Seven Maps, One Product
Before I ship more features, I want a map. Not a mood board. A map of apps and meditation traditions: what each one assumes a human needs, and what each one sells as help.
I have sketched seven complete products for different personas in my head. Each persona matches a meditaion tradition.
- Zen / just-sit: bare form, silence, return to the seat.
- Mindfulness: clinical evidence, noticing, stress management.
- TM: mantra, instruction lineage, another door. A bit shady.
- Vipassana: insight work that needs real teaching. Danger of long sits.
- Metta: warmth at the center of everything. Compassion
- Breathwork: breath as the whole project. More Yogic
- Guided / apps-first: the host never leaves. A weird kind of dependence.
I am opting out of shipping some of those. Without proper instruction, certain traditions can be dangerous, some need more guidance than an app can give. No TM. No pure breathwork even though I already built a bunch of support into the app, I am cutting it back out. Without extra guidance it is easy to bring you into unhealthy states with breathwork.
Mindfulness is useful for the clinical evidence. I still refuse “mindfulness app” as the shipped identity. I am going with a Zen just-sit approach: one structure, daily-life benefits beside it, not seven skins and a dark mode.
Three Wishes I Had
I wish I had found a single path (zen) earlier. Seems like the healthiest no-nonsense path to me.
I wish I had brought some of the daily-life benefits in earlier. Especially returning to the present moment with a touch or breath anchor.
I wish someone had told me sooner that it is ok to go at your own pace. That just sitting is enough. No need to seek for more.
What I Refuse to Build
An endless paid subscription at first open. Just sitting should be free. Probably some minimal instruction too.
A huge library of guided sits. That is a non-starter, though I almost built one anyway. Hard habit to kill. It’s the default for most apps.
Gamification. Streaks set you up to fail. They look like motivation and feel like debt. Also in direct conflict with non-attachment.
The Trade-Off
A smaller app means a smaller funnel. Slower experiments. Slower growth. But maybe more sustainable in the long terms?
I am fine with that for now. Trying to get the basics right first, then move onto more.
Like what is the absolute minimum in terms of intro guidance that is necessary to teach someone to sit?
And then after that, after the basics are covered, how can I help people deepen their practice, one site at a time? More like Kusen than Dharma talk.
