Dario Tordoni

More letter, less envelope

Dario Tordoni — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 00:20:00 +0100

Francesco, a fellow tech nerd, shared an interesting interview with Jason Fried.

The interview sometimes felt a bit too staged, and I don't know if he actually behaves the way he described, but I appreciated some points.
Fried didn't invent these concepts, but he made me think.

Small is beautiful

In a business you must earn more than your spend. You can’t control the context where your Business works, but you can control how much you spend.

Talking about the digital field, I think that using AI we are going to see more small companies with higher margins, thanks to automation reducing operational costs. Creating a small org from the beginning will be even more strategic.

I believe that we are at the beginning of a turning point, and we will need to figure out how to take this, unclear to me, path.
Not to mention the social consequences we may have to face, such as job displacement and widening salary gaps, a complex issue whose full impact is yet to be seen.

Reducing the size of a company, simplifying its structure, flattening it, can reduce friction, empower teams, remove communication layers.
Organizational streamlining should also be reflected in product simplification; ultimately, you ship your organization.

The envelope and the letter

Focusing on the letter means focusing on the substance,

“the envelope is just the thinnest little thing that needs to be there to hold the letter”.

I think that it’s not easy to stay focused on a digital product, because software is less bounded by limits, it can easily grow in functionalities and complexity, getting worse if they don’t add real final value for the users.

Building a product, there’s a time when we must ask ourselves if what we built is enough.
A very hard question.

Short-term Planning

You can plan everything, create a specific roadmap, but you don't have a crystal ball.

A long-term plan can help you clarify your thoughts, write down your goals, acting as a strategic tool, to review periodically.

But you must also short-term plan for your tactical needs.
You have to face how the context of your product is changing, to adapt it, to redefine a better road, especially in such a fast-changing field, where new technologies and competitors can shuffle the cards quickly.

Templates, metrics and random thoughts on drinklytics' future

Dario Tordoni — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 22:39:00 +0100

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

Following the “fresh start effect” of the new year, I spent some time reflecting on Drinklytics and its trajectory. I asked myself: what value does Drinklytics actually bring to people?

To answer that, I refined the value proposition:

Drinklytics helps drink enthusiasts build a private, personal archive to remember, compare, and choose the right drink for every occasion.

Three key pillars emerge from this:

Personal collection
Retention
Search & Selection

Consequently, I decided to pivot my North Star Metric (NSM) from:

Drinks added per active user per month

Monthly users who add at least one drink

Here is why this shift makes sense:

It measures real value: it focuses on consistent engagement rather than raw volume.
It’s inclusive: it doesn't differentiate between someone who logs a fine wine once a month and someone who logs their daily tea.
It rewards growth: the metric only grows if the archive stays alive.

The true value lies in supporting a habit. I don’t want to over-engineer the process, but this new NSM aligns much better with my vision. After redefining it, it suddenly became clear how my backlog prioritization was slightly off.
I have now adjusted the I.C.E. parameters of my tasks to align with this new metric.

✅ What’s New

I’ve officially released Drink Templates. Users can now create templates based on drink types, customizing them with specific fields and tags.

To make the process frictionless, as soon as a user selects a drink type, the app automatically loads the corresponding template. This makes logging a new entry significantly faster.

I’m particularly proud of this release because:

I shipped a feature directly requested by users.
Feedback came through the “Give me feedback” CTA I implemented in the previous release; it’s great to see users engaging.
It can directly impact the NSM by lowering the friction of logging a drink.

How Templates work in Drinklytics:

Flexible Fields: templates can include numeric or text fields. These remain blank when adding a new drink to keep the UI clean.
Smart Tags: if a user adds a tag to a template, the app asks whether to apply it to old entries or just to the new entries.
Clean UI: when viewing old entries, empty template fields are hidden. However, if a user hits Edit, those fields appear, ready to be filled.
Non-restrictive: templates aren't rigid; users can still add custom fields on the fly for specific entries.
Consistency: I’ve implemented title case formatting for labels to keep the archive looking professional, regardless of the input.

