A Sparkli Reflection

2026-02-25

The following is a reflection of my time working with Sparklii LLC, and building a date ideas app (which started in high school), and was my first introduction to a major project and to building a business in general.

All of the notes are from an extended meeting we had, and highlighted our journey. These are my personal notes of the biggest major points of what I learned.

Lessons

Business Perspective

• needed to fail significantly faster
• needed to be data first, growth was clearly not there
• earlier pivot would have made more sense
• planned ahead on partnerships and whatnot when we had no market validation or user base
• burnt way too much for too many months

Development Standpoint

• architectural mistakes with some of the data structure, particularly with likes and things like that
  • did not fully leverage relational db at times, and utilized json
    • json is not awesome to work with in flutter, much easier with js or ts
• was learning at the time, so def could have made better decisions in hindsight
• definitely would stick with a BaaS/FaaS provider in the future, made things significantly easier and quicker
• would have made much rougher drafts and just released, sharpen the ui much later
• lots of time spent on minor UI tweaks or revisions when should have been on core product
• would use flutter again, but probably would now make a webapp mvp possibly, then shift to flutter depending on userbase
• challenging to dev without daily standups, challenges with both John and I having to more or less tackle larger projects on own just because of time constraints
• egress issues should have been avoided

Notes from the meeting:

Link to Andy’s doc: [[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SrTkhjifpEI366Bzm3-V6qRF7CyBxjtzqrt4DdbuX68/edit?invite=CL-R3K0H&tab=t.0]]

My Personal Takeaways:

• name is not that important, just build
• should leverage wireframes/power and easy apps to make it really easy to see the concept and show to people
• faster iterations, quicker pivots and documenting
• should have worked with users on day to day, was not building anything significant
• find proper channels early, for ex: LI was not working
• legal for apple is a struggle, get it done early
• transparency in the journey makes things very understandable
• do a lot more research on the apple submissions
• launch days are only if the app is approved and good to go for a while
• use a CRM as early as possible
• go native early, or be specific
• own your own IP, don’t be limited by another company
• keep all the content on your own stuff, we lost a ton of content due to working with another business
• free labor does nothing
• not great launch, build more hype, should hype when all set
• gotta spend money to make money
• tech debt acquired pretty quick, need to focus on core features
• high quality story telling was a great pitch and got a lot of hype, and showed a lot of drive
• should focus on small groups
• validation is so much more important, finding the niche, rather than targeting a very broad group of people
• talk is cheap, very much needed it to be niche, needed to be data guided significantly earlier
• need to be connected customers always
• USE SOMETHING LIKE POSTHOG, NEED TO BE VERY DATA DRIVEN, AND MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON THE DATA ITSELF (POSTHOG WORKS WITH FLUTTER)
• READ ALL CONTRACTS, MAKE SURE TO NOT GET HOOKED
• virality does not convert to downloads
• if paying for something, drive the direction, ensure to enforce it
• reddit organic marketing does kinda work
• DATA AND NUMBERS DRIVE A TON OF IT, NEED TO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF LIKE SITTING AND ACTING LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT PEOPLE WANT
• marketing in public works, is actually effective
• need a very clear business model
• don’t spread thin on socials
• be VERY CAREFUL WITH TRADEMARKS, SCAMS ARE FREQUENT
• go angel tbh
• DONT AUTOMATE IT UNTIL ITS A PROBLEM
• founder market fit also helps
• TALK TO COMPETITORS AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE

Final Thoughts

• stay connected
• reach out to andy when in cincy