A community of builders I turned into an official company, so the apps we make can reach the public. Seven products across iOS, Android, and web — each one built to solve a real problem, not to chase a trend.
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A community of people building useful apps and helping each other ship — with no official way to publish them, support real users, or put them in front of the public.
Bearacle started as a community — people who liked building things and helping each other ship them. Good apps kept coming out of it, but they had nowhere to live: no entity to publish under, no shared brand, no way to support real users. In 2026 I made it official — a name, an LLC, and a bear in a suit — so what we build could actually reach the public. The brief: keep the community's energy, add the structure of a company. That meant ruthless prioritization (three filters: can it ship in months, does it solve a real problem, will anyone pay), one shared design standard, and a release pipeline that carries any product from Figma to the App Store.
Communities are great at starting things and bad at finishing them. The challenge was structural: give a loose group of builders the rails of a product company — strategy, design standards, QA, store review, marketing, support — without turning it into bureaucracy. That meant a repeatable pipeline where each product reuses the last one's decisions (stack, design patterns, release process), so every new app ships faster than the one before, and quality never drops to 'side project' level — enterprise standards, community scale.
Made the community official — company, brand, strategy, shared design standard, and release process — and lead product and design across every app.
Seven products in flight, four live — Pocket ID on the App Store, Vibeshift on Google Play, Fuel Meter and Deutsch Dojo in users' hands.
How I approached it, step by step.
The community never lacked ideas — it lacked a filter. Every idea now passes three questions: can we ship it in months, not years? Does it solve a problem someone actually has this week? Would anyone pay — or is it a toy? The old folder of half-finished apps existed because nothing had ever been filtered. The company exists because now everything is.
Expo + React Native for mobile, Next.js for web, Supabase for the backend — every product, no exceptions. Boring consistency is the superpower: each app inherits auth, storage, and release tooling from the previous one, anyone in the community can pick up any codebase, and product #5 ships in a fraction of the time product #1 took.
I own the design standard and design the products personally — that's Bearacle's edge. Community members and contracted engineers carry the builds; AI handles the acceleration: code generation, content drafts, prototyping. I treat it like a fast junior — useful, quick, occasionally wrong, always reviewed.
The blog documents everything — store rejections, launch numbers, what got cut and why. It keeps the community honest, gives each product a launch audience, and turns process into marketing without pretending everything works on the first try.
Every design is a set of choices. These were the big ones.
The options I weighed, and why I chose what I did.
The shipped screens, and what changed.
A closer look at the final design.
One year after going official: Pocket ID live on the App Store, Vibeshift live on Google Play and in Early Access with companies, Гориво Метар (Fuel Meter) live in North Macedonia, Deutsch Dojo live on web with its Goethe exam trainer — and Clear Roam, Noted, and Gotta Go in active development. One brand, one design standard, and a community that now finishes what it starts.
Structure doesn't kill a community's energy — it gives it somewhere to go.
Shipping is a muscle. The first product took months of hesitation; the fourth took weeks of work.
Portfolio pressure beats perfectionism — when three other products are waiting, 'good enough to ship' finally gets an honest definition.
A shared brand buys each product instant credibility that a standalone app icon never gets.
Bearacle is the case study under every other case study — proof that the design opinions on this site survive contact with real users, real store reviews, and real costs. My role shifted from designing apps to building the environment where good apps get finished. The honest lesson of year one: distribution is harder than building. The next year is about making fewer things and marketing them better. The bear stays.