To help those who already have an existing archive, I also developed the Smart Deducer. This tool scans old entries by drink type and automatically suggests templates based on the statistical occurrence of fields and tags. If there aren't enough entries for a precise scan, the Deducer alerts the user, who can still choose to force the template creation.

📈 Numbers and goals

Based on the renewed NSM, here the monthly users which at least add one drink (among those who agreed to send usage statistics):

and here the numbers of active installs with MoM growth rate:

Growth is steady and organic, but slow compared to the potential user base.
At this point in history, when AI enhances, speeds up, facilitates, or unlocks development, reaching potential users becomes the area where we need to focus most of our energy, which is increasingly necessary due to the growth of potential competitors.

Clearly, the product and the experience with the product remain central, but reaching users and doing so quickly makes all the difference.

I think this is particularly true for simple applications that can be replicated in a few hours of work, such as mine.
This could also open up the issue of pricing, with a phenomenon of replication in vibecoding and price reduction that is somewhat reshaping the landscape of this product line, but potentially also larger areas.

Not to mention a future in which app creation will be on-demand and personalized. Perhaps by then Drinklytics will even have 300 active installations.

Profile hub released, templates in progress and a 37% growth

Dario Tordoni — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 17:49:00 +0100

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

I failed, and maybe I could have done more, but I see goals, especially for this side project, as inspirational moonshots.
In July 2025, I set a goal for Drinklytics: 1000 active installs in six months.

We could talk about how relative 1000 active installs are as a goal: for some people it’s unachievable, for others it’s just a simple step.
I won’t go deep into this; for me it’s a goal that helps me growth in multiple ways.

So, let’s see how good December has been for Drinklytics.

✅ Done

I released the profile feature, a hub of data that gives an overview of a user’s tasting journey.

As a first version it’s quite simple, a tasting heatmap and some charts; I will improve it in the future releases, but it works, adds nuances and makes the path I expect for the app clearer.
I also decided to make the profile hub the place where users can contribute to the project, in three ways:

support by sharing
support by donation
support by giving feedback

Sharing and donating unlock a “supporter” badge, but for now it’s only a badge of honor: I would like to unlock some features by sharing, but I’d also like to give the whole value to all the users, so I want to think more about it.

The badge is unlocked as soon as a user taps the call to action. I don’t know if and when a user shares the app, and I don’t really want to know that, it’s their device.

Regarding donations, with the current setup, I don’t know who is donating, so the easiest way for now is to just unlock the badge after a tap. I am fine with this, and I make it clear inside the app.

🚧 Progress

After the release of the profile section, I received two feature requests from users, and they asked for the same thing: a drink template system, to customize the fields of new drinks based on the drink type, making it faster to log a new one. That makes sense to me.

I am working on this new feature, which involves many aspects to consider:

should I apply a template to older entries? If so, how?
should I allow users to override a template while logging a new drink?
should I let users find pre-made templates?
should I make some fields mandatory regardless of templates?

I am making good progress and in the next update post I should be able to summarize the choices I made.

📈 Numbers and goals

As usual, some number to show the growth of Drinklytics.
These are active, organic installs, with a 37% increase compared to November.

And here some Mixpanel numbers, from the people who enabled the stats tracking (pure love for them <3).

Total drinks added

And the drinks added ratio

One year has passed, new core features and sharing

Dario Tordoni — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 00:06:00 +0100

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

Welcome to a new update on my Build in Public journey with the Drinklytics app.

I realize just now that September marked the anniversary of the start of the project; not the publication, but the very first experiments.
I had the opportunity to look back a little, and I think I learned some important things:

Better time and priority management (I.C.E. framework and time-blocking). In a side project they are not a given.
Substantial improvement in my prompts structure (brainstorming and refining in out-of-context chat)
I deepened my understanding of ASO concepts through hands-on experience
I overcame of my shyness and reluctance to write publicly and step outside my comfort zone

✅ Done

The “Custom importer” is live! It’s based on a user’s feedback, who asked me to create a way to import an existing archive, previously created in excel or using another app.

