Bye-bye BabyGrow

Update 11/1/13: BabyGrow is no longer up for sale, and I am back to working on it. It turns out I wasn’t ready to let it go yet, after all! I’ve been working hard on a new update which will mostly be fixing several issues with iOS 7. There might be one or two new features in there, too!

BabyGrow was my first, and for a long time, only self-developed app on the App Store. It’s never sold especially well, but it does what it does very well and I’ve always been proud of it. It’s helped that I used the app myself so much. I “ate my own dog food,” as they say. But, my kids are getting older. My eldest, while still just skin and bones, is developing well enough that we are no longer so concerned about his growth. I don’t find myself using BabyGrow much anymore, outside of working on updating it.

And over the last several weeks, I’ve come to realize that BabyGrow has been holding me back. Instead of working on something clever and new, something more pertinent to my current life, I’ve been spending my limited free time mostly on BabyGrow.

I realized that I have been holding BabyGrow back, as well. There is a healthy market for apps aimed at new parents. I’ve kept a keen eye on BabyGrow’s competition over the years and think that frankly, when it comes to tracking the growth of young children, BabyGrow blows everything else out of the water. Sure, it’s not as pretty as some of the more recent offerings, but it is far easier to use, more stable, and doesn’t depend on a web service that could disappear next month. Put in the hands of an able designer and backed by a decent marketing budget, I firmly believe BabyGrow has potential to do reasonably well. But I cannot do those things for it myself, at least not right now.

So, I am putting BabyGrow up for sale. This was not an easy decision for me to make. I still have many plans for the app, many features I’ve wanted to add. I’ve started work on a new user interface, one which would feel right at home on iOS 7. It was the first product I have actually put out there for people to buy. It’s my baby. Sometimes, though, you have to let go.

Earlier this evening, I listed BabyGrow here on Apptopia (BabyGrow is no longer up for sale, see the update at the top of this post). I sincerely hope that a suitable buyer picks it up. I may not be able to keep up with it anymore, but I think the app has a lot to offer and hate seeing it stagnate. If you know anyone who might possibly be interested, a developer who also happens to be a new parent perhaps, please pass this along.