Hey everyone,
I just wanted to share a small personal milestone and say thank you to the Expo team and community.
I’ve been working with React Native for almost 10 years now. For most of that time, I was building apps for other people, clients, companies, startups, agencies, you name it.And don’t get me wrong, I learned a lot from that.
But at some point, I started feeling this weird frustration: I had spent years helping other people ship their ideas, while never really giving myself the time to seriously build one of my own. So this year, I decided to change that.
A friend and I started building our own app, Paintly, a small daily art history app that helps people discover one artwork every day and learn a bit more about art in around 2 minutes.
Nothing massive. Nothing revolutionary. There are already apps in this space, but none of them felt exactly like what we wanted as users so we decided to build our own version.
And honestly, Expo has been a huge part of making that possible. Being able to move fast, iterate quickly, ship updates, test ideas, and avoid getting stuck in too much native complexity has made a real difference. Especially when you’re a small team and every hour matters.
We recently crossed 700+ downloads and around $200 in revenue.
It’s still very early. We’re not “successful” yet. But for us, it already feels meaningful because it’s the first time React Native and Expo are not just tools I use for work, they’re tools I’m using to try to build a different life. So yeah, thank you Expo.
Not only for the framework, but for making it feel possible to go from idea to real product without needing a huge team or huge budget.
Curious if anyone else here is also using Expo to build their own indie project or side business. Would love to hear what you’re working on.
And if anyone wants to check out Paintly and give feedback, here’s the link:
https://taap.it/getpaintly