Dolphy

We launched the Dolphyn on the r/sideproject subreddit and stay on top for 4 days. It was the first successful experience launching in the public domain. We garnered over 6000 views, 18 upvotes, and a significanly up in website visits.

We concentrated on social media marketing, targeted follower increase, and slack groups for initial traction. We experimented with pricing. Now my focus is on improving SEO, Blog SEO, and email marketing. We had our first 2 paid customers.

By the end of December, we had over 200 sign-ups. We received good feedback so far and pivoted from one featured product to four featured products. It was not the progress though. Many the assumption was not validated enough and I diverted from the initial vision.

From transition MVP 2 to MVP 3, we had almost 5 months of blank period, which we had to spend on refactoring codes, design, and improving the quality. It was a time, Dolphyn was not accessible to users. Dolphyn was never ready to date for users to use without any issues. I feel it is not supposed to be like that.

We wanted to launch MVP 2, but feedback and performance was not to the level.

During the time, my fiancée came to rescue us. She introduced standard coding practices, reinvented the design, refactored the certain modules and strengthen the hiring process to filter out the few, strong candidates.

Due to consistent efforts and streamlining the process helped to resolve many issue of team building, quality code, QA process and product management. However, MVP 2 was facing major UX problem. With good team we came up with MVP-3 UX design to make easier for new users to navigate the app. However, that was our naïve attempt. Only UX design and flow does not solve the problem of user onboarding and what we assume as a smooth flow was actually compartmental issues. We clearly identified each features and created feature-centric design and did not understand that user wants to see value not features.

With help of Interns and one senior UI developer, we completed the version 2. However, the bugs was still there and application was keep breaking. I has bad feedback compare to MVP 1 which are not supposed to be. I hired QA for software testing and improved the coding process to improve the quality. I integrated Jira, Gits. I gathered a lot of frustrations and disappointment by the time. Since I improved the UX, added functionalities but not receiving positive feedback.

By MVP 2, I pivoted the initial idea.

I changed the tech stack to React JS for Website UX, and Speed improvement. Found one experienced developer to work as a mentor and hired one junior to work.

The first time, I hired a UX designer for app designing. Since I was not aware of how designing work, I hired again an Intern based on his past projects and dedication. He did a decent job.

I hired three more Python Junior developers (Interns) since I was not able to hire a senior developer or get on board as a co-founder. I wanted to add some new features and improve on existing ones. I had limited exposure to marketing or marketing communication. Basically, I had no idea!

Adding all feedback received on first MVP, I listed out the priority list

• Website speed, marketing messaging on website, UX, had a problem
• Features are good but needed bug-free to use
• Issues with server side with many pages with errors and
• I received complains that signup does not work in some countries.

I realized I need experienced developer. I struggled to get one. They are not fully qualified and if they are, they do not understand equity sharing. They were all looking for salary. I put ads on Angelist, and LinkedIn direct contact.

In six months, working with fresh developers we built the first MVP. I showed it multiple people of the industry. They all liked the concept and idea-solutions. They all wanted to use bug-free version. We had many bugs since it was developed by newbies and a non-tech guy. I received the confidence to move further. I received the feedback that I need to work on UX. And the plan to build version 2 MVP started.

I am coming from Non-web dev background and struggled a lot initially to understand even how does a website works and what are different tools available to build a website.

Earlier, I worked with my buddy on the IoT- Framework Generator- a SaaS product. It was around 1.5 years, this was the time I come in contact with "Tech World" starting from a Website builder - WordPress. We used the PhP framework to build the initial MVP. Due to resource constraints, we could not proceed further. However, I explored the process, terms, the technology of a web app and startup processes, terminologies, etc.

I started building MVP for Dolphyn, with one fresh Python developer. We both learned together from Python Framework, database, Linux basic, GCP instances, and GitHub

It was when I was providing ML-BI services to a few marketing teams of mid-sized companies, I realized marketers do not like Stats and ML stuff. However, they need to learn Business Intelligence, Data Processing, Excel, or Tableau in order to perform their daily activities.

I was successful enough and received good bucks for my services, however, it was difficult to scale since fetching BI from data and reporting to the Marketing head was specifically different for each company and require specific skillsets. Even without proper data infrastructure, it was difficult for companies to exploit the power of data.

That forced me to think about a solution that harnesses data infrastructure and algorithms that can remove middle steps and provide marketers with what are they looking for from data - an Insight. That's how Dolphyn was born.