ThrEEE Months of Silence, the 80/20 Trap, and Where We Go From Here

The last blog post was published on July 4th, so it’s been nearly three months since our last update. Honestly, these have been the least active three months since Patryk and I started our journey with Zenith.

As a reminder: we agreed to build this project around the Christmas and New Year holidays when we were hanging out in Poland. We got to work after I returned to Germany—first looking for the right platform, and by mid-February, we ran our first prompt. Our original target launch date was late April, and up until then, our momentum was so good that it really felt like we were going to pull it off.

The 80/20 Trap & Backend Roadblocks

So, what went wrong? Classic 80/20 rule: we built 80% of the app in 20% of the time, and now the remaining 20% is taking up 80% of our time. Theoretically, we could release it as is, but we’re still missing a few key backend elements that I have zero clue about because Patryk handles all of that. Truth be told, I'm not doing much with the app on a day-to-day basis right now, which leaves me with a lot of doubts.

Market Doubts & Strategic Pivot

My doubts are mainly about our market strategy. I’m questioning whether it even makes sense to push straight into the English-speaking market. I set up a TikTok account, posted a few videos, and got some initial traction, but I'm still unsure if we shouldn't just start exclusively in the Polish market, or at least run a dual-track strategy. If we launch in English and hit a brick wall, we’ll just say: alright, let’s pivot and try the Polish market instead.

For now, the entire website and blog are in English, even though this blog means absolutely nothing to the average user—they'll probably never even see it. Everything revolves around Google Play anyway, since that’s our primary target right now. I personally never visit the websites of apps I use just to read their dev blogs. We’re doing this mostly for ourselves as a way of logging our history.

Life Between Germany, Poland, and New Priorities

Why did we slow down so much since July? I’ve been constantly on the road between Poland and Germany. Whenever I’m in Poland, I completely forget about the project—my focus shifts entirely to hanging out with friends, short trips (Budapest, the Polish mountains, a bachelor party, and a wedding), and managing my house construction, where the biggest milestone this year was ordering and getting the windows installed.

A lot was happening on Patryk’s side as well—he changed jobs (he’s now working at a company that tunes cars and builds 1,000 hp engines), bought a motorcycle, and spent a ton of time riding over the last few months. Zenith isn't our only thing in life; we both work full-time jobs. As our momentum slowed down and we ran into tougher problems, our motivation took a hit and development dragged out.

What's Next?

• End-of-Year Launch Target: For about three months now, seeing how things were going, I’ve taken the stance that I’ll be happy if we just launch this app to the public by the end of the year. New Year’s is a great launch window for this type of app anyway.
• Refocusing in Germany: Now I’m back in Germany for the next three months, where I’ll have more time and structure, and I plan to dedicate a lot more of it to pushing the app forward.

Thanks for sticking around. Time to get back to work.