I quit my stable government job to run poker tool I amm stuck and need your advice.
Just wanted to share a bit of my journey over the last 10 months as a solo dev, and honestly, to ask for some real advice from fellow players and builders here.
To give you some quick background: last July, I officially quit my job at a state-owned enterprise in China. Back here, we call those jobs "iron rice bowls"—meaning it’s basically impossible to get fired and you’re set for life. You will never guess what I used to do... I literally sold commercial explosives lol. Like, blasting materials for people building roads, bridges, and mining.
Why did I quit? Two reasons. First, I had a kid. Being a manager at an explosives company meant carrying massive legal liability. If anything got stolen or went wrong, I’m looking at actual jail time. The stress was insane. Second, my side project at the time was bringing in 5x my day job's salary. So, I took the leap to become a full-time indie developer for that sweet time freedom.
But man, I had no idea how brutal building a poker tool would be.
When I first started, I just wanted to make a fun little tool for sharing hands—kind of like a custom trading card or a Pokemon card, but for poker hands. I had zero business model in mind, just wanted to make something cool that people would pass around. But my coding skills weren't great back then. I grinded for three months and ended up scrapping the entire project. (I still have a few of those early card designs saved, I'll drop them in the comments later just for laughs).
After that, I fell straight into the classic developer trap: Feature Creep. I tried to build this massive, all-in-one platform. I kept piling on features, trying to track match data like a macro tracker. Because the scope was too big, I ran into endless bugs and tech debt. I spent months drowning in code, and none of the features actually felt polished or competitive.
Eventually, I realized I had to pivot and validate the market fast. I abandoned the web version, packed up my algorithms, and threw everything into a WeChat Mini-Program (basically a lightweight app built inside China's biggest social app). That went surprisingly well—it took about a month to launch, and with almost zero marketing, it quickly picked up over 5,000 users.
That proved people actually wanted what I was building, but the monetization wasn't there (the user base wasn't highly inclined to pay yet). To go global, I started building the iOS version. Since it was my first time doing native iOS dev, handling user data, storage, and cross-platform syncing was a total nightmare, but I pushed through.
On May 1st, my iOS app finally went live! It’s sitting at around 600–700 users right now with zero promotion. But as soon as it launched, I felt this weird emptiness. Why? Because using it myself, I realized doing everything on a phone sucks. Back in the day, I spent $200 on GTO software specifically so I could batch-import my hand histories from GGPoker on my PC. Trying to transfer and convert those files on a phone is a total pain in the ass.
So, I pulled some all-nighters, switched to a new tech stack, and rebuilt the Web version from scratch (only keeping that original "hand card" feature from day one). Now, it’s finally a fully rounded product, and it even includes over a dozen free, fast poker tools.
Which brings me to why I’m here today. I’ve hit a massive wall and could really use your brains on three things:
1. The TikTok / Traffic Nightmare
Even though the iOS app is global, 90% of my current users are still from China (mostly thanks to the good word-of-mouth from that early mini-program). This completely defeats the purpose of why I built the iOS and Web versions—I wanted players all over the world to use it.
I'm actually pretty good at making videos. I've made several poker videos that got over 100k views, which is tough for a niche niche like this. But for some reason, TikTok instantly bans every single account I register. Even when I use clean residential US IPs and a completely wiped iPhone, it's an immediate shadowban or lock.
So my question to you guys: Where do you actually watch poker content or app reviews? Besides TikTok, what platforms is the global poker community actually hanging out on?
2. When should I build Android?
I already set up my Google Developer account, but I haven't touched the code. Building the Android version would take me about a month. But if I lock myself in a room to code, I have zero time left for marketing. I don't want to sink energy into something without seeing some traction first. Should I hold off on Android and focus 100% on marketing iOS/Web, or is not having Android a dealbreaker for most of you?
3. Looking for about 10 heavy users for feedback (Non-Chinese)
Since I already have plenty of feedback from Chinese players, I desperately need about 10 serious iOS or Web poker players who are non-Chinese to stress-test this thing. Give me your brutal, unfiltered feedback. Tell me what you love, or tell me it's absolute garbage—I just need the truth.
If you made it this far, thanks for listening to my rant. Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
