Building a Design-First App Business that Stays Small on Purpose — Andy Allen, Not Boring Software

On the podcast: Andy Allen shares how he went from designing the never-shipped Microsoft Courier tablet and co-founding the Apple Design Award-winning drawing app Paper to starting !Boring Software (Not Boring Software) — a deliberately tiny, 2-person studio built around one rule: never make boring software again. He talks about why staying small on purpose protects you from getting trapped in a business you hate, how a "patron plan" with no extra features outsold expectations, why sound design and haptics are the most underused tools in app development, and how 3 years of false starts led to Not Boring Camera — an app that strips out all of Apple's photo processing so you can take expressive photos instead of technically perfect ones. Top Takeaways: 🎨 Design can be the entire value proposition — not just a nice-to-have People pay premiums for notebooks, furniture, and cars based on aesthetics, yet the software industry still assumes you need feature differentiation to charge money. 🔒 The biggest risk isn't failure — it's getting trapped in a business you don't want to run Structure your company, your incentives, and your product roadmap around the work you actually want to do, not the work that seems most scalable. 🎭 Doing the uncool thing often has the most staying power The projects that resonate most tend to be the ones nobody else wanted to do — starting an app business when everyone else was chasing SaaS turned out to be the right move. 💰 Patronage works when your mission resonates If people see you fighting a battle they believe in, they'll pay significantly more than the value of the features they unlock — they're funding the effort, not buying a product. 🔊 Sound design is the most underused tool in app development One sound file repeated is grating; a dozen slightly different versions of the same click — borrowed from game audio — makes software feel alive without adding real complexity. 📷 Default camera apps ensure you never take a bad photo — but you can never take a great one Stripping out computational processing and putting expressive tools into the moment of capture makes people want to go outside and take photos of random things again. 🧱 Ship complete products and move on Committing to "this is the app we made" — no V3 feature bloat, no chatbot in the corner — forces you onto the more creatively interesting path of making something new every year. About Andy Allen: 🚀 Founder and designer behind !Boring Software (Not Boring Software), an app studio creating expressive, design-led utility apps including Not Boring Weather, Calculator, Timer, Habits, Vibes, and Camera. 👋 LinkedIn -   / andrewsallen   🌐 Learn more about Not Boring Software - https://notbor.ing/ Follow us on X: Charlie Chapman -   / _chuckyc   RevenueCat -   / revenuecat   Launched -   / launchedfm   Episode Highlights: [00:00] The fear of building the wrong business [00:45] WWDC, Apple Design Awards, and Not Boring Camera merch [04:27] Growing up in a remote Alaskan fishing village [06:09] Studying visual communication design [08:51] Early interaction design work at Ziba [13:37] Moving to Microsoft and working on Courier [17:48] Designing tools for creativity instead of consumption [22:03] Building Paper for iPad [28:15] Raising VC and selling FiftyThree [30:05] The origin of Not Boring Software [35:28] Building a small business on purpose [37:39] Testing whether design can be enough [45:51] Subscriptions, skins, and patronage [50:28] Why customers support the mission [53:03] Avoiding a business you do not want to run [55:47] Sound design, haptics, and game-inspired software [01:03:15] Performance trade-offs with 3D app design [01:06:06] Building Not Boring Camera [01:12:13] Super RAW, LUTs, and expressive photography [01:17:11] Why the moment of creation matters [01:20:33] Andy’s creative inspirations