Hello, hello! I am building an app and, in the spirit of the indie hacker, I am building it in public. My app is called Ensembl. Read on for more details! I am starting this blog series and maybe other channels to document the journey.

A little background on me: I am 26 years old, from a town wedged between Manchester and Liverpool in the north of England called Wigan. I am an AI Tech (it’s not as fancy as it sounds) and have been studying Software Engineering for the past four years in a degree apprenticeship. However, I have never had an official “developer” role. I scored highly in university, but I would say I’m an average programmer.

Although I have wanted to be an entrepreneur for years, I have little to no knowledge of building a company and getting a solution to market, but I’m excited to learn! There, all caught up.

These posts will cover my experiences and insights into the project as I go along, such as finding the idea, market research, brand design, app design, finding customers, tech stack, development, first sale, and anything else I think is worth sharing.

As an aspiring entrepreneur, I LOVE this kind of content! Wanting to build a company but having zero idea how to do it, dev vlogs, indie hacker posts, and build-in-public content is amazing. It takes this overwhelming dream and turns it into achievable tasks and insights, making it a reality.

It has inspired and helped me so much, and I hope if anyone follows along, it will do the same.

Stay tuned for more, wherever you read this from.

Thanks so much!

Jordan.

👋🏼 Say Hello to Ensembl!

Ensembl logo

The application that organises all your favourite saved and shared posts across all your socials in one space.

Social media are not becoming they are the new search engine. Recipes, date night ideas, travel destinations, and things to buy no longer come from Google searches, they come from TikToks, Instagram posts, YouTube shorts.

If your like me you have all these social network apps and have saved content across all of them. I have recipes for example saved in Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube and some of them I just share with my fiance. To make things more complicated I also share things with her across Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, Whatsapp, Instagram and more!

I save and share this stuff because I want to come back in the future and attempt the delicious curry I know is way out of my cheffing skills.

The problem is when I want to find that recipe I feel like pulling my hair out! It goes a little something like this.

Recovering Useful Content

First I have to remember if I shared it with my fiance or saved it. Answer: Saved it - Ok nice, let’s check my messaging apps. Its not in Messenger, move on.

Check Whatsapp its not here, ok it has to be in iMessage; f**k it’s not here! maybe I saved it; Yeah it was something I saw on Instagram 🤬.

Check my unorganised collections of saved content in Instagram and it’s not there (anger levels reaching new heights).

Move on and check TikTok, guess what? It’s not there. At this point I am ready to give up I think f**k it I’ll just have a frozen pizza. Pizza in the oven I text my friend Tom and there it is! It was a recipe he had shared with me. I make a mental note to remember where it is and when I want to find it again repeat the cycle.

My second problem is when I am trying utilise social media for project work.

Project Work

I want to use things I see on socials as inspiration and I see something I like from a brand I follow on Instagram and save this in a new collection called ‘Recappe’.

I then browse Reddit and find some really useful posts about app design and save them but I can’t even organise my saved content on here so it’s amongst everything else 🙄.

I now have all this useful content for my project yet it’s spread across all my social platforms. But this no longer feels helpful and more like project admin. This was supposed to speed up and help my work not slow it down.

I want to see all the content I have saved in one space so when I design the app I have this coherent space where all my inspirations bleed into my designs. I don’t want to be continuously flicking through apps or tabs finding and comparing the posts I have saved!

What if I saved a post of an app I liked the look of for the layout, I now need to go searching (like in problem one) or I want to show all the inspiration to potential customers so they can feedback on what it is they like and dislike.

Enter Ensembl…

Problem Solved!

With this app I can store all my saved and shared content in one organised space! I can then utilise it rather than it getting buried in the app, lost in texts, or becoming a random screenshot in my camera roll of something I wanted to save (We’ve all done it).

No more will I waste time trying to hunt down a TikTok I shared for upcoming travel plans, instagram post I saved for a date night idea, or a YouTube video for a project I’m working on. I can simply come to Ensembl and if I want to be extra lazy I can just search what I’m looking for. What a great way to segue into the features (smooth).

Colletions

Organise your saved and shared content in one app not five.

Search

Easily find the dinner you will ruin tonight and end up ordering out anyway.

Collaborate

Work together with your partner to fix your relationship.

Avoid talking to the colleagues you don’t like by showing them instead.

Multiple Views

Sometimes you need a better angle…

If you share my pain and want to solve this problem for yourself you can join the waiting list below where you will get exclusive access and updates.

Ensemble - All your saved and shared content across all your socials all stored in one place. — Jordan Prescott.

Ensembl is just the beginning of this exciting journey, and I'm thrilled to share every step with you. If you're passionate about simplifying your digital life, an aspiring entrepreneur, or if you just want to see what it takes to build an app from scratch, then stay tuned.

Your feedback and support are invaluable in this process. Follow along, share your thoughts, and be part of Ensembl's story.

Thanks for reading,