Adrián Romero Verdasco

I'm building Leo to take a real app from zero to market, and to create the book reader I kept wishing existed.

I'm Adrián Romero Verdasco. Leo started as an honest mix of curiosity, personal challenge and a real need of my own: I wanted to see whether I could build a complete app from scratch, care about it properly and take it all the way to real users.

I did not want to make a nice demo that ended up sitting in a folder. I wanted to go through the whole process: shape the product, design it, code it, write the website, prepare the launch, deal with the small details and learn the things you only learn when you try to ship something for real.

The app idea came from a very specific frustration. I love reading, but traditional reading often felt slower than my mind wanted it to be: long lines, visual jumps, distractions and the feeling that the day never had enough room for everything I wanted to read. I tried speed readers, but very few matched how I read actual books and documents.

That is why Leo is not trying to promise absurd reading speeds. The idea is simpler: your EPUB and PDF files, word by word when you want it, with context close by, control over the rhythm and an experience made for real reading, not just for showing a high words-per-minute number.

If you join Leo, you are not joining a huge newsletter or a faceless brand. You are following a fairly personal attempt to build a useful app, bring it to market and improve it with people who also want to read more and read better.

I have been building software for a number of years and Leo is the first project I have taken through the full cycle: from concept to working iOS app, from landing page to App Store submission. I wrote the iOS app in Swift, built this website in Next.js and handled every design decision myself. That full ownership of the process is part of what makes Leo feel like mine.

Local-first is not just a buzzword. It means your EPUB and PDF files stay on your device. Leo does not upload them to any server, does not require an account and does not need an internet connection to read. Your library is yours. That matters more when your books include personal documents, study material or anything you would not want stored in someone else's cloud.

Leo is in final development and the App Store submission is approaching. The waitlist is for people who want to be among the first to try it. What makes Leo different from other RSVP apps is not a single feature but the combination: personal file support, synchronized context, local-first storage and an experience built around actual reading habits rather than speed records. Most RSVP tools treat your text as input. Leo treats your books as a library.

If you're interested in the project, have an idea or want to tell me how you read, you can write to me at adrianromero@ireadwithleo.com.