Midicircuit - The Story So Far

Hey! I want to talk about something special to me. It's something that I have been working on for the last 3 years. It's an application—a thing—that helps you get started making music. But because learning is comprised of theory but also challenges and self-exploration, it also has a "playground" where you can create your own songs.

I want to tell you about the idea, where it started, the people involved, the ups and downs and... perhaps a glimpse of the journey so far.

Even if you don't read this at all, I believe this is something I need to do. It feels important to me. A look-back into all the effort I have put into this project. An appreciation for the people that helped so far. A reminder to myself... to keep moving forward... to help people get started making music.

Getting Started and The Problem

I have always wanted to put together two of my biggest passions: software and music. I've built many things and—quote on quote—failed ideas before. But I had never put together my tech and music skills. However, I knew this was sort of a big part of my journey. Perhaps my purpose.

For many years I struggled to learn the theory behind making music and in particular in the context of the different electronic instruments I owned: like samplers, drum machines and digital audio workstations. I was often in online communities like forums, blogs, Facebook groups trying to learn the ins and outs of these instruments. As I got more proficient I started helping other people and answering questions they had. As the same questions kept showing up, I realised that there wasn't a common place where you could learn and practice how to operate these instruments and develop a workflow for creating music.

I thought that perhaps this was a problem I could tackle and put together two of my biggest passions! And even a third one too: Entrepreneurship!

Building the MVP

I have built many things before so, at this point, I knew I needed to build an MVP. I needed to build something so simple that convinced people that my idea was worth it—that it had potential.

I coded a really basic prototype. Like really, something quite basic, just to understand if it could actually work. I then built a landing page over an afternoon highlighting its key features with a preview of what it could look like—"Midicircuit, Learn Music Production with your midi instrument". Then I showed it to this Facebook group I was part of and I also shared it on Ableton's subreddit.

Within a couple of days there were over 400 people signed up, some DMs and some conversation threads—mostly showing support, which was very encouraging.

I felt convinced enough this was an idea worth putting in more time!

I started laying out further the concept and initial wireframes. This is also where my friend Delcio comes in. He was already helping me here and there with the design but eventually I hired him on a freelance basis to help me create the UX and UI of this first version.

Within about 2 months we built a functional prototype of Midicircuit, integrated with Ableton Push. It wasn't great but it helped us understand what worked and what didn't and more importantly we could share it with some of the people that signed up for early access and get feedback.

This part was really interesting because I had the opportunity to speak with people across the world from different backgrounds but that saw Midicircuit as a solution to their problems in learning how to make music with midi instruments.

We took their feedback, kept iterating and fixing bugs. There was still quite a few things missing before we could make a v1.

Apple Entrepreneur Camp Experience

Around summer of 2021 I got introduced to the Apple Entrepreneur Camp. "A one-on-one technology lab for underrepresented founders and developers with app-driven businesses."

I applied—and around September, to my surprise, we got told we were in! This was amazing news! Both me and Delcio were very excited! I was looking to learn more about building a great product and who best to give you some tips on building delightful experiences for the masses than Apple?!

The program runs for 2 weeks and you are joined by 7 other startups. There are numerous sessions around engineering, design, pitching and releasing your app to the world. You get coaching on pitching your startup and on the final day you have one minute and a half to pitch your idea to Apple employees and the other startups. This particular part of the eCamp was crucial in being able to pitch Midicircuit to different audiences in a clear and concise manner in under 30 seconds as I kept refining the original pitch.

The whole experience was a great demo of what kind of people Apple hires: incredibly talented, humble and kind people. I will never forget this experience and I am sure the connections we made will pay off long term.

Hiring a Freelancer to Help Fix Bugs

After the eCamp I felt invigorated and excited to get the v1 out! Listening to Apple employees support and how much they believed in us was encouraging and a fuel to the next steps. Around this time a big name in the music software industry also approached us—I will not mention who but, added to the eCamp experience, we felt even more urgency in getting our v1 out.

Midicircuit still had a lot of bugs and a few backlog tasks to complete. I was working heavily on the integration with midi instruments and everything else in-between. So I needed a helping hand.

I put out a job advert for a freelancer on an iOS Slack group. After a while we ended up going with an iOS Freelance Engineer that showed excitement for the product, talent and honesty. In a short period we could see significant UI improvements, bug fixes and new features added.

We also found a Go(lang) engineer for the backend but this didn't work out. We didn't feel like this person was a good fit for us and the timezone they were in also made it difficult to engage with them within our own pace.

As usual I had to go back contracting to keep money flowing so we could continue with development. This slows down progress and also means I can't interface as much with the team. These periods were always frustrating and took us a bit off focus. To bring back that sense of mission and alignment I got everyone together and we defined clearly what needed to get done for the v1. Every day we focused on those goals. All the tasks we worked on were based on these goals.

My friend Tiago, who's an incredible Software Engineer and music producer—and who also happens to have a masters thesis on converting audio samples into midi—offered to help us. Tiago focused on fixing bugs, adding unit tests to the backend, observability and improving our continuous integration pipeline. Essentially he was trying to make sure that when we went live we could monitor the system's performance and tackle production problems ASAP.

