When starting B Simple Apps, it was important to pick a first app that not only demonstrated how to make an experience simple and easy-to-use, but also one that truly listens to consumer feedback, needs and painpoints, and wasn't too complex to build (wouldn't take months to complete an MVP).  And the goal wasn't to create something entirely new and innovative in and of itself (maybe just add a small innovation or 2!) - but rather to show that there are plentiful opportunities in the world to simply do better than what's already out there.  And lastly, with a background in and passion for audio, this was the space to start.

White noise and sleep sound apps quickly came into view.  They are plentiful and widely used by consumers.  They have been around since the first apps were made for smartphones; and even before that, there were and still are physical products offering a solution to the same problem.  The problem is pretty straight forward: Distracting or disruptive background noise makes it hard to sleep (babies to adults) or focus (while studying or working).  The high level solution of providing some masking sounds or noises is also pretty well studied and known to work.

Studying the "app" products in this space was more eye opening than anticipated.  While you might think these apps should be pretty simple, apps were chalked full of ads and tracking your every use and pumping you for money constantly.  Multiple tiers within products (subscription/upsells/etc) to unlock relatively minor product enhancements or additional sounds that really didn't need to be tiered.  Convoluted user experiences with multiple steps just to play simple white noise.  Apps that didn't enable simple personalization to combine a few sounds.  Apps that enabled way too much personalization and mixing of sounds to the point of being overly complex and confusing to use.  Apps where you could hear noticeable glitches in the audio or the loop points.  And overall, pretty complex apps and business models for something that could and probably should be much simpler and work better.

On top of all of this, when using assistant (Gemini or Siri) to get these apps to work and do their thing - they failed.  And while enabling your app to be nicely supported via these AIs has had some starts and stops over the years, no one can deny that more and more consumers are leaning on these AIs for not only product recommendations but also use of the products themselves.  So, this seemed like an entire miss.  And as we move toward a more agentic use of AI, it would only make sense to have this on the roadmap and start today with at least decent assistant integration.

With Simple Sounds from B Simple Apps, users get a very simple app experience that anyone of any age or technical (or audio) background can easily use to get a personalized background noise that works for them.  There are no ads, there are no upsells, there is not even data collection for analytics.  It's just not necessary and there were enough concerns from people in reviews wondering why a simple white noise app needed to collect data and how that data might be used.  Frankly, for something this simple, the basic data you get from general app store usage analytics (fully anonymized) and reviews/comments people optionally leave (along with user testing ahead of launch), can give you enough feedback to improve a product this simple. (Note, many other categories of apps really do have justified use of fairly extensive data and analytics collection; and in fact, every other app developed previously did. But it just wasn't warranted in this type of app.)

Finally, the whole Simple Sounds app can be completely controlled by the latest AI on your phone.  On Android, you can have a conversational experience with Gemini to drive Simple Sounds to play different sounds, mix in additional sounds, lower the volume on select sounds, set timers and more.  Complete control of the experience can be accomplished without viewing or navigating the app - enabling Simple Sounds to seamlessly work for those who have adopted AI and simply deliver on a consumers need to mask distracting or disruptive background noises at a consumer's beck and call.