Building Dulce alone: phone, watch and widgets

Dulce is my own product: a diabetes app for people in Spain. It runs on iPhone, Android, Apple Watch and Wear OS, and it has paying subscribers. I built all of it on my own.

Why I built it

I've built apps for other people's companies for years. I wanted one that was mine end to end, where every decision, from the pricing to the wording of an alert, was my call. It's also the most honest portfolio piece I can show a founder: not "I worked on it" but "I made all of it, and people pay for it".

What's in it

• The iPhone and Android app, from one React Native codebase.
• Live Activity and home-screen widgets, so the reading is visible without opening the app.
• Apple Watch and Wear OS apps.
• Alerts on the lock screen, a logbook for insulin and meals, and a followers screen so family can keep an eye on things and send a nudge.
• A small Cloudflare relay as the backend.
• The website, the pricing and the App Store listing.

What I learned

The phone app was the easy part. The watch apps, widgets and Live Activity each live by their own platform rules, and each one has to be done natively. That is most of the reason a product like this usually needs a team.

The other lesson was about care. A glucose alert has to be right and readable in the middle of the night. Getting those small details right took more time than any feature, and it is what users mention when they write to me.

If you're building something similar

If your idea needs a phone app plus a watch, widgets or a web side, I've done that whole set. Have a look at my work or write to me at giorgikhimshiashvili@gmail.com.