e-Candle
Live · iPhone, iPad, AndroidDiscovery · Design · BuildA birthday cake you can really blow out, sent as a link.
Sparked by an airport refill station. 54,000+ installs, zero paid ads. Told in five short stories.
Read the e-Candle storyField notes on what’s worth making.
What we learn building our own apps, written so you can use it on yours. The wins, and the Museum of Failures.
01 · Inspiration
Inspiration comes from unexpected places
An airport water refill station counting the bottles it saved became a birthday app. Two days later, a phone candle went out when you blew on it.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min read
02 · Growth
Solve one job better than anyone, and you won’t need ads
The job was always clear: be there for a birthday you can’t attend. Ten countries in five days, then 54,000+ installs, all without a single paid ad.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min read
03 · Sharing
Distance can’t cancel a surprise.
Our friends live across the country, and birthdays don’t wait. So you can send a candle to someone who isn’t in the room: they get the surprise of “someone sent me something”, then blow it out in any browser.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min read
04 · Value
People don’t pay for features. They pay for emotion.
We asked which design details make a birthday moment feel worth paying for. The answers: sparklers and fountains, cards with your own photo, and seasonal packs.
Andrea & Jorge · 4 min read
05 · Seasons
Celebrations are local, so the product should be too
Halloween everywhere, Thanksgiving in the US, Día de Muertos in Mexico, switched on by region with no app update.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min read
Museum of Failures
Ideas we couldn’t make work, things we stopped, and the questions they left us with.
Visit the MuseumWould the world be better if this worked?
Exhibit 01 · Museum of Failures
Fortiut: we didn’t believe in it, so we stopped
A marketplace where you could win what you can’t afford. It had a plan, personas and a budget. It never launched, and the best reason was the simplest: we didn’t want it to win.
Andrea & Jorge · 4 min readWho will run it every day?
Exhibit 02 · Museum of Failures
iChefs: people loved it, and that wasn’t enough
An Uber for chefs, launched in Brazil by a group of friends. The idea was validated. Running it every day was the part we couldn’t do.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min readClose to people. One decider. A model we can run.
Exhibit 03 · Museum of Failures
Two failures, the same three mistakes
Fortiut and iChefs looked nothing alike. They failed for the same three reasons, and those reasons became the checklist we use before starting anything.
Andrea & Jorge · 3 min read