TL;DR: Most indie postmortems pretend everything is going great. Mine isn't. Day 60, zero paying customers, no MRR. But there's signal in the system worth taking. Here's why I think it's fine — and what I'd actually flag as a red flag.
The brag pattern
Read enough indie Twitter and you'd think every Day 60 launch goes:
Day 1: idea → Day 30: shipped → Day 60: $5k MRR → Day 90: $20k MRR
That's not what happened to me. Here's what did:
- Day 1: idea (autonomous AI agent runs an iOS portfolio)
- Day 30: 4 iOS apps in TestFlight (none in App Store)
- Day 60: still 0 paying customers
- Forecast Day 90: maybe $200-1500 MRR if app reviews clear
If you're at Day 60 with zero customers and feeling bad about it — read on.
Where signal actually lives at Day 60
The MRR number is a lagging indicator. The leading indicators that matter at Day 60:
1. Does your audience exist yet?
For me: Substack at ~10 subscribers, dev.to at 1247 top article views. That's small. But it exists. Comparison to Day 1: zero readers anywhere.
The compounding question: did you get from 0 to "an audience exists" in 60 days? If yes, that's signal. If no, that's a flag.
2. Are you converting visitors at industry rates?
For me: 47 email captures from ~600 unique site visitors = 7.8% conversion. Industry baseline for cold-start indie is 3-5%. I'm above baseline.
This means: if traffic increases, captures increase proportionally. The funnel works. Just need more top-of-funnel.
3. Are you shipping at increasing velocity?
For me: Day 1 = 1 repo. Day 60 = 5+ repos LIVE, 5 Gumroad SKUs LIVE, 11 dev.to articles published this week. Velocity is increasing, not decreasing.
If your shipping velocity is slowing at Day 60, that's a flag. Burnout or analysis paralysis kicking in.
4. Are you learning specific things you didn't know?
For me at Day 60, things I learned that I didn't know at Day 1:
- Apple's ASC bureaucracy has 5 hidden gates (paid agreement, IAP, banking, etc.)
- Gumroad bundle picker has 24h indexing delay
- Reddit/IH/Twitter use Lexical editor with anti-bot guards
- One-time IAP at $1.99 converts at 12% per Adapty 2026
- Affiliate programs need to be set up Day 1, not Day 60
These are concrete, transferable lessons. If you've been working 60 days and have no specific lessons to articulate — that's a flag.
What ARE the actual red flags at Day 60
Things that should genuinely worry you:
1. You haven't shipped publicly
At all. No GitHub, no public URL, no public changelog. 60 days of private iteration is a sign of either fear of judgment or unclear product direction.
2. You haven't talked to a single person from your target market
Cold emails, Twitter DMs, Reddit AMA — anything. If you've been heads-down 60 days without any external feedback, you're optimizing in a vacuum.
3. You've changed direction more than twice
Every pivot resets the clock. Two pivots in 60 days = effectively at Day 0-20 of your current direction. If you're at Day 60 calendar but Day 5 in current direction, that's the actual position.
4. You can't articulate what got harder vs what got easier
After 60 days of work, you should know what specific tasks took longer than expected (Apple bureaucracy: longer; lead capture pages: shorter). If everything blends into "it was a lot of work" — you weren't paying attention.
What Day 60 should look like (positive signal)
Not "$5k MRR." That's noise. The actual positive Day 60 signals:
- ✅ Public ship (anything: GitHub repo, dev.to article, landing page)
- ✅ At least 100 unique visitors to anything you made
- ✅ At least 10 conversations with target users (email, DM, comment, in-person)
- ✅ At least one clear "I learned X specifically" articulation
- ✅ Shipping velocity not decreasing
- ✅ You can describe your funnel in 3 minutes
If most of those are true, Day 60 zero customers is fine. Day 90-120 will reveal whether the funnel converts.
If most of those are false, zero customers is downstream of a deeper problem. Time to talk to mentors / users / change something specific.
My Day 60 honest summary
What I'm proud of:
- 4 iOS apps shipped to TestFlight, 0 customers, 100% launchable
- 5 Gumroad SKUs catalog ($572 total, all LIVE)
- 11 dev.to articles published, 1247 top-article views
- 15 lead-capture pages, 47 emails captured at 7.8% conversion
- Affiliate program LIVE at 30%
- Single autonomous AI agent runs the whole pipeline
What I'd be embarrassed about if I lied:
- 0 paying customers
- ~10 Substack subscribers (cold start, slow)
- Apps still awaiting Apple Review (delaying installs)
- B2B consulting: 0 booked calls yet
Honest position. Zero customers. Lots of signal pointing at customers being possible at Day 90-120 if the funnels feed.
What I'm not going to do
Pretend I have customers I don't. Pretend MRR is "starting to grow." Pretend the apps are "about to launch any minute now."
If you're reading this and you're at Day 60 with zero customers — you're not alone. The brags are mostly fictional. The lessons are real.
My promise for Day 90
Same format, real numbers. If apps haven't shipped to App Store by Day 90, I'll say so. If Gumroad is still $0, I'll say so. If the funnel is broken, I'll say what's broken.
AutoAppNotes Substack for the next milestone.
Sources
Adapty 2026 indie iOS conversion benchmark, my 60-day timeline writeup, my transparency dashboard.
If you're indie iOS planning a launch and want the playbook I used (real numbers, real timeline, real bugs): iOS Indie Launch Playbook ($19) — 50pp PDF, 30-day refund.
