Reaching 100 users from the app store feels amazing. 100 strangers felt that BOLT Social was great enough to download. With 100 users you start to see some bugs and some areas of improvement.
I noticed with BOLT that the cost of one user (database costs) was roughly 4x what I expected it to be. I also noticed some bugs that occurred through simultaneous operations, things that I had never tested before.
Figuring out how to lower costs was task number 1. I looked closely at every single algorithm that utilized our server and ran it out a piece of paper seeing what could be the issue. After days of troubleshooting, I realized what exactly it was related to. Something that turned out to be a very interconnected function, which meant changing countless algorithms.
I never knew about some thresholds that existed regarding some functions I used, so that meant making my own to replace them. After a while everything was sorted out and I deployed the new code.
The costs, although not exactly what I hoped for, were pretty close to what I had expected. So it was a win.
Through this process, I learned to first thoroughly research and plan out what you are going to build, before going all in and putting in the work.
Aug 2023, Darsh