Just Five

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Inspiration

I’ve often found myself staring at something I needed to start—and realizing I simply didn’t felt like it, or that the task felt too big to face. In those moments I wished something (or someone) could help me break the ice without pressure. A few months ago I came across the five-minute rule and thought: this would make a beautiful app. The idea sat quietly for a while. RevenueCat Shipaton was the push I needed to finally turn it into a real product. Just Five is that product: five minutes to begin, and permission to stop without guilt.

How I built it

I built Just Five solo as an independent developer, with AI agents helping me parallelize work so I could stay focused on product design and UX decisions—something I’ve been doing more often to stay productive without losing the “why.”

The app is Kotlin Multiplatform + Compose Multiplatform, so I could ship Android and iOS from one codebase, building on ~16 years of mobile experience (especially Android) instead of starting from scratch twice.

During the Shipaton window I developed and shipped for both platforms, with monetization powered by RevenueCat (subscriptions + lifetime) and a free tier that keeps the core “permission to stop” experience available to everyone.

I shared the journey #BuildInPublic mainly on X, Mastodon, and LinkedIn.

Challenges

The hardest product challenge was deciding what stays free vs what goes behind the paywall, while keeping a calm, no-guilt tone. Moving from “nice idea” to an app that actually helps people start—without nagging them, but still gently motivating them to push a little further—took real care.

On the technical side, the toughest parts were store review, notifications, and keeping the whole UI coherent with the soft visual theme across screens and both light/dark modes.

What I learned

This was my first time shipping a paywall with subscriptions (not only one-time purchases) in one of my own apps. Through RevenueCat I learned how to manage that cleanly across platforms.

If I started over tomorrow, I’d begin with a deeper study of the motivational / behavioral core first, then build everything around it—because translating that feeling into a product was the hardest (and most important) part.

I’m especially happy with the overall user experience: soft, simple, and true to the five-minute promise.

Built With

• android-studio
• cmp
• compose
• kmp
• kotilin
• xcode