Why I built Muta

Michael Foster

Before we dive into why I created Muta, let's lay some groundwork first…

What is Muta?

Muta is a no-code, drag-and-drop onboarding builder for mobile apps. Imagine if Pendo and Canva had a baby and it grew up hanging out with indie app founders. That's Muta. Muta allows you to design your entire onboarding flow and deploy that flow to your app instantly. This means the next user who downloads your app experiences the most recent flow—with no delay.

What's the point of an onboarding flow?

An onboarding flow is the first interaction a prospecting user has with an app. In the early days of app development, it merely served as a collection mechanism for key user information . That was before the app store grew to 1.8 million apps.

Today, an onboarding flow is the final and most important part of a sales funnel. It's where 80% of in-app purchases take place. As an app founder, you should imagine a convince-o-meter next to every step of the flow. Is another step going to make it more or less likely that the user converts at the end of the flow? Will the meter be high enough when I show them my paywall that they will sign up for a free trial? Could I get it so high that they skip the trial and make a purchase instead? While the onboarding flow is not the core product, it significantly affects how users perceive the core product. This is your final chance to convince users your app is what they've been looking for.

But there's just one problem…

Writing code for flows sucks

As a multi-app founder I can go on and on about how much it sucks to write code for onboarding flows. I love building apps, but man—onboarding is a pain in the a$$.

Here's why

It's just marketing (which means lots of fluff)
It crowds the codebase with useless junk
It could always be better
It doesn't improve the core product at all
Every time I make a change it has to go through App Review

The biggest problem Muta solves is the app review bottleneck. Without Muta, I have to write code, potentially break things, rebuild my app, create a new app version, and submit it to App Review—just to make a single change to the onboarding flow. Then, I wait. How long? Hours? Days? Weeks? Who knows. With this process, how can I optimize the flow in any meaningful way?

Alright, stepping off of my soapbox now… but only because Muta has freed me from this headache. Here’s how:

Muta allows for in-app changes without resubmission

Muta in its current form allows you to build onboarding flows through a variety of core elements. These elements include images, text, shapes, icons, buttons, progress bars, multiple choice questions, text inputs, loading spinners, and more. There are still elements and further customizations to be added—and I’m working around the clock to push them out.

Along with more design options, I would like to enhance analytics and experimentation. Currently, we offer BYOA (bring your own analytics). We emit events, you choose what to do with them. Experimentation can be done easily through feature flags and separate flows, but eventually I would like all experimentation to be done in app. Also, it's 2025, so of course there are some AI features coming down the pike.

My Commitment to You

My goal is to make your life as an app founder easier. That means making Muta a joy to use and solving real problems first. That also means making components around Muta like pricing (check out the generous free tier) as straightforward as possible. To fill in any gaps we will have the best support you have ever experienced, you can quote me on that. If you have any questions, comments, or feedback feel free to send a live chat in the app or on the website. All chats go straight to me and I can't wait to hear from you. I'll be building in public from here on out so feel free to follow along.

Alright, hanging up the blogger hat for now. Time to get back to building.

Best,

Michael