Everything you should know about MyLomi

As you can see from the screenshot above, building MyLomi in public started in early 2021. Back then, I couldn’t build mobile or web apps or have the needed expertise and experience in any language or framework. A high school friend and I were brainstorming on app ideas and were discussing a product launched in the US. It was a platform where you hire a boyfriend or girlfriend that checks on you, texts and calls, or even visits your family to fill the gap you have in your romantic life and convince others your love life is thriving. I can’t recall its domain perfectly now, but it has been an app highlighted on mainstream social media and entertainment news.

My younger brother chipped in an idea that later became MyLomi. He said it may be a fresh idea to work on in Ethiopia. So we came up with the name “MyLomi” after some iterations to make it feel traditionally suited.

The Early Days

My friend started designing the app’s UI/UX, and at that time I didn’t know what Figma was or how app design and development work. I just participated in brainstorming features and experiences the app should include. After he went on the UX design document for a few days, he started building the mobile app using Flutter.

Early 2021 Context

My friend was around his senior year in college. I was barely getting started with the second semester of my first year at my university. And my brother was finishing his high school studies.

Late 2021 Assimilation of ProNerds by Natinet

ProNerds (the parent company of MyLomi; my friend and I were trying to start a general software development startup) merged with Natinet ICT Solutions (at the time a hardware and network installation and maintenance startup). The merger was a successful deal for me and my friend, as it meant better team structure and technical guidance from members/owners of Natinet.

Early 2022 Termination of Project MyLomi

After working on the app for months, our team discovered the availability of similar apps on the Play Store and couldn’t see what sort of distinguishing feature we could come up with to control the small market there is in the Ethiopian dating scene. Therefore, Natinet decided to shift its focus and priorities to other in-house products rather than continuing to work on building MyLomi.

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Early 2023 Build in Public: The Return of MyLomi

Early 2023 Context

I left Natinet to pursue other opportunities and focus on my iOS development career, which at this point was 2 years after I got introduced to Swift Programming Language and was about to graduate from university. And a simple misunderstanding reminded me of the project.

As I was proficient in iOS/Mobile development, I was confident enough that I could build the app as a side project. I made it my mission to share the entire journey and story of the development process as a Build in Public campaign. It paid off.

The Build in Public activities got me in the eyes of recruiters and landed me several contractual roles for my iOS development skills. It also laid the groundwork for the genuine personality I built online as an iOS developer, which helped me in the famous iPhone purchase fundraiser I conducted mainly on Twitter.

Moreover, professionals I look up to reach out to help in the development of MyLomi. People helped revamp the entire design for the mobile experience and were also committed to helping me with the API and dashboard development.

What’s next for MyLomi?

I started the development of the iOS application back in April 2023.

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To be honest, I haven’t made any progress in ways that matter in the development process. At this point, it just feels like one of the abandoned projects in one of my GitHub repositories (and my friend’s GitHub repositories, for that matter; the Flutter version).

I wrote this to get upfront with the progress and set your expectations lower as everyone I meet online or in person is asking me when MyLomi would launch. For instance, I was planning to finalize work on the entire product by this Ethiopian year Epiphany, but it just seems like I won’t make it.

The next step will be exploring other options, like making the project open-source and maintaining the development process with the programming community. This would mean an absolute change of tech stack and approach for mobile app development. I hope this will get it off the ground.