Yes, I remember that moment exactly. My mum and I were in holiday in this restaurant, sharing a bottle that—for the first time—matched both our tastes perfectly. Since we usually prefer different styles, it felt like we’d discovered the one secret wine capable of uniting us. But back home, the name was gone. That perfect wine became a ghost. It was incredibly frustrating; we eventually had to call the restaurant just to find out what it was, and I knew there had to be an easier way. It happened to me all the time: I’d have a great wine, only to forget it the next day. That’s why I created Wine Scanner AI. A memory that tastes that good should be kept forever. One scan, and all your favorite bottles are saved in your personal wine diary including personal notes and all you need to remember the moment. Plus, it’s now so easy to find a bottle we’ll both love by using the app’s menu scanner.

Yes, living in West Germany near France is a true blessing from a wine perspective. In the Pfalz and France, we have access to the best white and sparkling wines in the world. With so many small wineries to visit, I’m tasting different bottles like every day or week, so I use my Wine Scanner AI App constantly to keep track of them all. From a developer's perspective, most of my networking happens online or at conferences; I haven't found a local app-builder community here just yet, but nearby in Frankfurt and Mannheim.

I’ve spent 20 years mastering the full software lifecycle. My career began at Teckpro with complex insurance systems, followed by SAP, where I've earned the discipline required to build high-quality, scalable frontends for global enterprises. I later transitioned that enterprise knowledge into the startup world as the technical lead for Spotted. I navigated the high-growth mobile era, architecting systems that served millions of users while balancing User Xperience excellence with a multi-million dollar subscription business. Today, I balance high-level architecture for tribeworks by Hays with the hands-on agility of my own indie projects. This 'dual path' allows me to bring 20 years of architectural stability to the table while maintaining the rapid execution speed of a solo developer.

The core mission is simple: Always find and remember your wine. The App instantly identifies wines by their label, builds your personal wine collection, and lets you rate and remember your favorites. Wine Scanner AI is the digital memory for your palate. Whether you’re at a dinner or a wine shop, you just scan the label and the app instanly identifies the wine it even recognizes the rarest labels in seconds. It Builds Your Collection and automatically organize a digital cellar of everything you've tasted. This allows you keep your personal tasting notes in one place and to Rate your bottles. Beside that the app is your personal sommelier.

The idea came from a simple observation: wine isn't just a drink; it’s always connected with special moments in a timeline of your year. You remember the champagne at the wedding, the heavy reds in winter, and the crisp whites on vacation. I realized that while most apps are transactional, I wanted Wine Scanner AI to be emotional and reflective. I took the 'Wrapped' concept because it basically turns database entries into a personalized narrative that users actually want to share. When a user opens their Wine Wrapped, they get a high-end, visual summary They see their 'Palate Profile': A breakdown of the tasting profiles of their scans. They see a seasonal timeline showing their most active months and weekdays, their favorites grapes. Their favorite regions and wineries. Their 'Hall of Fame.' with the most expensive and highest rated bottles. Check it out there is even more and we've just added badges you can earn while scanning. From a product perspective, it’s a massive retention hook. It's shareable, user love to show their wrapped to friends. From a technical perspective, it’s data aggregation, it takes a year’s scans and ratings and instantly compiles them into a shareable asset.

There were two hard lessons. The first was getting any users at all — the app market is flooded now, everyone is building apps, and standing out is very hard. And then the first users I got... were scanning the barcode. Not the label. That was a humbling UX moment — I had to make the label scan experience so obvious that nobody could miss it. But my deeper failure? The Menu Scanner. I love this feature — you point it at a wine list in a restaurant and it instantly recommends the perfect wine for your dish and taste profile. I think it's brilliant. Nobody uses it. And that taught me something painful: the features you build for yourself are not always the features your users need. My users want memory and discovery. They scan bottles. Going out and navigating a menu is a different mindset. But I'm not ready yet to remove it.