Wow, all of a sudden we are 4 people working on this. It felt great having a team to bounce ideas with and to help deliver the vision! There were also some challenges now managing work and expectations—but I'll keep this for another post.

Releasing v1 to the App Store

Ok the v1 was out now on iPad and macOS! Finally! It felt great to hit this milestone. For me—it felt like climbing over a huge wall I had been trying to for years now. It meant I could also plan for smaller goals, smaller and easier "walls" to climb over I guess...

The release was received with positivity and I had calls with a few of our users where I gathered more feedback. I was ecstatic it actually worked for them. My imposter syndrome couldn't believe it! But within that feedback some people also mentioned that they wanted the app on their iPhone, more content, accessibility improvements, learn music theory concepts and much more. One user in particular shared how Midicircuit was useful to him with the focused, bite-sized, hands-on lessons—given he had been recently diagnosed with ADHD.

Hearing from real users was the best part! It made it all feel real and that we were having an impact in the world somehow.

Part of our user base and fans were also music teachers. Music teachers wanted Midicircuit in the classroom. They felt like Midicircuit had a visual language that was delightful for kids, easy to grasp and was stable enough for them. They shared that a lot of software that gets into schools under-delivers on promises, it's full of bugs and visually non-appealing. They also told me that many of these kids and schools couldn't afford expensive midi instruments. Wealthier kids had midi instruments at home and they would progress faster than the others who didn't. They felt like Midicircuit could be a tool to help level up the classroom equally and even be a fun homework—but for that, we needed to make sure it didn't always rely on midi instruments being connected.

Through this feedback and iteration we also realised we needed a curriculum that proved Midicircuit could take you from A to B. That you would actually learn end to end an aspect of music—for example composition and music theory.

All this feedback was really important to me and something that kept coming back the more I talked to people.

The Pivot

One thing that was nagging me was that Midicircuit v1 was heavily tied to midi instruments and, in particular, the Ableton Push. I knew Ableton was going to release Push 3. I also had spoken to a few other friends that worked for popular music hardware and software companies. The overall feeling was that we would always have to play by their rules. If they changed direction we would have to follow. If they released new hardware we would have to catch up. If they didn't want to have content around their instruments next to a competitor they wouldn't work with us.

Another thing I knew is that DAWs were overwhelmingly complex and did more than what people needed to get started making music. I understood that there was a lot of tools out there if you were already proficient in making music but not as many if you wanted to get started and progress in your learning. Something that could take you from knowing nothing to making your first beat!

So I decided we would ditch the focus on midi instruments and take all the learnings from creating the lessons and shift into helping people get started making music.

To do that I created a beginner-friendly DAW within Midicircuit—the Playground. On the learning side we adjusted the UI to work on iPhones and introduced what we call the LPC Framework—learn, practice and challenge. In every lesson you have an introduction to a musical concept, then you practice and then you get some challenges and questionnaires around what you just learned. We believe this is the best way to learn.

No Money, Mo Problems

Perhaps you have heard the song by Notorious BIG—Mo Money, Mo Problems. In our case it was more like No Money, Mo Problems. Our iOS Engineer wanted a raise and I couldn't afford that. Remember Midicircuit was running off of my own money all this time! Knowing she wouldn't get the raise and that we weren't raising money she decided to leave.

Since the company didn't have money we also couldn't hire Tiago fulltime. Tiago was working for a famous tech company at the time as an Engineering Manager. Eventually he moved to another company. At this point it was hard to get his help as he was super busy.

Essentially we didn't have money to retain, hire and support talented people.

Uuuugh... now it was just me and Delcio. At the end of 2023 I understood that this wasn't sustainable and I was running out of money, the contracting and freelancing market was dry, so it was becoming harder to find ways to keep things afloat. So I couldn't keep Delcio on the team either. So we parted ways.

This is where I have to admit... I am not good at asking people for money... I am very scared of all this VC funding game. I have seen people raise money, spend years trying to get product market fit, burn it all and gain not much more than the experience of having done so. Some are lucky to become millionaires by inflating the company value with consecutive funding rounds, sell to someone and cash out. But most just suffer through it all and gain nothing. Being a founder is really hard on your physical and mental health. I wasn't ready to give up on my health and on seeing through this passion I have for music and to help as many people get started making music! I am not saying I won't ever raise money.

I just think I still can build this organically, help thousands of people get started making music and that will probably give me more confidence and more leverage for when I choose to raise—and maybe I will be lucky enough to raise directly from my customers or users.

Where Are We Now?

Right now it's just me...

Working my way through improving the app, building the curriculum, adding new features, fixing bugs, building business networks. Very slowly. Real slow.

I am trying to only do the things that will help me get this v2 into your hands as quick as possible.

The v2 has been out on beta for a while now and every now and then I release an update. Your feedback would be really appreciated! So please check out Midicircuit and join the beta on TestFlight. I would love to talk to you and learn how Midicircuit can help you learn how to make music.

My next priority will be launching the v2 as a standalone app here at Yonko Level.

I feel like I had to speed run through the last 3 years in this post. There is a lot of moments and details missing here but I hope this gives you a good picture of the journey so far in building Midicircuit. I hope you can stick around and see what happens next.

For now, this is all. See you in the next one.