About · Ascent

Four of the Ascent team around the long table in the Portland studio, laptops closed, one pouring coffee — The studio on SE Clinton Street, Portland. Laptops stay shut until the email has been read.

It started as a script for one tired developer

In 2022 Casey had four apps on the App Store and a habit of opening App Store Connect before getting out of bed. Quinn wrote a script that pulled the reports overnight and emailed four numbers at 7:00 AM. The habit stopped within a week.

Friends asked for the script. Then friends of friends did. By the end of that year 214 developers were getting the email. Reviews came next, then keyword ranks, then a way to reply without leaving the inbox.

We have kept it small on purpose. There are six of us, there are no investors, and the product still does one thing: tell you what happened yesterday, once, so you can spend the rest of the day building.

Write to the whole team

the year the first email went out, to one developer: 2022
people, three in Portland and three elsewhere in the US: 6
indie studios reading it each morning: 3,140
raised from investors. Subscriptions pay for all of it: $0

Whoever built it answers the email

Three of us are in Portland and three are spread across the country. Write in about a feature and the person who made it writes back.

Casey Morgan

Co-founder, CEO · Portland, OR

Shipped four iOS apps before Ascent and checked App Store Connect far too often for all of them.
Quinn Alvarez

Co-founder, engineering · Portland, OR

Wrote the first overnight importer in a weekend and has been making it boring ever since.
Rowan Castillo

Design · Portland, OR

Draws every chart in the email by hand first, then takes half of it away.
Emery Patel

Data · Madison, WI

Reads Apple’s report formats so nobody else has to, and keeps a list of the ones that changed.
Skyler Hayes

Support · Tucson, AZ

Answers most email the same day and wrote the saved replies that ship with the reviews inbox.
Drew Nakamura

Engineering · Minneapolis, MN

Keeps the 7:00 AM send on time in six time zones. Was awake for the one morning it was late.