School just wrapped for the summer here in Barcelona.

My son Theodore is 9. He’s very interested in technology, loves creating videos in Final Cut Pro, and is curious about how programs and apps are made. He noticed recently that I have an Apple developer account, and he asked if we could make an app together this summer.

So this summer I’m building an app with my son. And we’re doing it in public.

We’ve tried this before

We always try to make a game. We start small and end up trying to build Breath of the Wild. We burn out before we finish building the second level.

This time I told him I would work on this, but we are going to work on it like it is a real product and a real business. It needs to be a real tool that solves a real problem. If we build it to a usable state that we are happy with, I’ll consider game design again.

He agreed.

The timing was perfect

We had enrolled in a father and son Spanish class at a nearby school for some summer study together. The same day we decided on our app project, we had our first class together.

We moved to Barcelona last year. Neither of us speaks much Spanish. We’re roughly at the same level, and learning together sounded like fun. So we decided that building a Spanish learning app would complement our Spanish studies and scratch our app-building itch.

Our first business meeting

This morning, after breakfast, we had our first proper business meeting. I taught him what an MVP is. What a roadmap is. What phases are. These are necessary concepts when you’re brainstorming with a 9 year old.

We wrote down a million ideas. We picked a few for the MVP and pushed the rest into phases or the backlog. He’s now designing the logo and colors, because that’s what excited him most. I told him the colors matter more than the logo right now, because they’ll show up all over the app. He’s thinking about it seriously.

(If you like the gold and the little bloom, that’s Theodore.)

Follow along

A 9 year old and his dad. Learning Spanish. Building an app. Simultaneously.

I think we will move fast, so the next update will be soon. We’ll be accepting feature requests before long. If you want an invite when it opens, leave your email.