// gazzini

Pooldash

August 2026 — A 15-yr overnight success

Fifteen years after my first pool app, this is finally a real business. We have over 3k subscribers paying $50 / year for Pool Care by Swim University, and I'm partnering with Matt to do something even more aggressive next year.

This is also enabling me to spend way more time with my kids in this critical age range (my oldest just turned 6 years old).

Feb 2025 — Maybe a real business

I think this might finally be the lifestyle business I've been chasing for years.

We found a pool influencer who is both smart & fun to work with, and my developer made a new version of the app just for his audience.

We're tweaking the onboarding, deleting most of the advanced features, simplifying everything, and putting in more video content. It's actually useful for the vast majority of pool owners, and it's starting to sell decently (in Feburary)... so I think this summer is going to be really fun.

June 2023 — $1k/week, a new developer

After turning the apps back to simple pay-per-install ($20 on iPhone), they've started making $1k / week. That will die down after the summer but covers some costs in the meantime (and by "some costs" I mean my co-working office lease that I apparently can't cancel for another year).

I got introduced to a high-potential aspiring developer, and he's really smart.

He's not just doing engineering -- he's also helping reach out to pool influencers (they exist!!) to try & drive installs. $10 per paid install of a great app isn't such a bad deal, especially for people with large followings. This has been a really fun project to continue (very little time from me recently).

March 2023 — Nearly quitting

The job market is tough for junior devs right now -- a smart, hard-working parent couldn't get hired after working with me for a few months. They just joined the military instead (I'm extremely proud of them).

I also took a massive pay-cut by joining an early startup, so I'm going to try some boring ways to soak more value out of the pool apps. They're no longer open-source (just open-core, which kind-of sucks). I'm just going to charge in the App-store, and link to some instructions on https://swimdocs.com and see if Amazon affiliate links make any sense.

Also... I joined a startup, and I still have 2 young kids, so I just don't have time to sink into this anymore.

I'm nearly quitting this project... just trying anything to recognize some value from it this summer. But still, I get a forum post like this sometimes that just makes my day, man.

This app is delish! Not only what I needed but looks so damn good too.

November 2022 — Helped dev #8 get hired

I helped another dev land a job through this project (that's... 8?). I love directly helping individual people; it's my antidote to the "greater good" BS that many software companies claim. My altruistic, anti-entropic projects aren't intertwined with my employer's fiduciary duty to its shareholders.

This is what God has called me to do at the moment -- I don't see many steps ahead, but I'll keep working.

I'm glad I made the app free. It's eliminated a whole category of not-fun concerns for now, and I can just invite people to help me build an awesome product.

August 2022 — Free & open-source

This project has been ongoing for 2 years. Financially, it's not great (130 paid subscribers). It has, however, been a great way to help aspiring engineers bridge to their first real programming job. I've also had fun working on every feature... except for billing.

Following my 2nd principle for this project, I'll just make it free so that I don't have to consider billing anymore. This way, I'll have more fun.

While I'm at it, I'll make the whole thing aggressively open-source (AGPL license). I suspect this will be even more fun, as I can respond to user's feature-requests with a link to the code-changes (and possibly stream development on Twitch).

This project is now explicitly art, rather than business.

In summary:

Next up, I'll build out online sync (like I've been saying for years, but putting off because billing is so tedious).

July 2021 — One year in

It's this project's 1-year anniversary! I'm still having fun building it, but we're only at $100 monthly recurring revenue... so let's hope "slow and steady" still wins the race. A graph from July 2020 -> July 2021, starting at 0 and ending at $119 MRR

May 2021 — Full-time on pooldash

I've helped 3 people get their first full-time tech jobs. I just quit my job to focus on pooldash full-time (funded by selling bitcoin and some other crypto).

March 2021 — Hired 3 engineers

I love mentoring people, but most of them need opportunity (not advice).

November 2020 — Filming update videos

The Tiger King documentary inspired me to film myself doing unusual things.

July 27, 2020

I finally took this project from 0 -> 1 paid subscribers... feels good! Now it's time to iterate for a few years.

July 20, 2020

I finally got some public feedback in the forum... hopefully this effort pays off.

July 12, 2020

Nobody is posting in the forum, the recipe editor is barely functional, going to keep iterating...

July 5, 2020

I finally launched this thing... I had to take some shortcuts for the sake of shipping, but it feels good.