Marti
Start with an offshore team that scales with you
On March 14, 2022, I had to say farewell to Marti, our headhunting service. We had highs of $5K MRR but this ultimately went all the way back down to $500 MRR. I have since pursued Valheim Server Hosting, a game server hosting platform for Valheim and Hostari, a game configuration platform.
We are still hovering around the single-digit thousands mark and after a couple of months of trying to sell productized services, our customer base hardly used our product. We sold ourselves more as a service than a platform.
For the next 3 weeks, we are going to work on the following:
- A new onboarding process that basically eliminates 99% of the use cases that we've built over the years. To replace this, we're going to make a "Talent Request" form. Our sales & operations team members will use data from this form to help drive sales.
- Marti will begin its phased transformation into an HRIS product that is very similar to Deel, Panther, OysterHR, and other companies that offer EOR as a service. The product will focus on being the best and automated software system to help startups hire full-time employees in the Philippines. We are able to do this because of investments in our financial and legal infrastructure in the Philippines over 2 years.
- We will focus on making the product more marketable, which includes optimizing for mobile, and building out a blog for SEO purposes.
- We will extract the "productized services" part of our product into a brand new product, called... Liquid Super Team. We will build this product the same way as one of our other successful SaaS products.
- When we launch Liquid Super Team, the contractors and freelancers that power the service will be faceless and nameless until a service arrangement is struck. We will sell ourselves as a service provider, and Marti will complete its evolution into an HRIS product while its productized services are migrated towards the Liquid Super Team product.
Got our first customer bringing us to $1K MRR. Next goal is $15K MRR.
We have a vetted talent pool of graphic designers, project managers, marketing agencies, and software development agencies that our internal sales team is looking to place in US tech startups.
Also partnered with a coding bootcamp that is providing us with junior Ruby on Rails developers. So far, this specific role is really hard to place in the US. There are not many public job openings for this role -- we're trying different sales channels to find ways to place this specific profile.
We started The Outward Hire podcast as part of our content marketing efforts. We're looking to interview both job seekers and hiring managers in the US so that we can attract our prospective audience to learn more about the hiring process and what they can do to stand out from other job candidates.
Listen to The Outward Hire on Fireside: https://outwardhire.fireside.fm/
We're looking to further our business development by joining online fellowships that can connect us with other businesses interested in outsourcing administrative work to our assistants. Hopefully, we can achieve ramen profitability by word of mouth!
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Did you end up getting in? I'm reading about the ODF right now. It sounds pretty rad.
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I didn't get in, unfortunately. It's actually best to apply via a referral, which I should've done! It also costs $1500 to join when you get accepted -- so you have to weigh the benefits really. Would an access to a wide network grow your worth by at least $1500? If so, then it's worth joining.
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Yeah, I just learned about them today, and it sounds like a pretty valuable program. Are you planning to reapply?
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We started to follow Basecamp's Shape Up methodology for our product strategy. Our product team is following a new development cycle that involves placing bets on product features, shaped in the form of a pitch. These pitches are developed given customer and stakeholder feedback, and push the product forward in a 6-week timebox. Pitches are bet on in an internal product meeting called the betting table.
Our product team will publish the results of the betting table here on Indie Hackers every 8 weeks.
Following the 6-week cycle, the product team enters into a 2-week cool-down period, where bugs are fixed, and we plan for features to be developed in the next 6-week cycle.
Cycle 1 will run from July 20, 2020 to August 28, 2020. These are the features that are assigned for Cycle 1:
Landing Page Fixes & A/B Testing
In coordination with the content team, we will be developing 3 new landing pages for 3 different personas that will coincide with the paid ads that we post on social media. This will further improve our top-of-the-funnel efforts. The product team will require one member from +Stoko Design Studio to help layout and design the assets needed for these landing pages.
Stripe Billing for Time-based and Performance-based Tasks
Tasks will become billable at the end of our beta launch on August 28, 2020. We will implement an interface where customers must input a payment method before starting a task.
Employee Dashboard Changes
Workflow changes will be made to the employee dashboard to reduce the number of clicks needed to view tasks, track time entries, and monitor customer messages.
Mobile-Friendly Site
Our customer-facing webpages will be adjusted to be mobile-friendly. We suspect that a number of customers are dropping off because our site is not mobile-friendly.
Message Notifications
Message notifications will be fixed to not seem as spammy in the customer's email inbox.
View Updates Button
A customer would be able to see updates from each time entry a VA inputs.
Login Button on Landing Page
A "Log In" button will be added to our company's landing page to reduce number of clicks to log in.
Add Tasks to Home Page (Portal)
Customers will be able to see their tasks immediately without going to the chat via an item on the navbar.
System Generated Messages (Create a Task Customer Flow)
Automated messages will now appear when customers create tasks to avoid confusion on when their task will begin.
VA immediately goes to chat with user
VA will no longer need to click on the customer email on the chat application.
We launched Marti by Makisu in beta today!
You can now delegate the menial so you can focus on the meaningful tasks in your life - and finally get out of busyville!
We offer two pricing models at the moment:
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Time-Based Tasks, which are tasks billed by the amount of hours the virtual assistant spends working on a task
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Performance-Based Tasks, wherein we offer an upfront rate for a pre-defined task, which you will be guaranteed deliverables for
We are also in the process of scaling our in-house virtual assistants to meet the demand for our service.
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