MyCheckins

Slackbot to track progress and execute better.

Under 10 Employees
Founders Code
Solo Founder
B2B
B2C
Bots
Communication
Productivity
SaaS

I want to help founders and teams leverage async communication in a matter of minutes. I built MyCheckins because I needed a tool to run async meetings and build feedback loops with my team. Simple and affordable.

September 3, 2021 200 sign-ups ✅ Email + Community

August was good. Even though I spent the majority of my time building product, we reached 200 user sign-ups for MyCheckins (https://mycheckins.io).

How did I get here?

  • Cold emails got us a surprisingly decent result. We signed up 6 important teams (1 enterprise, 2 YC-backed, 3 mid-market) in the last month after a cold-email campaign targeting 300 potential customers. I wrote about my experiences here
  • Slack community posts did well too. I spent a small amount of time engaging in Slack communities and that saw a few sign-ups trickle in. No marketing BS, just engaging with users and adding value in conversations. If you do this, make sure you optimize your Slack profile (add a link to your landing page and an interesting bio).

While sign-ups have been decent, I do see a big issue with retention. I think the next item to target is fixing retention. There are a lot of things to work on:

  • Streamlining the UX.
  • Adding richer templates and use-cases.
  • Engaging with users via emails. (sharing use-cases, etc)
  • Offering 1:1 calls for setup/onboarding.

Hoping to come back at the end of this month with more updates. Cheers!

August 20, 2021 Hit 20 Weekly Active Users. Finally. 😭

After 3 weeks of grinding it out with cold emails - I finally hit 20 WAUs on MyCheckins (https://mycheckins.io). Seeing that curve shoot up on Mixpanel is a sweet, sweet feeling.

How did I get here? Cold emailing. Something I never really expected to work.

I sent around 350 cold emails in the last three weeks. Stats? Average open rate - 61.3%, Average CTR - 19.7%.

The first 30 emails were.. bad. Too long, not enough value, and trying to go from intro to sign-up in a single shot.

I started splitting emails into cohorts of 30 at the end of the first week and started viewing each set as an experiment. I would send a set, study the metrics, learn and iterate on the next attempt.

My three top takeaways from this exercise:

  • Treat everything as an experiment: Send emails in cohorts, measure the results, see which component has the highest drop-off (email open, email link click, landing page, etc), learn from it, and improve it.
  • Do not try to land the sale with a single email: You need to follow up and gradually build a relationship. First email, get them to visit the landing page. Next email, show the use-cases. Final email, ask them to sign-up or hop on a call.
  • Do not talk in hypotheticals - If you're pitching to someone, do your research, see what use-case applies to them and pitch them a specific solution to a specific problem they might have. You need to show the real value they can extract from your product. Vague statements like "improve productivity" make no sense.

I hope someone finds this useful. Cheers!

August 20, 2021 Hit 20 Weekly Active Users. Finally. 😭

After 3 weeks of grinding it out with cold emails - I finally hit 20 WAUs on MyCheckins (https://mycheckins.io). Seeing that curve shoot up on Mixpanel is a sweet, sweet feeling.

How did I get here? Cold emailing. Something I never really expected to work.

I sent around 350 cold emails in the last three weeks. Stats? Average open rate - 61.3%, Average CTR - 19.7%.

The first 30 emails were.. bad. Too long, not enough value, and trying to go from intro to sign-up in a single shot.

I started splitting emails into cohorts of 30 at the end of the first week and started viewing each set as an experiment. I would send a set, study the metrics, learn and iterate on the next attempt.

My three top takeaways from this exercise:

  • Treat everything as an experiment: Send emails in cohorts, measure the results, see which component has the highest drop-off (email open, email link click, landing page, etc), learn from it, and improve it.
  • Do not try to land the sale with a single email: You need to follow up and gradually build a relationship. First email, get them to visit the landing page. Next email, show the use-cases. Final email, ask them to sign-up or hop on a call.
  • Do not talk in hypotheticals - If you're pitching to someone, do your research, see what use-case applies to them and pitch them a specific solution to a specific problem they might have. You need to show the real value they can extract from your product. Vague statements like "improve productivity" make no sense.

I hope someone finds this useful. Cheers!

June 19, 2021 Finally. The MyCheckins Public Beta is live.

I never realized how quickly the last few months went by. In the last three months:

  • We tested our initial MVP, figured that we were pretty much off the mark, and went back to the drawing board.
  • We pivoted MyCheckins into a Slack-Bot that lets you run daily stand-ups, sprint retros, and much more.
  • We started testing with users all over again. This time, something seemed to work.

So here we are with the public beta. Today was the first day of finding users and putting the product out there. It's tough, but each new sign-up puts a bigger and bigger smile on my face.

(You can check it out here: https://mycheckins.io)

Some learnings from March-June:

  • Never write a single line of code without spending time talking to people. I feel the time we spent on the first MVP was a waste.
  • If people don't seem enthusiastic about the problem you're solving, don't assume that they will change their minds once they see your product. You might be working on a non-problem.
  • User behaviour is the only source of truth. Learn to ignore your own biases when making decisions.
  • Build an emotionally supportive relationship with your co-founder. If you're solo, build a support system of fellow founders. The journey is not easy.
February 24, 2021 Finished the MVP!

After 6 weeks of work, we're done building the MVP! It was definitely a massive learning curve for me, building my first software product. But it was full of important lessons.

The MVP is far from how I imagine the product being. The inner perfectionist in me wants to start over and spend time getting every pixel perfect. But it's time to do some user research now before we put more time into developing the product.

This marks the start of our user research phase. Check us out here: https://mycheckins.io :)

About

I want to help founders and teams leverage async communication in a matter of minutes. I built MyCheckins because I needed a tool to run async meetings and build feedback loops with my team. Simple and affordable.