Punch: visual shared spaces

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Inspiration

While searching and scrolling endlessly in the group chat for the address of an out-of-state friend to know where to send his birthday gift, I had an epiphany. This act was an annual tradition at this point - and it wasn't the only time I found myself taking way too long to find important information in the group chat.

I quickly gathered the other co-founders and found it wasn't a solo issue. As we built, we also realized it solved more than just that single problem.

What it does

Punch is a place where users can store bits of info/content called "Blocks" for themselves or a group (I.e.: Airbnb address while on vacation, a friend's gate code, an itinerary, a grocery list, important photos, etc.) It's a cross between shared notes and a visual board.

With our latest update, we've implemented Siri AI for quick Block creation + widgets + automatic clipboard pasting. The customizations and possibilities are endless.

How we built it

Currently, our app is in React Native. We may switch to Flutter in the future, but who knows.

We had Ryan make our design and backend like we usually do, and Justin dealt with frontend.

I (Paul), have years of experience in social media marketing, so I am confident we can stretch that to the highest level.

Challenges we ran into

Obviously, cross-platform is always a challenge. We weighed the pros and cons between React Native and Flutter - only to switch back and forth a few times.

We also had huge disagreements on the design - we wanted it to stand out, and we had differing thoughts on what that meant. However, we were all able to compromise and agree on our current design and now we love it.

Our biggest challenge was the App Review process for the App Store. The Play store was smooth sailing - approved in one go within 24 hours. The App Store on the other hand... took 3 weeks with multiple rejections, 2 of which were things they claimed we didn't have when we did. This killed our momentum but thankfully we were still able to launch in time for Shipaton. Sadly, it did kill 3 weeks of acquiring users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of pushing the boundaries - not only in the capabilities of the app, but the marketing. We are going full force with our goal to stand out: starting with the name, going into the design, and even with our social media marketing.

We are also proud of simply being able to end the day in agreement. Obviously with 3 co-founders it can be hard to agree on everything. However, since we've been working together for years before this, we've learned the process of sacrificing for the greater good - and that was absolutely tested while creating Punch.

What we learned

We learned to really dial in the App Review process. In the past, it wasn't as strict, but we learned that now we should give them a mini-documentation in the Notes section so they don't miss anything.

We also learned that no app is simple! We thought there wouldn't be too much to the MVP of this app, when in fact it's a lot more complicated than we initially thought!

What's next for Punch

We are so excited for the future of Punch - both on the marketing side and the product side. On the product side, we've quickly iterated new features, with our next being adding more to the social element of Punch with comments and reactions on Blocks. On the marketing side, we will continue experimenting with social marketing.