Pre-launch Sneak Peek 🚀
You know the drill, IndieHackers! Let me know what you think. I’ve been designing and building this product myself over the last three years and this is the first public release for feedback. I’m super excited. You, the builders and founders of IH are exactly the users my partner and I want to support with Mission because that’s who we are.
What is it?
The Pitch:
Early-stage products and startup teams need freedom to adjust and explore their roadmap. They need to be able to quickly describe the entire structure of a new idea. Mission is a task management and planning tool that embraces the spirit of “agility”. It’s fast and flexible, not heavy and complex. Mission starts with a fresh approach to project management without the artificial limitations enforced through traditional epics, tasks, and subtasks. Stop listening to anyone who is telling you how your team should work. Let your product get complex, not your process.
At least that’s what my co-founder, Justin, and I started feeling strongly about 4 years ago when we started designing Mission during our daily carpool. To this day, after building this in any waking hour I could around work and kids for 3+ years, we still feel as strongly as we did back then.
The core goals of this product are these:
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Freely subdivide tasks many times until they’re actually achievable. Break them down or group them however best suits your situation.
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Get out more than you put in. Running reports is antiquated. Data should be real-time. In Mission, all task properties sum-up to their parents live, all the way up the tree. A parent task is the sum of its children.
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Keep it fast and simple to use. Don’t fall in love with project management and add the kitchen sink just because everyone else did. Help users fall in love with the product they’re building. We’ll win if they do.
Conclusion:
We’re just a couple of guys with young families working nights and weekends, looking for a something better. Any feedback we like we will prioritize and implement quickly. Everything about Mission we’ve designed together and I’ve built myself. It’s survived three stack changes, many design iterations, but never a change in the core mission. We feel very strongly about the core mission, and hopefully you do as well.
Let me have it!
All the best,
Scott (@KeepCrankin) & Justin
Hope you have a successful launch, I like the Features section showing the offering.
Thanks, @aljaljic!
Hi KeepCrankin,
First of all, congrats on getting this far. I was looking for something like this for managing my projects. My colleague set some project management software up in a M$ environment. Ouch!
The interface is clean and works well. I like that you keep it as simple as possible.
I'm a bit confused though. I added a mission: "find freelance work" with two tasks: "submit on upwork" and "cold outreach email". In the Board I now see these items, and option 1 and option 2. What is this board thing? I was kind of expecting a kanban board of sorts
And Is there a way to make tasks recurring? I have lots of those recurring tasks in my daily work.
Well, @ThomasW81, I hope Mission can be the answer you need! Simple and fast are our primary concerns, but simplicity is an important thing to understand. DaVinci said "simplicity is the ultimate sophistication", which I love. That's why in Mission you will find everything you need to set up your project the way YOU want, while hopefully giving you some rocket fuel along the way :).
In your example, what I generally do is use those two tasks as parent tasks and then create all of the specific tasks below them. Such as:
I did something like this recently when I was looking for a job. I used Mission to track all of the resumes I had sent out, the responses, follow-ups, statuses, etc. It worked really well and I couldn't think of doing it anywhere else afterwards.
As for re-occuring tasks, it hadn't really come up before, tbh. Mission was intended as a way to break down complex tasks and projects that could be completed. I'll add your request to our Feature Request mission, though.
As for the Board, it actually is a kanban board. The option 1, option 2, just means you haven't named your choices yet. Click the pencil at the top of the column and edit your choices. You can set colors here and everything. Then, once you're in the Board view you can drag/drop between columns in the traditional way.
Thanks for being a user! Let me know how I can help you succeed.
Interesting approach, love it. Simple and effective road mapping tool. It's really interesting. Looks fresh and original! I work on something in the same niche, it would be good to discuss the possibilities of collaboration and integration if you are interested
Thanks for the kind words, @booper (great name). Always down to see what others are working on!
All the best!
You could do as we did on Goleko and integrate a screen recording feedback system :)
Also fast and simple is always a win in my book!
Congrats on Golecko - just checked out your marketing content. I think we'll leave screen recording to you guys, you appear to be doing it well already ;). Question, how did you go about getting your initial traction and finding your initial customers?
Thank you! Well, while there was some trial and error, we have found success with building a community on X, and Reddit isn't so bad either. PH was a bit of a letdown, but I recognize the potential.
Best of luck!
Loving this!
Couple of thoughts
Hey @ezzabuzaid - thanks for the positive energy!
Thanks again for giving us a shot and please stay with us while we grow!
Best wishes for a successful launch!
Thank you, @joy1122!
I'll start the comments - I haven't built the payment system yet, so the product is currently free!
Stripe will be a quick favor for that. Also, you mind if I ask how you’re planning to find users?
Yes, I’ll be adding in stripe shortly.
To find users I’m appealing to small tech-centric business (not necessarily software). Starting with people I know and hoping for some grassroots momentum - but that hasn’t happened yet.
Communities like this one, product hunt, and Reddit are my next targets. After that I thinks SEO and paid ads? Really open to suggestions here.