Fluxo

This was such a loooong process. We had to go over process review, technical review , security review, and marketing review.

And in between those, multiple emails so they didn't forget about our application.

The one review that I liked, though, was security review, because it basically gave us a free security audit and we were able to address some potential risks.

Now we have to wait and see if it was worth it. https://apps.intuit.com/app/apps/appdetails/fluxo/en-us

We've just launched on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/fluxo-3

The day didn't start as planned, Product Hunt is having issues with 504 errors, which leaves us on a little bit of a limbo.

Do I tell people about the launch and risk them seeing a 504 page? Or wait until later with the risk that the problem is not going away?

I'd love more feedback and questions ✌

We launched our free trial at https://www.fluxo.ai.

I sent 10 emails to our most recent waitlist subscribers and got 1 signup!! Great first day :).

Some of the others complained either that our pricing is high, that 7 days is not enough of a free trial, or that they didn't want to give a credit card for a free trial, though.

I tend to agree with them, but our application is very processing intensive, so my fear is that if I allow too many people to try for free and they don't stick, my AWS bill is going to be too high.

We'll keep monitoring how people respond to this issues. I'd love to hear some feedback.

Fluxo, the fastest way to create a financial model, is now ready for us to demo. And will be available for free trials very soon!

I'd love any feedback, especially if you have ever created a financial model for your business or want to create one.

Ps: We're opening up for more private betas - subscribe on www.fluxo.ai

https://youtu.be/5lch7owHzOA

Just came out of a meeting with our first customer! It's super exciting because our product still has a long way to go, but the customer is happy to test it out in exchange for my help with their financial models, which I'm happy to do.

The big learning for me is that until my product is ready to sell for itself, I can sell my expertise to compensate for it.

Our product is now ready to start testing with some selected customers.

Our product has 3 main parts:

1. Inputting historical data (Actuals)
2. Creating and maintaining a financial model, with assumptions and projections (Plans)
3. Creating Summaries, Reports, and Sharing

Our focus for our beta is #2, and I'm going to be working manually on #1 and #3 to make sure customers get the most out of it and can give me good feedback on #2. The goal is to get to the end of the beta with 10 users that are willing to pay for #2 alone.

Learnings:
It took a while to click that the product had these 3 almost independent parts and that if I wanted to launch all 3 at once it would take too long for us to launch and get feedback. So the learning is to find out what's the smallest part of your product that people need to love so that everyone else can work and focus on that first.

Btw: We can still fit a few more people on our beta, it's free and I'll work personally to work with you to improve or develop your financial models. If you are interested, I'm asking everyone on the beta to fill out this survey: https://airtable.com/shrmlvmSGF0g80O9L

We started picking up a lot of pace in the last 6 weeks. I joined a program called Startup Boost in Detroit, in which I would go every Wednesday night for a pitch and receive feedback. One thing that I didn't expect was that after every pitch 2 or 3 people from the audience raised their hands and told me they were my target customers. That's how most of our 20 beta signups happened.

At the same time, the feedback from all these different potential customers helped us accelerate product development and now we are on track to start releasing our beta next week!