Ask IH: What's your progress report (August 2017)?
This is a redux of this post from last month. I thought people might be interested in updates.
Here's the format again:
- What are you working on?
- How long have you been working?
- (If applicable) What deadline(s) did you set?
- Are you "on schedule?"
- How are you feeling about it?
- What have you recently learned as a result of your work?
As for me...
- I'm working on feedback-oriented writing platform called Wordsworth.
- I'm in month #4!
- I'm still targeting a November release.
- This has been a slow month but I'm barely holding on to an end-of-November release date according to this burndown chart.
- Feeling pretty good. I wanted to finish up the landing page and get the Viewer and Editorto a demoable point. I accomplished that. However the pace of development has definitely slowed-down. I'm hoping that prelaunch feedback will help me pick up the pace.
- It's hard to stay focused. You can read about "productivity hacks" until you're blue in the face, but staying focused will always come down to making a conscious decision to get something done. Last week I was feeling a little burnt-out so I took a break and spun-up another side project, just to scratch an itch. Now all of a sudden I feel motivated to work on Wordsworth again. I'm just hoping taking off an entire week won't come back to bite me later on.
@robotnoises I must say I really liked the landing page for Wordsworth, simple, neat and clean.
Even though I wasn't part of the previous thread, but here are my updates:
Thanks pranav7, I feel compelled to echo the same comment about Cadet. I love the landing page!
Love these!
A simple dashboard, that lets you stay in control of your app subscriptions, manage users, track whether you're staying in budget and more.
9 months
1st September
Yes
Excited! Night before last, I randomly woke up at 3:30am, wrote out an entire launch plan and went back to sleep at 5am.
Absolutely everything takes time to gain momentum - learn to love the journey. Another one is learn to read less advice and just do. If you read advice, learn to extract what's necessary and move on quickly - find your own path.
A productivity tool focused on helping people do more meaningful work while blocking the noise.
This is my first month!
Launch landing page by end of August, and launch the beta by the end of October.
It's too early to tell but I'll have a better idea closer to September
I'm super pumped! Excited to start making progress on solving a problem that I personally faced. Still in the later stages of the research phase (help me out by taking this quick survey)
Lots of people face the problem of reducing noise while getting more meaningful work done. I'm trying to learn what tools they've tried, what worked/didn't work and how I can better help them achieve their goals.
Good idea!
What are you working on?
www.techpresslist.com - a curated list of journalists for startups
How long have you been working?
Since 22nd July
What deadlines did you set?
Originally the 8th August of August but that was unrealistic so made it end of August which I managed.
On schedule?
Yes, launched yesterday.
How you feel about it?
Great! Successful launch. Made $300.
What have you learned?
Make realistic time scales.
Double check details like analytics (I missed most of first day)
Probably launch on a weekend in future.
"What are you working on?"
CRM & Project Management tool Pareto http://paretocrm.com to help digital teams manage projects with less chaos.
"How long have you been working?"
4 months now.
"(If applicable) What deadline(s) did you set?"
Launch before the end of summer.
"Are you "on schedule?""
Sort of :)
"How are you feeling about it?"
A bit stressful. The hardest thing starts now - get the first clients. Have 0 yet.
"What have you recently learned as a result of your work?"
I've learned that SaaS marketing sucks (I even registered a domain http://saasmarketingsucks.com where I plan to post my progress or blame the world because nothing seems to be working for my project). Seriously, I've got a decent marketing experience, but haven't expected that growing B2B SaaS would be so challenging.
Respect to all those non-marketing founders who managed to get their start-ups off the ground!
I am working on https://bestfoodnearme.com a food dish by location web app. I relaunched a new design at the end of May.
I recently added 1000 new dishes 600 in New York and 400 in San Francisco. I am also working on loading a dish from each restaurant featured on the Diners Drive-ins and Dives food show, this works out to around 930 dishes. Once this is done, I will have decent coverage across the US.
I still need to do some content marketing to get the word out. I also have to make the whole process of adding a dish a bit easier based on the feedback I have gotten.
Traffic to the site has been steady at about 40-60 new visitors a week. Most drop off at the home page, so I need to investigate how to change that.
What are you working on?
I am working on ScrumGenius - https://scrumgenius.com
How long have you been working?
3 months.
(If applicable) What deadline(s) did you set?
To launch asap and get on all platforms. We did that. MSTeams was added 2 months ago and Slack added us 3 weeks ago.
Are you "on schedule?"
We have soft launched recently and the goal for next month is to really drive more traffic to our product.
How are you feeling about it?
Good! We have 200 signups so far, all organic. Through the app store. We have had more MSTeams and surprisingly more bigger businesses sign up than I thought. We have not had as many Slack signups - this could be due to a crowded marketplace.
What have you recently learned as a result of your work?
We have been seeing a steady signup rate and we are getting good activity and usage of our product. We are also receiving good product feedback from our customers. We are able to prioritise and focus on the customer needs and hopefully convert more customer.
We got our first paying customer last week! That was also a big achievement and it feels so good!
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