I found the idea very challenging and useful. It required me almost a month and a half of testing and testing to try to release a (beta) feature, as stable as possible.
Now a user can import XLSX, CSV or JSON files.

For any field missing in Drinklytics, a user can create a custom one on the fly, and if the user’s file doesn’t contain a mandatory field, he can choose to fill the field with custom values.

I tested this features with fake files thousands rows long, and it worked. In the previous update I also referred to some technical aspects I had to face.

Another user on Reddit found that the pics taken within the app weren’t available outside of it.
This is the standard behaviour of Drinklytics, but I saw the point of the user, so I added three ways to solve this problem:

a general setting that let the app to save a copy of a pic into the gallery of the device (disabled by default, full size pic)
a download button that appear when a user open a drink image inside the app (optimized size pic)
a share button that appear when a user open a drink image inside the app (optimized size pic)

This is also another way to make people free to use their data outside the app, to avoid lock-in.

Last but not least, I added a “What’s new” screen. No one asked for it, but I think is a way to make users aware of the new value offered by the app.

On my device, updates are automatic and they run in background so, every now and then, I discover by chance new features inside the apps I use.
If an app doesn’t show me the changelog, I can’t know what’s new.
This is the reason why behind this new feature. Is enabled by default, but users can easily disable it.

🚧 Progress

I am working on a core feature, a personal stats screen, a kind of a hub to get an overview of the user’s tasting journey. This new screen should become a pillar of the Drinklytics experience.

It’s not always possible or desirable to contribute financially to a project, and Drinklytics was created free of charge and will remain so.
For this reason, I am also trying to allow users to contribute to the project in other ways, specifically by encouraging them to share it with people who might be interested, thereby increasing the audience of potential users and, indirectly, the number of donations.
That’s why I am working on some sharing features to experiment some growth techniques.

📈 Numbers and goals

As usual, some number to show the growth of Drinklytics.

Here the active installs, they are increasing slooower, but still 100% organic.

And here some Mixpanel numbers, from the people who enabled the stats tracking (pure love for them ❤️).

Total drinks added

And the drinks added ratio

October update

Dario Tordoni — Thu, 06 Nov 2025 00:21:00 +0100

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

This is the October update, made in November. I am such a rebel. But I like the idea of a monthly post to tell what happened the last month.

Given that time is short for everything, I set up a new priority system, or better, I optimized my previous one.

I still use I.C.E. (Impact, Confidence, Ease), but now every field has a maximum level of 5 (before was 3) and the values are multiplied (previously they were added together). This way, tasks in the backlog are ranked based on a much clearer and more defined I.C.E. score.

I did a little experiments using story points and logging time for tasks, but it doesn’t fit my needs now. I don’t have a fixed amount of time to devote to Drinklytics, so giving more structure to the flow just makes everything slower.

✅ Done

Pictures were saved at full size. With lots of items the app and its backups became too heavy.

Since the last update I improved the images management, reducing images sizes during the item saving step, also creating smaller variations for the ones used on the listing screen.

This let the app load faster and improved the backup system.

🚧 Progress

I am working on a big single feature, the custom importer.

Chatting with some Drinkylytics users or potential users they told me about their personal archive, like excel or csv files where they store their tasting notes.

If you start logging drinks into an app, you would also like to import the archive you already have, to make you journey complete. This makes perfect sense to me, and I am close to the release.

The hardest part:

manage different date formats
converting different rating systems to the one of Drinklytics (0 to 5 with half points)
let users to add custom fields in bulk while importing
make some fields mandatory and give users the possibility to add a standard values if these fields are not in their archives
manage multiple file format (now csv, json, xlsx)

I am going to release the custom importer soon, but I will label it “beta” during the initial period.
There are too many variables thinking about all the possible personal archive structures out there.
II tried to manage the common use cases, but I am sure that I will need to improve this feature from time to time. I just hope to receive feedback to do it, rather than bad review for not having done so.

