Welcome
You’re one of a handful of people getting this email, which makes you either exceptionally eager, deeply curious, or personally related to me. Possibly all three. Whoever you are, thank you so much for being here at the very beginning of this experiment.
January was… significant. Not because of what I shipped (though we’ll get to that), but because I left 25+ years in corporate IT to work on sistnt full-time. As of January 26th, I’m officially self-employed, building privacy-first iOS apps for data nerds who want to live more intentional lives without surveillance capitalism monetizing or enshittifying their lives.
That’s the big personal news. But this newsletter isn’t (only) about me and my soapbox — it’s about the apps. So let’s talk about what’s working, what’s coming, and why you might actually care.
What’s Already Working: Enumerator & 4KWks
Enumerator continues to be my most-used app, which tells you something about my personality. I’m still tracking coffee consumption (currently averaging 3.6 cups/day — which is notably higher than I’m happy with). But January reminded me why simple counting apps matter for anything you want to pay attention to.
Toronto, Canada (where I live) got slammed with a massive snowstorm this week. I spent many hours getting myself and helping neighbours out from under a mountain of snow. It was a once-a-decade event, not a daily habit, but it’s the kind of thing it helps to track in the moment. Set up the counter, add a shovel emoji, note the date and time, and move on. No social pressure to post about it, no algorithm deciding if my helpfulness was “engaging” enough. Just a personal record that I did something that mattered to me.
That’s the thing about Enumerator—it doesn’t care if you’re tracking mundane daily rituals or rare meaningful moments. It just counts, privately, without judgment.
4KWks (to be rebranded as Peer) had a moment of profound personal value this month too. I have used it to visualize my entire life’s career moves — over 35 years, more than 1,800 colourful and meaningful weeks, represented as a grid of equally colourful tiny squares. Seeing the blocks of lived, invested time helped to make the transition to self-employment feel less scary and more… intentional. Like I’d earned the right to try something different with however many weeks I have left.
To many, this type of reflection sounds morbid, but I can personally vouch for its clarifying effects. These apps exist because sometimes you need to see your life from a different perspective to appreciate it fully.
What’s Coming Next: Capture (February 2026)
Here’s where it gets interesting for early sistnt-supporters like you.
I’m very close to launching my first somewhat commercially-viable app — Capture! It’s a visual and voice note gathering app that solves a problem I’ve had forever. As a triathlete, I’m often out for a run or a long bike ride and I have a quick thought or see something that I need to record in an instant! Having to choose whether to use the Camera, Voice Memos, Notes or any number of different apps to capture that fleeting moment creates too much friction and I end up forgetting all about it — literally forgetting that momentary thought.
Capture solves that problem by letting you grab anything you can see or say quickly and then get on with it. Take a photo of a sign or a screen, record a voice note describing a moment of inspiration, and reflect on everything in one place later on. iOS handles OCR and transcription on the device without sending anything to the cloud. Everything stays local unless you explicitly choose to export to Obsidian, Notion, or even Notes — anywhere you keep your “second brain.”
The critical details: One-time purchase. No subscription. No feeding of training data for large-language models. No risk of your content appearing in some data breach some day. For the cost of a single cup of coffee (not some kind of weird “monthly” coffee), you own it forever.
I’m building this because I need it, and because I’m tired of apps that pretend to be tools but are really just surveillance engines dressed up as productivity software. Capture does exactly what it says: captures your fleeting thoughts before they disappear. That’s it. No upsell, no “premium tier,” no data harvesting.
Launch target is end of February and you’ve just learned about it first!
The Bigger Picture (Without Getting Too Philosophical)
Capture is the third sistnt app, but it won’t be the last. There are six in development at the moment. Each app will help manage a different relationship you have with your data like this:
- Enumerator: You and your activities
- 4KWks (to be rebranded Peer): You and your life’s achievements
- Capture: You and your thoughts (launching Feb)
All these apps will be built with a “privacy-first” architecture. I expect that these will all be one-time purchases - mostly because I dislike subscription models. I appreciate that app developers and distributors love a recurring revenue stream. But I miss the days when you could buy a thing and own that thing and not have someone always have the power to raise the cost of it, or take it away completely.
This is the anti-Rocket Money, anti-SaaS-everything approach. I’m not trying to trap you in a commitment for recurring revenue. I’m building tools you actually own in the hope that you’ll buy my next one.
Why This Newsletter Exists
You signed up early, which means you’re either genuinely interested in what I’m building or you haven’t figured out how to unsubscribe yet. Either way, here’s what you can expect:
- Monthly updates when there’s real news (launches, milestones, honest metrics)
- Product focus (80% about the apps, 20% about why I build them this way)
- Brutal transparency (I’ll share numbers—users, revenue, hours worked—because proof matters more than hype)
- No spam (I’m not trying to become an influencer; I’m trying to prove a business model)
If you want more frequent updates, I’m documenting the journey on:
- Blog: sistnt.com
- Instagram: @sistnt
- Mastodon: @sistnt
Because you subscribed, you’re getting the inside-voice content I don’t share on the blog. Early access to plans, honest metrics, unfiltered struggles—that’s the reward for trusting me with your inbox.
What I Need From You (If You’re Willing)
Right now, feedback matters more than anything. If you’re using Enumerator or 4KWks:
- What works and what do you want to see more of?
- What doesn’t work?
- Would you pay $4.99 for Capture when it launches?
- Is there a specific tracking/reflection problem you wish existed as an app?
Hit reply. I read everything. (With 3 subscribers, that’s easy.)
And if you know someone who’d be interested in privacy-first apps for quantified self-examination, forward this along. Word of mouth is the only marketing that actually works for tools like this. Tell five friends about my apps - it’s free and it will help tremendously!
Walking the Walk
Quick technical note: I’m sending this newsletter directly from a secure mailer application I built for my web server as basic content. No tracking pixels, no analytics, no commercial service harvesting your email address from me. The formatted version lives on sistnt.com for anyone to read.
Could I use Mailchimp and make my life easier? Sure. But building privacy-first apps while using surveillance-based marketing tools felt a little hypocritical.
Will this scale to 1,000 subscribers? Let’s find out! For now, it proves the point: we can communicate without intermediaries.
The Reality Check
I quit my job to prove that sustainable indie development can work without surveillance capitalism or venture capital. I’m aiming for CAD$30-60K/year from 500-1,000 true fans within 2-3 years.
Right now I have 3 newsletter subscribers and maybe a handful of regular users across two apps. This is as “the beginning” of the journey as it gets. The gap between here and there is large and uncertain.
But that’s why you’re here, right? To see whether this actually works.
Thanks for believing in this before there is much to believe in.
More to come as Capture ships!
— george
P.S. If you’re wondering whether I’m counting ‘newsletter subscribers’ in Enumerator… yes. Obviously yes.