# Marcus Tate, Independent iOS Developer (ex-agency, 6 years) at Tate Digital LLC — read of TrueDepth Face Analyzer, June 22, 2026

> "6 years building bespoke iOS apps for small medical and wellness clients. Currently have two apps in the App Store making a combined $340/mo. Looking for the next thing to build that isn't another habit tracker."

## How I got here

I subscribe to a few indie-hacker newsletters and I think someone posted a link in the Indie Hackers "Show IH" channel. The phrase "face measurements in millimeters" caught me because I've done LiDAR work before for a client in orthopedic rehab and I know the iPhone TrueDepth sensor is genuinely underused. I clicked in expecting to see an actual product. What I found was a factory selling me the strategy to build it myself.

That took about 30 seconds to realize and it reframed everything.

## What I clicked first

"Measure Your Face in Millimeters, Not Subjective Scores" -- that's a tight, clear line. It names a real tension: the beauty and aesthetics world runs on vibes and "you look refreshed" and the obvious counterpoint is that millimeters are objective. I felt it. I kept reading.

The "No cloud upload, no tracking, no ads" line also landed. For any health-adjacent product, especially one pointing a camera at someone's face repeatedly, that's not a nice-to-have. That's the business model.

## Where I paused

Right at the scoring block. They show me: "financial upside: 1/10" and "$-12,500 Year-1 take-home (Fermi)" and "1 in 6 Meaningful-success odds." I stopped for a while there. That's the factory telling me this idea has a credibility score of 9/10 but a financial upside score of 1 out of 10. Those two numbers together are strange. It means: the concept is real, the market is clear, and yet there's basically no money in it. That's a specific kind of problem. It's not "bad idea," it's "thin market." And for a $99 purchase, the factory is admitting that before I hand over anything.

That's either remarkably honest or it's honesty being used as positioning to sell me something the factory already knows won't work well.

## What I distrusted

The Fermi math. I have no idea how they calculated "$-12,500 Year-1 take-home." Is that assuming I sell to cosmetic surgeons at $49/mo and need 80 subscribers to break even? Is it factoring in App Store cut? My own time at what hourly rate? "Fermi" means "we made educated guesses" and I respect that they say so, but there's no decomposition of the estimate. I'd need to know the assumptions to know if they apply to me at all. I could be an orthodontics office software vendor who already has 200 warm contacts. Or I could be starting cold. Those are totally different year-1 numbers.

Also: "pain intensity: 4/10." That's the factory saying the problem this solves doesn't hurt that much. That's a quiet admission that the ICP isn't urgently searching for a solution right now. Combined with a 1/10 financial upside score, I'm looking at a product where the concept is clean but the business case is thin and the buyer isn't in pain. That's a hard market to build into.

The phrase "We shipped the strategy package; you ship the customer conversations" is real and I respect it, but it's also doing work. It's setting expectations for why if this doesn't pan out, that's on me and my distribution, not the strategy. Which is fair. But I notice it.

## What would convince me

Show me one specific ICP job title that is actively spending money on a related problem right now. Not "cosmetic surgeons might use this" but "three practices in Austin are paying $X/mo for [competitor or workaround] and here is what they hate about it." The "buyer clarity: 8/10" score suggests the factory knows who the buyer is. Let me see one line about what that buyer is doing today when they don't have this tool.

Also: what are the 50+ measurements specifically? Some of them. Not all. Just enough to know if this is usable clinical data or a novelty. Facial symmetry score, nasolabial fold depth, orbital rim distance -- give me three. If I can picture a cosmetic injector using those numbers in a patient consultation, I'm $99 richer and the factory has a customer.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. The financial upside is scored 1/10 and the pain intensity is 4/10. Given those two scores, what specific distribution or go-to-market assumption would need to be true for year 1 to be positive? I want to know if there's a path or if this is just a known thin-margin product that I'd be building for craft reasons.

2. Who is the working code starter built for? A developer comfortable with AVFoundation and ARKit, or someone more greenfield? I need to know if the $99-$199 tier saves me 40 hours or 4 hours.

3. Have any of the "Adopt the build" buyers for any idea in your catalog shipped and reported back? Even one? Not asking for revenue numbers, just: did the code starter actually run on day one and did the outreach pack get any replies?

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The honesty about the weak financial case almost works as a hook by itself -- I've looked at enough idea sites to know that kind of disclosure is rare. But I can't get past "financial upside: 1/10" and "pain intensity: 4/10" as a combo. That's not a product I'd spend months of weekends on. If the dossier shows me a specific buyer segment where those scores are wrong for MY situation, that changes things. I'd pay $5 to find out.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-06-22. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*