Apollo: Build a community, understand your platform risk
Apollo creator Christian Selig revisits launching and pricing his Reddit client, growing its community, and offering custom icons and merchandise. The conversation also covers Apollo’s shutdown after Reddit changed API pricing. It is a first-person account of both building a beloved product and depending on another platform.
What to take into your own app
Treat community as part of the product
The interview connects Apollo’s early reception with its community. For your own app, make feedback easy to give and show people how it informs the work.
Explore what people identify with
Selig discusses custom icons and merchandise alongside app pricing. Consider whether customers value ways to personalize the product or express their connection to it.
Map the dependencies you cannot control
Apollo’s API difficulties show why platform access and pricing belong in business planning. Growth does not remove that dependency.
A small experiment to try
List the platforms and APIs your app depends on. For each, document the pricing or access change that would threaten the product and one practical fallback.
The original source
Good ideas get better together.
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