📅 Next

After the custom import I am going to address a major feature, a personal profile with statistics and charts. Because I like them.

I know, it’s not the best product management workflow, but my business stakeholder self, he sometimes just wants things done with no supporting data.

I will also manage minor issues that a couple of users have raised with me.

📈 Numbers and goals

Active installs are growing, not as fast as I expect, but they grow, and all organically. My goal is 1.000 active installs in 6 months (from mid-June 25 to the end of 2025).

I am almost at 9% at about 70% of the time.

I also defined more KPIs to follow. I created a Mixpanel dashboard with some data that I will start to share.

On October I received a donation from a Drinklytics user, the third since my June launch.

I have a goal set up on ko-fi, and I am at 34% of it.

Completing the goal should allow me to manage the app expenses for a couple of years, and also to publish it on Apple Store (which would be the largest annual expense)

📝 Final thoughts

The custom importer is a powerful feature, and a very time consuming one to develop. But it’s an interesting feature to release, it requires lots of thinking and tests.

When fully working and available for multiple file types, it will be a precious ally for all the new Drinklytics users.

My posts are more about development than anything else, but I am also working a little on marketing, or better on setting things up for close future marketing.
I am not a developer, I am a product/marketing/data guy, so I want to give more focus soon on these topics too.

I would love to receive feedback, whether it's about my app or these build-in-public posts. If you feel like it, send me an email. I'll be happy to hear from you!

On the road

Dario Tordoni — Thu, 18 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0200

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

This is the September update update about my Build In Public journey with Drinklytics, I missed the August one.

🚧 Progress

I made a mistake from the beginning; I forced people to use the app only to save three kind of drink:

wine
beer
spirits.

“And what if I want to save sodas?”, “I’d like to save teas”.. mm well, you can’t.

This has been also one the first feedback I received from Fabian, but I was so focused on my idea that I was like deaf; sorry man for not listening to you.

I was wrong, so I spent some times re-working on the database schema and on the app screens too, to make it possible to save all kinds of drinks.

The funny thing is that I created the app to have my personal archive for the specific drink types above, now I use myself the app to save juices. 😏

I also worked on the import-export feature, and I couldn't wait to do it. I found this one a very important feature, because I think it gives reliability to an app.

You know that you can spend your time adding data to an app and that your time will not be wasted one day by a poorly managed update or by the loss of the device.

This is not yet a scheduled backup feature, it’s just a manual export/import, but it’s the basis for the backup that will come in the upcoming updates.

Some updates about ASO (App Store Optimization). Reading some forums, one theory is that without an initial push from Ads, the store listing won't rank in the Play Store.

I tested a 100% organic approach starting from scratch, and for now it seems to work.
In August, about two months after publishing, I started to see the first movements and, one month later, the situation is what you see in the image (this is the US version of the listing page).

I am still lacking in serious promotion of the app, I'm finding myself running out of time, because I am also working on other projects that I will share.

Having few time, I prefer to focus on features, to make my app a better product and its existing users satisfied, focusing on organic installations which, although few in number, arrive.
Few active users could promote the app through word of mouth.

For a couple of days I saw some traffic to Drinklytics website coming from Facebook, so I suppose someone shared it. I wan’t able to find anything, otherwise I would had participating in the post.

It’s just an assumption.

📅 Next

In want to focus on three main elements:

a better images management → to reduce images sizes, makes the app loading faster and improve the backup system
automated backup → to add more reliability to the app
an icon redesign → to improve CTR and installs in the Play Store

📈 Numbers and goals

In June I have set a goal: to reach 1000 active installations in six months, or to round up, by the end of 2025. From Google: an active device is defined as one that has been turned on at least once in the past 30 days.

Currently, after three month and a half of activity, and relying only on organic growth supported by ASO, app active installs trend is the one below:

So at ≈50% of my journey, my goal met is at 4.7%. 🙃
A lot of work to do, but I'm super pumped.

