Blackjack Trainer
An established iOS product with real users and real revenue, in need of a refresh. I was brought in to take over its technical delivery — not to rebuild it from scratch — and I have been the only technical person on it since, working alongside a non-technical product owner.
Starting position
The product was already operational and earning. What it lacked was the groundwork that makes deliberate product change possible: a reliable development environment, instrumentation to tell whether a change helped, and purchase infrastructure that could be reasoned about. So that is where I started, before touching the product surface at all.
What I did
- Established the development environment and integrated Firebase Analytics and RevenueCat.
- Delivered a full production redesign: new navigation, onboarding, blackjack-variant selection and richer training feedback, including advanced feedback for paying players.
- Released the redesign incrementally rather than as one large drop.
- Own development, integrations and the external technical systems around the product.
- Coordinate external designers and handle ongoing product development and support.
Deciding with data
In late May and early June 2026 we ran an A/B test on whether showing onboarding improved conversion to paid. The result was clear enough to settle the question: onboarding is now shown to everyone. Small, but it is the difference between a product opinion and a product decision.
Where it stands
As of August 2026: slightly more than 10,000 active paid subscriptions in RevenueCat, with free trials excluded from that count. Around 1,700 users active in the latest one-day window, about 8,600 over seven days and roughly 24,000 over thirty.
Honest framing
I did not create this product. I was recruited to transform, extend and simplify an existing application, and it is a limited ongoing side engagement rather than my primary work. Both of those things are true and neither of them weakens the case: taking sole technical ownership of a live subscription product, and changing it without breaking the revenue, is its own discipline.