--- title: "Papper: I built a team and shipped an app to the App Store" description: "I conceived and designed an app for paper lists, then shipped it with a team in 2023. Distribution, running costs and a failed bet on App Clip came next." date: 2026-10-19 lang: en translationKey: "papper" translationStatus: machine kind: project name: "Papper" period: "2019–2026" role: "Concept, design, design system and product work; development with the team" status: "Released on the App Store" tags: ["product", "design", "paper"] related: [] sourceUrls: [] canonical: "https://shipulin.md/en/projects/papper/" --- I keep my to-do lists on paper. It does not send notifications or suggest a quick look at the rest of the internet. So Papper began with a fairly stubborn idea: keep the paper, and add the conveniences of a phone. I conceived and designed the app, built the team, and we released Papper on the App Store in 2023. Papper turns a handwritten list into a digital one. Or takes a digital list, prints it nicely, and lets you tick things off with a pen and scan the changes back in. The sheet of paper remains a full part of the system. ## From bad mockups to a real app My part was the concept, design, website and product flows. Bogdan handled iOS development; Kolya handled ML. Along the way, I learned to make bad mockups in Sketch, and then one good one in Figma. By then, I had also designed the website, registered a company and made a 3D animation that nearly boiled my laptop. We could already have posted a handsome concept and collected some likes. But we were stubborn: we wanted the thing to actually reach the App Store. The App Store was still years away. ## A real tick looks different In a mockup, a tick is a neat mark inside a box. In real life, people use different pens, almost hit the box, and photograph the sheet with sunlight falling across it. To train recognition, I asked people to print our templates and send photos: first of the blank sheet, then filled in, from different angles. Printers running out of ink were especially welcome, along with coloured paper, difficult lighting and different cameras. A bad printer had suddenly become more useful than a perfect mockup. The beta was just as practical: test recognition, gather data, try the design and work out how to explain the app on first launch. We were looking for people with printers. Without one, they could not try half the idea. ## Shipping is not the finish By 2 December 2023, Papper was on the App Store. That day, I showed myself using my own app, installed from the store for the first time, and asked people to support our Product Hunt launch. Inside the app, a list became a carousel of individual tasks. We wanted to keep that paper-like focus on one thing at a time. The printout had a QR code. Someone with an iPhone could scan it to open an App Clip, a small version of the app containing that list, without installing the full app. I made a big bet on App Clip. Removing a trip to the store from someone's first encounter with the product seemed important. Designing that flow took a lot of work. But after launch, we still had few users. The New Year growth we had hoped for never arrived. An unexpected backend bill did. Getting into the store had not solved distribution or economics for us. ## The product comes back from the real world We kept changing the interface and recognition, and tried promotion. One sponsorship reached a schoolgirl YouTuber in Texas. Her example to-do list included “remember to take the Bible to church.” That was a life for the paper list I had certainly not pictured while designing it. App Clip never provided the easy way into the product I had hoped for. A lot of work went into that bet, and to me it became an important part of Papper's failure. Papper became a practical course in almost everything: design, collaborative development, management and marketing. I learned that I could come up with an idea and get it to release through willpower, stubbornness and stupidity. That I was a decent designer, but still a weak manager. I published the design system in June 2024, and the App Clip retrospective in June 2025. The release left me with things to share and things to rethink. ## Sources - [My co-founder role and work with the team](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexeishipulin/) - [Papper's early years](https://t.me/Shipao/1561) - [Collecting examples for recognition](https://t.me/Shipao/1888) - [The first beta](https://t.me/Shipao/1939) - [Launch thread, 2 December 2023](https://x.com/8hipulin/status/1730921871305048238) - [2023 recap: team roles and problems after launch](https://t.me/Shipao/2060) - [Publishing the design system, June 2024](https://x.com/8hipulin/status/1801028980495069250) - [The Texas sponsorship](https://t.me/Shipao/2194) - [Looking back at App Clip, June 2025](https://x.com/8hipulin/status/1932021304867119358)