As always, thank you for your time and get in touch with me, I'm very curious to meet you 🙂.

Don't shoot at random

Dario Tordoni — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 11:45:00 +0200

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

This is the July monthly update about my Build In Public journey with Drinklytics.

I think that at the beginning of a project, you must do things that don’t scale.

You can’t just shoot at random and hope to find people eager to install your app. I say that to reinforce it for myself.

Of course I also tried to shoot at random. 🙃

🚧 Progress

I worked a lot on this project during the last month, just to list it out:

completely refreshed the app page on Google Play

made new screenshots made with preview.app
refreshed content with some keywords

UI/UX redesign. Now the design of the screens is aligned to each other, some elements have been moved to create a better (I think, I hope) experience

I asked for feedback on a UI/UX subreddit 🫣 and they demolished the design.
They are right, now it's just a boring and simple one, I am going to rethink everything. As a non-designer I don't know how good I'll be at this, but I'll try

I did ASO (App Store Optimization)

added schreenshots (better if with keywords inside them)
got some good reviews from the testers
made sure there were no crashes

I am working on my social presence. These are the socials where I am actively sharing the project, one way or another:

Linkedin
BlueSky (because Twitter sucks now)
Reddit

I am not receiving waves of traffic or installs due to my social activity, but I am creating real connections with people and that's still a success.

Also, having never been a social media person, I'm studying the best ways to use them without losing my tone.

📅 Next

The app is still not ranking on the Store; I have seen it rank for unimportant keys for a day or two and then disappear. I think I need to optimize the content of the listing more.
I could give it a boost using ads, but mine is a zero-budget project, so, I pass
I am trying to build some backlinks for the app page, because it seems they have a weight for ranking, even inside the Store 🤔
I must do 1-to-1, cold DMs to people who might be interested, to find my niche.

📈 Numbers and goals

I have set a goal: to reach 1000 active installations in six months, or to round up, by the end of 2025.

From Google: an active device is defined as one that has been turned on at least once in the past 30 days.

This means that every month I should reach 167 new active installations.

Currently, after one month of activity, I have reached 20 active devices, so:

monthly goal met: 12%
H2 goal met: 2%

I have work to do.

App launch update: now available for everyone! Road to 1.000 installations

Dario Tordoni — Tue, 03 Jun 2025 13:22:00 +0200

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics, now live. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

📝 Some context 📑

In the last update I talked about how my closed test was moving forward. I implemented the main feedback received during the test, the ones that seemed to bring the most value.
I currently have a nice backlog loaded with new features to be implemented, which I aim to implement following the roadmap drawn at the beginning and readjusted sprint by sprint.

I finally requested Google to go into production. I knew I would have to answer to a kind of questionnaire, and I did, but it felt like a pro forma step rather than something really impactful.
Once I responded, within a couple of days, I was given the okay for production, so I created a new release, asking to be published.

It took about seven days to receive feedback from Google, which was negative.

🚧 Problems, development and solutions 🔧

When I received the email notification I rushed to read it thinking about the possible reasons.

In the end it was a small thing, the privacy policy was in a pdf hosted on the app site, but Google requires it to be a page, linked from the app too.
After the change, the app was immediately accepted, and Drinklytics is now officially on the Play Store! 🎉

Now that the app is public, I will dedicate more time to promoting it, without interrupting its development.
Following the build-in-public approach I had already started to tell the story of the journey on X (no more), Mastodon and Bluesky, in a very discontinuous way.
My focus was on development, moreover I have to admit that the initial enthusiasm had clashed quite a bit with the daily routine of life.

Regarding the SEO and ASO aspects, I had done an initial analysis that allowed me to set up a bit of the basis of everything, but I have room to work on organic positioning.

Each phase of the app's processing focused on very specific aspects, because time is always short for side projects. Now that I have achieved the first goal, however, I can refocus and reprioritize.

📈 Numbers and goals 🎯

Wanting to maintain the transparency of the narrative, these are the final numbers from this testing period:

120 landing page visits
24 form views (20%)
6 closed test joiners (5%)

In total, 32 people were given access to the test. Thanks to all of them!

