Thanks for checking out my monthly blog series. Every month, I highlight new topics that I’ve explored, projects that I’ve completed and helpful resources that I’ve used along the way. I’ll also talk about pitfalls, including diversions, wrong turns and struggles. By sharing my experiences, I hope to inspire and help you on your path to become a better human, in whichever field that may be.

At the end of July, I escaped the island for an unbelievable 10-day road trip from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas via Joshua Tree, CA. Now, I’m back home in Bermuda and quarantined for four days, pending two negative COVID-19 test results. As if red eye flights weren’t bad enough…now you have to get the back of your brain scraped too!

Anyway, I’ll keep this update short, as my primary focus for July was YC Startup School. James and I are continuing to submit weekly updates and attend group sessions. Happily, the feedback and takeaways from these sessions seem to be getting more relevant and useful as time goes on. This potentially could be due to an improvement in the way we are communicating what we’re building. But it could also be that groups are more experienced in listening to pitches and honing in on key discussion points.

July has also been filled with user interviews AKA market research AKA talking to as many people as will humor me. (Reading this and don’t mind answering some questions about salary? You’re amazing, please send me a DM on twitter @amypeniston).

It’s been fascinating to listen to friends, colleagues and connections discuss their experiences with salary negotiations, compensation and knowing their worth. A lot of commonalities, to be sure, but also a lot of differences. Some people seem to be inherently more comfortable with negotiations, while others shy away from the confrontation. I’m learning a lot.

The number one piece of feedback that I’ve received when talking about Guess My Pay specifically, is that Google Chrome extensions, well, suck. So, exciting news! Guess My Pay will soon be available on the iOS store. 🥳 James and I are hoping this makes it easier for people to use and share the app.

Here’s where I would tell you how much fun it has been to learn SwiftUI and Xcode, but that would be a total lie. 😬😬😬

Stay tuned for the Guess My Pay iOS announcement soon!

In other news, I’m also working on a tool to manage…hashtags! I know, not that exciting, but I’m loving learning React and am eager to build something that means I no longer have to use Excel to complete a simple task. My plan is to do a full launch (domain name, logo, branding, etc.) as practice for creating a fully fledged, functional product.

As you probably know if you are also a hacker/tinkerer/coder, finishing a thing is so, so hard. You’ve got to fight diminishing interest, feature creep, imposter syndrome, perfectionism. It’s like an all-out war over here. But I am determined. MUST…FINISH…IT…!!

Anyway, here’s a sneaky preview:

And with that, July is a wrap! Thanks again for reading and, until next time, happy coding.