I should really say, my story

Hello. I am Leo — not my real name, my nickname — owner and founder of Cygnus Crane, and the solo maker of Cygtree, the mind-mapping and whiteboard app.

I am an immigrant to the awesome country of the United States of America. I have been here most of my life, and the most beautiful thing to me about this country is the amount of ground-breaking, record-shattering ideas, endeavours and dreams that the American people are willing to put together and accomplish at any cost and in record time — from the Hoover Dam to the Golden Gate Bridge, to inventing the internet, the microwave and the light bulb.

So how is that relevant to why Cygtree was made?

Truth be told, this niche has a lot of competition, and making it as a solo entrepreneur is almost impossible. But I saw a giant hole in this boat that nobody was in a hurry to patch.

When I set out to make Cygtree, I was really going to make a private app for myself — to accomplish my own goals with mind mapping and whiteboarding, and to actually be able to put an idea down with all its details and work on it effectively. Without constant paywalls, disconnections and timeouts. Without spending money I don't have on software subscriptions, browser logins, authentications, 2FA, and the rest of it.

There are obviously others who make very visually polished whiteboards, and who beat us with unlimited options — Obsidian, Lucid, Canva, Miro, FigJam and the like. That is awesome. However, you will find out very soon after you have made an account and downloaded their software that one or many of the following issues are impossible to escape, and each one brings its own set of problems.

1. It's a subscription

   How many times have you reached for a feature that would have saved you effort and time, only for it to tell you “Upgrade to use this feature” — and you felt slighted and manipulated into downloading the app, and then uninstalled it out of frustration? Me too.

2. No offline-only

   Forcing someone to place their trust in a server that might go offline tomorrow is bold, but it isn't smart. It's great for monetisation, and it does nothing for the user.

3. Forced to use privatised AI, or an API key

   I already pay for two LLM subscriptions personally, with usage left to rot at the end of the week. I have yet to see a single AI-powered whiteboard that lets me use my own subscriptions or a local model without daily limits, or some kind of arbitrary server call that costs them nothing and blocks me from working — basically digging into me and you for money that we don't need to spend and shouldn't.

4. Options overload

   As I said above, options are great. However, it almost feels like every mind map is trying to be a CRM, an ERP, a backend intelligence hub, an AI provider and a food-stand seller all at the same time — or it has a learning curve so long that Niki Lauda would take three light years to finish it.

   You have to ask yourself: at what point does a mind map become so incredibly complex that it swallows your ideas? Or when does a mind map become so hard to navigate that your own ideas start to look foreign to you?

5. Value proposition

   OK, fine — I pay your normal subscription. Now what? Now I get to drool at, and be reminded every second of, all the features I need and am missing out on, because I have to upgrade. And then I upgrade, and two months later I stop mind mapping, I forget it, and now I'm paying 30, 40, 50 dollars every month — or even every year — for something I barely use.

6. Tracking

   Need I say more? Why does your mind map company need to know every time you launch the app, or log in, or how long you spend in it? As a customer, I highly commend Obsidian for avoiding tracking user data, and I have taken a page from their book. The only thing my software tracks is whether or not you have a licence — and if you decide to go offline afterwards, well, nothing is stopping you. My app doesn't track you and doesn't force you to log in every time. You only ever have to enter your licence key once on each computer you use.

Last but not least

Yes — our software is a lifetime purchase for Cygtree version 1 through 1.9. Version 2 and beyond would be a separate product, if and when it comes.

Updates and support

As I said, I am a solo developer. I made everything from the app to the site alone, and I will be handling current and future support myself, as far as I know at the time of writing this.

With that being said, I still have a rather sensible plan for this application, one that hopefully always has a happy ending.

I plan on supporting this app for as long as it financially makes sense to me — with updates, polish, fixes, and the additions I believe belong in version 1 but that I was not able to integrate in a way I found acceptable, or in a way that causes no friction between user experience and app functionality.

However, in the case that I am no longer around, or I stop being able to support this app, I do plan on making it open source as a last resort if everything goes wrong — and I have planned contingencies for it. If not open source, then at least landed in the hands of someone who cares about users more than money. And if a miracle does occur and I manage to sell this software to someone, rest assured I will make sure we do right by our customers.

Thank you for reading this long section with me, and thank you for taking the time to look at our app. Feel free to try it for three days, and let me know what you think before you spend a dime.