The most touching feedback I ever received came from a woman who had recently lost her father. He was a massive wine collector, he had hundreds of bottles in a cellar he’d built over 40 years. But he never kept a formal ledger. To her it was his life's work, and she was overwhelmed, afraid of opening a priceless vintage on a random Tuesday. She told me she spent a weekend with Wine Scanner AI, snapping every dusty label in that cellar. She said that as the app identified each bottle and showed her the stories, regions, and ratings, she felt like she was having one last conversation with her dad. The surprising part for me as a developer? She didn't care about the 'Social Sharing' or the 'Price Comparison' features I’d spent weeks perfecting. What she valued most was the 'Notes' field. She used the app to catalog his legacy, and then she used the 'Notes' to document her father's life moments and shared it with a person she wants to share the bottle and the memories with. That’s why I obsess over the stability of the data—because for someone like her, that data is irreplaceable.

Big players have to be everything to everyone to justify their valuation. They become bloated with ads and social noise. I’m building for the power user—the person who wants a clean, fast, accurate experience. By staying solo, I can stay obsessed with the details (like the 'Wine Wrapped' feature) that big companies often overlook. Funded startups often burn cash on over-engineering. With my background at SAP, Spotted and Hays, I know exactly where the architectural 'landmines' are. I don’t waste six months on a feature that won't scale. While they are busy hiring and onboarding, I’m already shipping. In 2026, it’s not about who has the most developers; it’s about who has the shortest distance between an insight and a deployed feature. My distance is essentially zero. But everyone is building apps now and standing out with zero marketing budget is a different story.

I operate as a Technical Product Architect while I use Claude Code to handle the execution. I more on the observer side and with the collected experience I can ensure the system stays robust. My workflow is simple: I define the high-level system design and data schemas first. The foundation is most important, otherwise AI just builds a mess. I translate user needs into precise technical requirements. I don’t ask the AI to 'build a feature'; I define the logic, edge cases, and success metrics. I treat AI-generated code as a PR from a dev. I review the most important lines for security, scalability, and technical debt. But the most important part is the UI review.

In one minute, I’m the Product Manager making an emotional decision about Wine Wrapped. The next minute, I have to be the Architect worrying about database indexing and API latency. Then, I’m doing Customer Support reading users feedback. The danger is that you can lose your strategic objectivity. You can spend three days perfecting a beautiful piece of code that the "Product Manager" in you should have killed in three minutes. It requires a level of self-discipline and "ego-switching" that no corporate job ever prepares you for. You have to be your own toughest boss and your own most demanding client simultaneously. It's not easy to enter the tunnel, but when Your decisions are lightning fast, then you'll get into it.

The safety of a corporate job is the best place to build your foundation, but the speed of an indie developer is where my passion lives and I found my soul. My advice: Do a simple Business Test: Imagine working on it every single day of your free time for two years. Don't do it! unless you can commit. it's not going to be a business, if you can't see yourself in that grind. Otherwise do a Passion Test: If it’s your dream, start now. Use your "side-hustle" time to keep your soul alive. When passion meets that two-year grit, you’ve even found the perfect match. Always Validate before you leave. Use your corporate salary as your venture capital until you have proof that the market actually wants what you’re building. everyone is building apps now and standing out with zero marketing budget is a different story.

You can find Wine Scanner AI right now on the App Store and Play Store. It’s the one with the beautiful interface As for following the journey, turn on automatic updates and follow me on LinkedIn. If you’re a developer or a product person, I’d love to connect there. I'm currently searching a counterpart who is good at marketing, give me a message if you're into wine and want to spread Wine Scanner AI as a team. I’m always happy to chat about user experience, technology and app businesses.

Right now, we’re focused entirely on our subscription model and IAPs—retailer partnerships and data insights aren't live just yet. I’m sharing some raw numbers on our current subscription growth and in-app revenue privately. Comment or send 'REVENUE' below and I’ll DM you the breakdown!