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22 Comments

#TheCommitals: Weekly Check-In (Week 42)

  1. How did you fare last week?
  2. What's on deck for this week?
  3. What's your goal for the month?
  4. [Optional] Still on target for end of year goal?
  5. [Optional] Brief description of project with link (if applicable)

@louisswiss, @helengriffinjr, @vimalin, @jpusateri, @Guidione_Machava, @natejcho, @DF_V, @davey, @VisionIsScary, @breedaddy, @janice

  1. 4

    Launched the conference website: conf.wcd.school
    And I have managed to get a team of people involved to help out. Next week will start inviting people and promoting the event on social media.

    1. 3

      Attractive colors on the site! Good job putting a team together, it seems like it made a big difference to you!

      1. 2

        Yes it did. We are moving much faster now.

    2. 2

      Agree with @davey! Love the color palette! Congrats on the launch!

    3. 1

      Wow! Congrats on your launch! How's the promotion and signups going?

      1. 2

        Thanks. We have just finished the organize the first round of speakers (12). We will start to promote the event this week.

  2. 3

    Late check in...

    How did you fare last week?
    After last weeks release I kind of lapsed into non productive mode, or at least it feels like that.
    Finished my quarterly VAT accounting (which is required, but paper work never makes me feel I did something)

    Over the weekend I installed the esxi on arm fling. Running VMware's flagship datacenter product on a Raspberry Pi. Which was great fun, not that useful but just geeky.

    Helped a few customers, but most of that was unpaid. (sigh)

    Had no time to work on my "it's just a week of development time" inbetween project.

    Of course no response from Microsoft on their blocking of the Vimalin installer. Luckily though, almost nobody uses the Edge browser, which does help somewhat.

    What's on deck for this week?
    The little inbetween project.. if I get a chance.

    1. 2

      I hope you find the time to do your in between project! I put a couple hours in on mine this week and I’m glad I did

      1. 1

        I certainly did.
        Even if you can only do a small improvement. Every step is still a step towards your goal.

        thanks!

    2. 1

      I thought since you included a link, that for once, I would understand what the hell you're talking about. Nope. 😂

      Congrats on finishing up VAT accounting. It's not sexy. But necessary. And what's this "in between" project? I'm assuming I missed an update...

      1. 1

        Sorry about that link... It is just a geeky thing for VMware nerds, a bit like installing Linux on a toaster. So you're not missing out much.

        The "in between project" is a small project for adding back a feature that VMware dropped on their update of their desktop line of products.
        Doing the full fledged feature they had is a lot of work, but adding the basics is not that much work. I think most people complaining about loosing this feature only use the basic functionality of that particular feature, so I'm looking into doing that.

        Still haven't made up my mind on if I am going to give it away (reasoning is - free advertising for Vimalin) or if I will ask something like 10 bucks. To be fair the VAT and payment processor overheads might not be worth the hassle.
        Then again, every little bit of money helps these days.

  3. 3

    I am focusing on raising money right now, either through an investment vehicle or extending my ability to bootstrap.

    [Last Week]

    • Sent out my short pitch deck and one-pager to a couple folks
    • Applied to the Community VC fund
    • Read up on funnels and offers, which prompted me to:
    • Started up the new classes website I will use to deliver non-live courses/classes
    • Didn't finish the couple things on the app I wanted to do, decided to
    • Created some content for a mini-course I want to put out for founders or potential/founders on business modelling

    [This Week]

    • Add an important slide to the deck
    • Send the deck to two people I have been holding off on
    • Try to get 50% of the way through the business modelling course
    • App: Friend matching, custom user profiles

    [October Goals]

    • Bring the Lift Squad mobile app up to parity with the React web app
    • Release a mini course for founders

    [Project]
    Lift Academy
    Safe online community for kids with classes/events/friend matching

    [Year End Goal]
    $10k MRR. Still the potential to hit my target

    1. 2

      This is a massive progress. Your update feels like a how to start a startup tutorial but for real life. Well done.

    2. 1

      Oh wow. I've missed a lot! Raising monies? For what? What's your current MRR? How goes adoption?

      1. 1

        I spent a few hundred $ on filling in as many blanks as I could in a business model which shows that it can work; got it down as close as I can to "x dollars in, y dollars out" in a positive and attractive multiple. To me, this translates to "Go for it!". Not to mention it's a project I am highly engaged with and believe in. It's been a life changer for some of my users and that's enough for me.

        This project ended up being community-first, and the addressable market is 100% solid. So the baseline product is an app for that community. All the various things I will do to serve that community are icing on the cake and inherently valuable. I've tested the marketing with about 10 different FB ad campaign, so have a great idea on what acquisition costs are, and what customer LTV is likely to be. I also know which messages didn't work at all, and I've even made some campaigns which failed to convert so much that it polarized people and converted highly indirectly. I played around with post engagements and saw those convert as well.

        So even though I am in the middle of recreating what I've already done as an app (because kids greatly prefer apps), I have a model which shows it to be feasible at the barebones level.

        I have bootstrapped everything since my interactive cinema project, for which I raised a few hundred k and failed to return even 1$. That's steered me away from investment when I probably should have kept pushing.

        So I'm trying to raise some money to follow this rabbit. I'm going to try for some angel/seed money, $130k, but every little bit keeps the ball moving. So I'm going to try and do whatever I can to NOT need to enter the job market again in a month or so. That may mean lining up some contract work, or taking a week here and there and putting out a course or something, but I'm going for it.

        1. 1

          Awesome! Awesome! Awesome! So how many users do you have? Free/paid? Seems like you've accomplished a great deal while I've been out playing!

  4. 3

    I haven't anything to report other than a week of hiking and star-gazing. It was glorious.

    I'll spend this week adapting to re-entry, finding my bearings at my main gig and determining course of action of Diversity Decoded. I also look forward to checking out the progress made by my fellow #TheCommittals!

    1. 3

      Sometimes glorious is all it has to be.

    2. 3

      I took a quick hike yesterday which made me want to take a much longer intentional hike this week. Wednesday looks like a perfect day to do it, and the colors up here this year are INSANE.

      1. 1

        Hiking is grand for the soul!

        1. 1

          Heck yeah it is, and the night sky has been just amazing up here lately, in the sticks with no light pollution.

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