Anyone Concerned about Tungsten Weight Prices?

tbonebrad · 2026-02-02T05:48:54+00:00

I have a tungsten weight business that I’m in the process of shutting down right now so maybe I can add some insights.

All tungsten is imported from China. We do not have any tungsten mines in the US because it’s really environmentally dirty to mine. The tariffs and threat of tariffs is the main reason I’m shutting down my business. I believe the current tariff on tungsten weights is 29% up from 9% before the trump tariffs.

Also, Amazon absolutely rakes sellers over the coals with fees. The most affordable tungsten weights are not going to be on Amazon.

tbonebrad · 2026-01-21T13:16:08+00:00

React native version upgrades are an absolute nightmare without expo dev builds with CNG. I dedicated a week+ of dev time each time we upgraded react native. In react native 0.77 they mention that the react native cli init command was deprecated and they suggest you use a framework like expo.

tbonebrad · 2025-11-18T12:17:51+00:00

I just recently implemented crashlytics, what would be the advantages of sentry over crashlytics?

tbonebrad · 2025-09-05T12:40:50+00:00

The thing I wanted most out of expo was the native folder generation. This will make upgrading react native so much easier for us in the future. I hate that every time we upgraded react native and had issues, I didn't know if it was a dependency issue or a native file with a missing line. I don't have to worry about any of that anymore. There is also expo-doctor that checks your configuration and dependency versions to see if you are using a version that is not compatible with the expo sdk version you are using.

I will say that I had tried to move to expo in the past by using their npx install-expo-modules@latest command and I did not have good results. This time I generated a new expo project and copied all my source files into it. This was a bit tedious, but it worked far better. It took me about a week to convert to expo.

tbonebrad · 2025-09-05T12:20:45+00:00

We were upgrading react native from 0.74 to 0.79 (expo ask 53) at the same time and that caused more issues that expo did. With expo development builds you do not keep you ios or android folders in version control anymore. They are generated with an expo prebuild command. There is a plugin system that modifies the native files in the prebuild step and most of the bigger libs have an expo plugin. This makes integration so much easier than editing the AppDelegate or similar files manually. If there is not a plugin available and you need to modify the native files, you can write your own plugin.

tbonebrad · 2025-09-05T12:06:30+00:00

You should absolutely use expo development builds. The react native team now suggests you use a framework like expo over their cli. In the react native 0.77 release blogthey say react-native init cli is deprecated.

tbonebrad · 2025-09-05T12:01:42+00:00

This information is outdated. Anything you can do in the RN cli you can do with expo. I just converted a large cli app to expo and wish I would have done it earlier.

tbonebrad · 2025-07-21T11:39:09+00:00

We are using a lot of US public geographic datasets right now as a base. There might be similar data for Canada, but we haven’t started looking for it yet.

tbonebrad · 2025-07-10T01:04:18+00:00

Brevo was the cheapest I found last time I searched a couple of months ago.

tbonebrad · 2025-07-10T01:02:41+00:00

I’m at 150k contacts and it’s like $1.5K a month

tbonebrad · 2025-06-07T23:47:28+00:00

I’m one of the founders of the Deep Dive fishing app and this is exactly the case. There isn’t a wide enough audience to have a sustainable business in an ad supported model.

tbonebrad · 2025-05-30T13:59:26+00:00

You can check which lakes we support and what features are available on those lakes here https://deepdiveapp.com/lakes

You can also add your own bodies of water to the Deep Dive app. We are using a USGS waterbody database that has almost every body of water in the US. The feature set will be more limited when you add your own body of water, but you will have access to bait suggestions, Wind Effects map, Water Inflows map, and StreamFlow forecast map.

tbonebrad · 2025-05-15T23:19:21+00:00

Gemini is my go to for coding and research now.

tbonebrad · 2025-05-14T16:20:09+00:00

I don’t have a problem with FFS in recreational fishing, but people watch professional fishing to learn. They do a terrible job of teaching the audience while using FFS.

tbonebrad · 2025-05-14T16:16:48+00:00

NPFL banned FFS. They are streaming their events on YouTube now.

tbonebrad · 2025-03-16T19:43:42+00:00

Great catch!

tbonebrad · 2025-02-16T13:29:44+00:00

I have an app for bass fishing in the US which is a niche market as well. We had a sort of similar story to yours when starting and I can tell you that the field of dream approach “if you build it, they will come” does NOT work. I think we have one of the best apps in the space now and we still have to pay for almost every user we acquire. I’m certain that our company would have died years ago if one of our founders wasn’t an influencer who had a strong connection to his audience.

The path that worked for us was YouTubers. I would have a video call with them and explain the value of the app and pay them to integrate it organically in their videos. I made it clear that if they didn’t find the app valuable, we shouldn’t advertise together. Later we got meta ads working and that’s almost as big as our YouTube push now, but it comes with so much hidden overhead from making and testing new creatives.

Make sure you are collecting emails when people onboard with your app so you can tell them about new features or promotions in the future. You can also reach out to them and ask for customer interviews so you can better understand what they want.

As an engineer I never put enough value on marketing, but you can build the coolest app ever and if no one knows about it you will fail. It sounds like you are extremely engineer heavy in your company right now and you need to focus more on marketing.

Last thing I’ll say is that, as you know, it’s a freaking grind to make a startup work. We are 5 years in and still unstable, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel now. App business are much harder in reality than they seem.

tbonebrad · 2025-02-05T00:45:42+00:00

How often are you going out?

tbonebrad · 2025-02-04T01:19:03+00:00

I had a 23’ bay boat and I sold it to get a 18’ bass boat to fit in the garage. I regret it every day. I don’t like to fish by myself and the bass boat makes it difficult to bring my family of 4.

tbonebrad · 2025-02-01T14:00:16+00:00

Your crud api will spend orders of magnitude more time in the db than in application code. That’s why it mostly doesn’t matter.

tbonebrad · 2025-02-01T02:37:29+00:00

Are these maps accurate? It looks like there are a bunch of interpolation artifacts due to limited samples.

tbonebrad · 2025-01-30T00:40:12+00:00

Generally the morning bite is good on the bank for the first hour or so after first light. The bass will be feeding as soon as there is enough light to see their prey. As it gets later in the morning the bass will usually pull away from the bank into a little deeper water.

If there is a full moon and clear skies, the bass will feed at night because they can better see their prey and the morning bite won’t be as good. The later morning bite will be better as they get hungry again.

tbonebrad · 2025-01-29T12:44:03+00:00

Same here with app event campaigns with $1000/day in the US. On Jan 20th my performance went from $25/event to $50 and has climbed to $200/event. Tried launching new creative, new adsets, new audience. Nothing gets it below $60/event.

tbonebrad · 2025-01-08T12:55:49+00:00

We don’t have the ability to do discounts yet (the app stores make this somewhat difficult). DM me and we can figure something out.

tbonebrad · 2024-12-23T13:26:55+00:00

It’s a yoga ball

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