Mindwave
Journal for work and life
After months of hard work, I'm stoked to launch Mindwave for iOS and Android today.
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/mindwave-daily
Journaling is the smallest biggest investment you can do. There is so much power in this daily routine. Benefits go from having a calm and clear mind, being more mindful and grateful, to documenting your work and life. Plus, It only takes 2 minutes a day to get journaling into your daily system.
Small investment, huge benefits! Easy choice, how hard can it be, right?
Well, surprisingly, it's really hard to get and keep journaling into your daily system. So, we tried to keep things as clean, simple, and effective as possible.
Meet Mindwave Daily
A beautiful journal app with smart tactics to keep journaling as a healthy habit.
✍️ Capture your thoughts in private, encrypted logs
😄 Track your mood
📸 Add up to 4 images
❓ Changeable daily prompt
🎙 Record audio logs
🎞 Record video logs
🔥 Build-in journaling streak
🔔 Daily push notifications
📊 Automated Highlights (web app only atm)
👥 Share your journal with an accountability buddy (web app only atm)
Download links are available at mindwave.app.
Today we passed 10 journal entrees at Mindwave. It was quite a coincidence that I noticed though. I just shipped the open usage stats to the homepage and there it was: 840 users, 10009 logs.
We launched Mindwave.app in July 2019. That’s not even one year ago. We started as a 100% web app. A conscious decision. Building a web app would mean maximum flexibility at the lowest costs.
After one year, and many experiments and small pivots later, Mindwave is ready to grow. To put it in startup terms, we've ‘reached product/solution-fit’.
In our solution, the Mobile app will have an important role.
In the web app, you can already log your ideas, feelings, and thoughts. It works great and it is without a doubt the most used feature. At the point of writing, we just passed 9.000 logs. That’s awesome!
But adopting journaling as a habit is quite hard. So we have to make it as simple as possible. The mobile phone would be ideal for daily journaling. Easy access from your bed, couch, the bus, or work.
Plus, ‘build a mobile app’ is the most requested feature. By far!
So, after months of sketching, prototyping, designing, building, and testing I’m thrilled that the app is released in beta.
Want to help us test the beta? Check the full story and download links at:
https://mindwave.app/blog/the-ios-android-apps-are-out-in-beta/
Today I took another big step in creating the best cross-platform journal there is. The Mindwave Slack App just got approved and listed in the Directory. Awesome!
👉 https://mindwaveapp.slack.com/apps/A0130HJ89UL-mindwave
Adopting journaling as a habit is quite hard. And getting another tool in your daily system is even harder. To make it a bit easier, I want to integrate Mindwave into the tools people already use on a daily basis. So after Telegram and Email, the Slack App is a great addition to the Mindwave integrations. Another way to journal about work & life.
A change in plans. Literally and figuratively! We’re going to delete two of our plans. No more Free plan. No more Team plan.
One plan, one (paid) subscription with a free 14-day trail. That's it.
It feels like solving a puzzle
We launched the first version of Mindwave.app in July 2019. So we’re still in the first year of our product development cycle. A continuous process of experimenting, testing, and improving. And we’re not afraid to make big changes if needed.
This is one of those moments. An opportunity to improve the product, even on a conceptual level.
It started three weeks ago. We got some great feedback from our Team plan users. Well, great… the solution just isn’t good enough yet. Not enough activity, not enough value.
Not a big issue of course. I started Mindwave for Teams as an experiment to see if journaling could be a team effort. And I’m still convinced it can be. I even got ‘proof’: It works for me! And if it works for me, it can work for others. The current solution just wasn’t the best fit.
...
Read the complete story at
https://mindwave.app/blog/change-of-plans/
After I sold one of my previous companies I decided to build a product on my own. I started working on a 'LinkedIn for close friends' under the code name Mbassador.
I made a mailing list with my ambassadors and updated them frequently. At one point I noticed that I was writing to inform them, where instead I wanted to write for myself and let them read it. A completely different mindset. The idea of building a journal for founders and makers arose.
So I wrote the last email update to my ambassadors with this conceptual idea:
Imagine yourself being alive when Columbus was on his big Journey. How awesome would it be to be able to access his journal real-time. To be able to read his logs, to experience the journey with him. No marketing, pure authentic and raw stories.
Your entrepreneurial friends are on a similar exciting expedition. Wouldn't you want to help, support and experience it with them?
The first customer was me :)
I'm scratching my own itch with Mindwave. Using it while building it. Also, I want to test the complete experience as a paying customer. It's surely not an objective way to test. But at least now I know exactly what the Credit Card statements look like.
The second customer was my co-founder.
He wasn't used to daily journaling. And I encouraged him to pay for the tool, even though Mindwave was in the development phase. Because when you pay for something you have more skin in the game.
The first 'real' customer was a good friend of mine.
Since I started building Mindwave he always ensured me he 's going to be my first paying customer. And so he did!
At the moment we're in private beta and we don't have our plans public yet. But I can't wait to find my first 'unknown' customer to sign up and pay. Someone that I don't have any connection with. What a great milestone that will be!
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2
Great mindset and way to get your 'first' customer :)
I've created the first version of Mindwave in Telegram. I created a bot, which really did nothing at all, that I could use as a private channel for my daily journaling.
Then I created another channel where I would share my stories, and invited some of my friends to follow this channel. Plus, I encouraged my friends to use the bot to journal themselves.
I connected the bot to Message Bird to see if I could extract the data from Telegram and import it into my own Tool. To connect the bot with I didn't need to write any code, which I actually can't.
And that's how I created a first MVP without writing any code or building an app on my own.
2 Comments
Very nicely done! Which technologies did you use to develop the Mobile Apps? We're they Native or Cross Platform using something like React Native?
Made it via Ionic. Great framework. For me, building the app hybrid has some advantages though. I wrote a blog about the technical choices here:
https://mindwave.app/blog/the-ios-android-apps-are-out-in-beta/