Originally published on expo.dev/blog By Erencan Arica A few years ago, launching a React Native app meant weeks of setup configuring Xcode, managing signing certificates, wrestling with Android Gradle configs, and cobbling together a CI/CD pipeline from scratch. Today, with Expo, a solo developer can go from idea to a production-ready native app in a single afternoon. It's a dream. And that's before we even mention LLMs. But speed creates a new problem: when shipping is fast, the bottleneck shifts. It's no longer building the app, it's getting it found . That's where App Store Optimization comes in. Why shipping fast made App Store discovery harder Here's the tension: Expo makes is easier for everyone to ship an app and now the App Store has over 2 million apps competing for attention. Paid acquisition costs have risen over 30% year-over-year, making organic discovery more important than ever. And here's the stat that changes everything: 65–70% of app downloads still come from App Store search. Not ads.…