DEVELOPER SPOTLIGHT
A fruitful path to self-care
Tangerine: Self-care & Goals
Habits. Mood Tracker. Journal.
‣ Company: Bitdreams
‣ Founders: Raphael Cruzeiro and Pedro Marques
‣ Mission: To create an all-in-one mood tracker, habit tracker, and journal
‣ App launched: 2020
‣ Team size: 2
‣ Go-to emoji: 🚀
Tangerine cofounders Raphael Cruzeiro and Pedro Marques have been working together for eight years. The last time they saw each other in person was – well, eight years ago.
“We’ve had plans to meet up,” says Cruzeiro, “but life got in the way.”
Some people just work better remotely, and the pair’s latest app, Tangerine, is proof. Built in coffee shops, train stations and airports in eight countries, Tangerine is a mood-tracking, journaling and habit-tracking app that launched in January 2020, just before the pandemic’s first wave. Within days, hundreds of users were downloading the app – and writing to tell Cruzeiro and Marques how useful Tangerine was in times of trouble.
We caught up with the two (remotely) in Lisbon and Brazil, respectively, to discuss the importance of communication and how to keep a remote partnership fruitful.
How did Tangerine come about?
Cruzeiro: We wanted to create something for ourselves, because we’re terrible at sticking to our habits. We thought, “OK, let’s start this just for fun. If we can get some subscriptions, that would be awesome, but let’s do it for fun.” Along the way we had the great idea to add mood tracking and the ability to correlate users’ habits with how they’re feeling.
Marques: Now we have three different apps in a single app.
You launched during a uniquely difficult time.
Cruzeiro: We noticed that because of the lockdown and everyone being stuck in their homes, people lost the references for their routines. That’s when the app started going viral. People were saying, “This is helping me keep my sanity.” We didn’t invest in marketing at all; everything was one person recommending it to another.
What were you hearing from users in those early days?
Cruzeiro: Most of our initial feedback was from students, especially freshmen struggling to adapt to a lifestyle away from home. Later we started hearing from all demographics, including teenagers and people in their 70s. Some were really concerned about mental health. That motivated us to implement features beyond habit tracking. We turned it more into a journaling app, and we shifted toward self-care. We had no idea mental health would become such an important topic when we were working on that initial version of Tangerine.
Since you seem to be experts at this: what are your secrets for working remotely?
Marques: Transparent communication – especially since we both have full-time jobs. If one of us was feeling pressure or had any specific personal problems, he needed to speak up, to be honest, to be open. That’s always been a rule for us.
What’s been the key to your success?
Cruzeiro: With all the failed projects we had, we learned how projects die. It’s usually when one person starts feeling overwhelmed and gets burned out. Communication starts failing. We’ve built our entire ethos for Tangerine around this: We’re human – if you’re tired, it’s OK to take some time off. Otherwise we’d be hypocrites, building a self-care app but not leaving time for ourselves.
Marques: We’ve proven that we work well remotely time and time again. But I do think we need to get together after this and celebrate all we have achieved in the past couple of years.
Bitdreams is a part of the App Store Small Business Program. If you are a developer and would like to learn more about the program, follow the link below.