I help founders ship AI-powered consumer apps from 0 → 1.
I’m a founder & product engineer behind Bonzen, a micro-meditation app for stressed-out knowledge workers. I blend product strategy, SwiftUI, and applied AI to take ideas from “we should build this” to shipped in the App Store.
Best fit for seed–Series B teams who want a scoped, 4–8 week push on iOS, AI features, or a 0 → 1 product.
Breathe for 7 cycles to clear meeting stress and reset your nervous system.
- Founders & product leads
- Seed–Series B startups
- Scoped 4–8 week projects
Fractional product + iOS · AI assistants & coaching flows · Subscription & IAP monetization.
Unyte Health · SmartHalo · Esper · IBM
Case study — Bonzen (iOS)
Bonzen is a micro-meditation app for busy knowledge workers. It delivers 2–5 minute resets with breathing animations, an AI “coach”, and a subscription-based model — built to fit between meetings, not on a retreat.
This is the same kind of scoped work I do with founders: take an idea, define the user journey, then own SwiftUI, StoreKit2, AI integration, and launch. If you want an AI-powered iOS experience shipped in weeks, not quarters, this is the pattern.
End-to-end iOS implementation with subscriptions, onboarding, context-based micro-meditations, and breathing flows.
OpenAI-powered coach that adapts to user check-ins, suggests next sessions, and keeps people coming back — all behind a secure proxy.
Cloudflare Workers & Pages, secure secrets, and Firebase Analytics for retention, funnel, and paywall performance.
Most meditation apps assume you have 10–20 minutes and low Slack traffic. My users were anxious, over-caffeinated, and context-switching — they bounced off heavy, “perfect” practices.
Bonzen makes it easy to drop into a 2–5 minute reset instead of doomscrolling: micro-meditations tuned for workday transitions, breathing animations and haptics, light gamification, and an AI coach that responds to how you’re actually feeling.
Founder, PM, designer, and engineer. I owned product discovery, UX flows, visual design, SwiftUI implementation, StoreKit2 subscriptions and paywall, AI integration through a secure proxy, and analytics instrumentation.
Early cohorts reliably complete 2–5 minute sessions instead of doomscrolling and build multi-day streaks around workday transitions — with the codebase set up for fast iteration on journeys and paywalls.
How I can help your team
I’m most useful when you need someone who can think like a PM, design like a product designer, and build like an iOS engineer — without adding a full-time headcount.
When to bring me in
- You have an AI-powered consumer idea and want a v1 in the App Store, not just in a deck.
- You have an existing product and want an iOS companion app that actually gets used.
- You want to bolt on an AI assistant or coach — safely, with good UX, not as a chat box afterthought.
- You need a product-minded engineer to validate a new bet (0 → 1) while your core team stays on the main roadmap.
Engagement shapes
- Scoped 4–8 week projects with clear outcomes.
- 1–2 days/week as a fractional product + iOS partner.
- Async-friendly, NA time zones, strong written updates.
Typical outcome: a shipped feature or app, plus a clear next-steps doc for your internal team to build on.
Skills & tools
I like to own a thin vertical slice end-to-end — from user insight to working code.
Product & UX
- Product discovery & positioning
- User journeys and flow design
- UX & microcopy for AI interactions
- Instrumentation for retention & monetization
iOS & frontend
- SwiftUI, Combine, UIKit integration
- StoreKit2 subscriptions, trials, paywalls
- Deep links & navigation flows
- Tailwind & simple marketing pages
AI, backend & growth
- OpenAI Responses / Chat APIs
- Prompt design & evaluation
- Cloudflare Workers, Node/TypeScript API layers
- Secure proxying, rate limiting, key management
- Firebase Analytics, event design
- SEO & Schema.org for marketing surfaces
Send me a message
This will open your email client and start a draft to hi@olicheng.com with your message below.
Contact
You can reach me directly at hi@olicheng.com, book time via Calendly, or DM me at @olicheng.