As I said, with the app finally on the Play Store, the first goal is achieved. Now what?
Now I think the most interesting metric is active installations.

Since I start with few active installations - despite the 32 user of the test, only 15 active installations result - any number would be fine as a goal.
I choose 1.000, a round number and one that can represent a first challenge.

If you want to contribute to this goal, you can download the app using the button above, or share it with people who might find it useful. It may seem spartan now, but I am already working on new features.

Thanks for following along so far, stay tuned for future updates.
As always, I welcome any feedback you would like to share and network.

It's not a delay, it's an improvement

Dario Tordoni — Sun, 11 May 2025 08:16:00 +0200

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics, now live. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

📝 Some context 📑

This is a new post format for my build-in-public journey. It's still a work in progress, but it's clearer than the previous one.

My closed test is still running, and I am receiving feedback. Thank you, Mom.
Jokes apart, the people who are trying Drinklytics are so kind and their feedback is useful.

The closed testing period (14 days) is technically over. I could ask Google Play to publish my application, but this is not the right decision.
Being my first app, I want to learn from every step. Ok, ship fast, rapid iterations, small improvements.. but I also want to take the time to think about what I am facing.

🚧 Problems, development and solutions 🔧

During the closed test phase, some say it’s best to release a few updates before requesting publication.

This might state that you're getting feedback and that your app is actively being used. It could also suggest that your app is slightly above the average quality of new releases.

Maybe it’s just a rumor.

I don't know, I decided to work more on my app before publishing, because it's the best choise.

Via the feedback, people asked me to:

have fewer required fields
be able to add many images per drink
be able to edit each field
some UI changes
minor/bigger improvements that I will manage in the next versions

These features required a database migration, which was new to me. I had to test it thoroughly to ensure everything worked smoothly and nothing broke during the update.
Git has been an invaluable tool, allowing me to manage code, make mistakes, and easily revert to previous versions.

I tested the changes on many devices and, yesterday, finalized the new release for the closed test.
Google Play allows you to prompt users to update the app when they open it. I tried this feature, but it didn’t seem to work, though I may have set it up incorrectly.
I’ll have more chances to test it.

Now the 1.3 version of the app is rolling out to the closed test users, if there are no bugs, I will ask Google to publish.

📈 Numbers and goals 🎯

Since I’m still in the development phase, I’ve kept the project’s publicity minimal, just enough to attract a small group of early adopters for testing. The numbers are modest, but in the spirit of building in public, here they are:

Drinklytics landing page

Q1: 55 visits -> 12 form views (22%) -> 4 closed test joiners (7%)
Q2 QTD: 36 visits -> 7 form views (19%) -> 1 closed test joiners (3%)

Drinklytics users

Totale enabled for closed test: 31

My Q2 goal is to get published, nothing more now.

Thank you for your time. Feel free to get in touch with me, I will be happy to receive your feedback. 😊

Testing and testing

Dario Tordoni — Sat, 19 Apr 2025 01:10:00 +0200

Following the learn-by-doing approach, in September 2024 I started working on my first app, Drinklytics, now live. In these articles I share my journey, ideally once a month

I have not been able to devote much time to the development of Drinklytics in the last period, but recently I have been able to resume work on it.

During my last post, I was in the closed testing phase, looking for people willing to join the tester club through the app's landing page.
Now there are twenty to thirty users who are testing the app.

What I learned.

Google now requires only 12 users for testing.
The fourteen-day countdown starts when the 12 users join.
They don't have to use the app every day, but they do have to stay signed up for the entire time period.
Of course, if one user leaves, another must take his or her place for the 14-day count.
Google simply provides a daily update in the Play Console dashboard, indicating whether the 12 users are still present.
At the end of the test, Google will ask me to answer some questions about the test.

If all goes well, Big G will allow me to publish the app. Let's see.
I have received some feedback from testers and am now managing the backlog to reorganize priorities.