From sketch to mobile app - “The Happiness Jar”

Answer: The Happiness Jar app - it’s a personalized happiness tool.

Long story short, in 2015 I went on a one-way trip to Asia where I met a super interesting person Aija, which happens to have a Graduate Diploma in Coaching Psychology from the University of Sydney. She had this amazing idea where you could put your meaningful memories in a jar (app) and whenever you need a mental boost, you can feed on your memories. Only you can make yourself happy!

Such methodology already exists in the physical world and is commonly practised by Elizabeth Gilbert (the author of “Eat, Pray, Love” book), but there was no app for that. So in August 2016, we put our heads together, sketched the app, and implemented PERMA methodology and by the on of October 2016 the MVP was ready.

Sadly we run out of seed funding, so the project remains at the MVP stage.

Lessons learned:

1. Not all investors are interested in making the world a better place without being able to make a profit from that. It’s better to build an app on a solid business model (business > product).
2. Investors are afraid of word visionaries. “Words are nice, but the numbers say more”.
3. “Zeitgeist” exists, maybe in 2016, there was no need for a private, close-group social app, but eventually the day will come when we are getting back to this project.
4. Try to avoid hybrid app-building frameworks, maybe they work on iPhone, but not on Android as there are so many phones out there with different settings.