Pluckd

Since our last update, when our biggest customer went through a layoff and downgraded, I've been trying to think about problems smaller companies may have that could be addressed by Pluckd - so I focused on an even smaller social structure: teams!

But then I was hit with a rollercoaster of events on my personal life: namely, I'll becoming a dad! I had to do some arrangements that slowed my hustling down. This will be the new rhythm for a while.

Our feature is nothing really new. It's a skill matrix! Ever tried to create a skill matrix for your team? If you have, you know it's a pain. They're hard to maintain, and by the time you're done, they're already outdated. That's the frustration we're tackling with our latest feature: Team Skill Matrices.

The Problem We're Solving

Traditional skill matrices are a managerial nightmare. They require constant updates and reassessments, making them more of a chore than a useful tool. We wanted to change that. Look how easy is to create a team matrix in Pluckd: all the evaluations comes from the peer endorsements inside the platform.

https://tinyurl.com/enter-the-team-matrix

Why Team Leaders?

The pivot here is to focus on team leaders rather than HR managers. Why? Team leaders are more likely to try the freemium version of our product for their teams. HR managers want sales calls - which for sure work, but it's also a much longer cycle. With a child on the way, that may be tough for me.

Also, team leaders are the ones feeling the pain of outdated skill matrices and are more open to a solution that simplifies their lives.

The GTM Journey

We've just started our 8-week GTM strategy. We're in Week 2, and so far, we've sent out an email blast to our current users and made organic social media posts. We're also updating our listings on platforms like Capterra/G2/etc. It's a bootstrapped journey, but we're excited about the road ahead.

Your Thoughts?

We'd love to hear your feedback on our strategy and the new feature. Ever faced the same issues with skill matrices? How did you solve them?

With the 2022 crisis, our biggest customer had to do layoffs. Pluckd is paid by seats, so if a customer has fewer employees this means a downgrade for us. My vision for Pluckd was to help create a world where everyone had a great, fulfilling job. Knowing our product wasn't able to help our biggest customer during this difficult time was tough to swallow.

As an enterprise SaaS, we depend a lot on a few big customers. This setback makes Pluckd default dead. Not good. I'm thinking of ways to diversify our customer base.

I was thinking about the problems smaller companies may have that could be addressed by Pluckd. Couldn't come up with anything that passes the Mom Test yet, though. I plan to stick with the vision: to create a world where everyone had a great, fulfilling job. Certainly, there are people leaving their jobs at startups and smaller companies for not feeling fulfilled. I have to talk with these folks... and their former bosses... in order to understand why.

Pluckd now speaks French! That's right, our badass app for discovering the skills hidden inside one's workforce is now available in the language of love.

Wait, so was there a demand from a French audience? Nope. Did I have any sales meetings booked with companies from France? Nope. Well, I suppose now I should do some targeted outreach...

Ok, so here's the cool part - and the reason why I added this feature – my dad actually translated it for me! He's always been a massive fan of everything French. Every year he saves the money to travel with my mom to Paris. And every year, when they manage to do it, they stay at the Quartier Latin. Needless to say that he can never explain to his buddies what it is that I do, so working on this project together was a chance for him to peek into the IndieHacker world. Overall, it was an excellent experience.

https://tinyurl.com/pluckd-baguette

So, I guess there's no lesson today other than to enjoy your journey. Otherwise, what's the point, right?

Most of the previous year was spent on a pivot that didn't really pan out. After reversing the feature we are closer to the original MVP proposal: to offer a way for companies to manage their internal skillset so that employees can live up to their potential and grow.

The secret sauce is still the same: we are the best at identifying what your workforce is capable of. What changed are the use cases.

https://tinyurl.com/pluckdtalentsearch

Talent Search is the first use case focused on the current pivot (and hopefully the last one before product market fit).

The idea is simple: if managers need someone for a position, gig or project, they can enter the combination of skills they need and Pluckd will give a list of potential candidates from their existing workforce - along with a recommendation of who the best match is.

After getting our first paying customer in August last year, Pluckd went through a pivot. I had decided to move away from being a tool to measure and manage your company's skill set. Instead, the idea was to use that capability to improve the culture of companies working remote. To reach that goal, we've deployed 3 features:

• Users could set their self-development goals;
• They could also commit these goals in public in the company's feed. Kind of like an internal IndieHackers for companies;
• Finally, we could match their goals to their peers who could mentor them. For example, if you wanted to learn JavaScript, Pluckd would introduce you to people in your company who already skilled in it.

Within the next months we will be removing theses features - thus burying the 2nd pivot of the product.

I had hoped this pivot would help Pluckd grow without having to rely on sales effort. Employees would try the tool out. If they found value in it, they would tell their bosses who in turn would create a paid account. That was the plan at least.

What I found out however is that employees have very little incentive to try to solve a problem they don't own. Not only the potential users I was talking to lacked a budget, but their bosses - who did have a budget - were not expected to tackle the issue of employee morale. Which was exactly the problem Plucked tried to solve.

We've been hard at work trying to bring together the insights that will make managers become better leaders.

Now every team will have their own dashboard. There, team leaders can have a bird's-eye view of their team's morale, collective iNPS and their most appreciated skills.

The lesson here is that finding the balance between user and buyer personas for B2B is tricky. For a while we were pushing Pluckd to the user persona - who feels the pain we try to solve - in the hopes those users would, in turn, convince their company (the buyer persona was usually HR departments or managers) to adopt the product.

This never happened. Feeling the pain was not enough. The user should also feel empowered to do something about it and most of them did not.

With this feature, we hope to become more appealing to managers - then we would be able to niche down to an audience that's both user and buyer.

But this is just a first step. A full pivot is still warranted.

We are launching our blog today! In it, leaders from our platform and guest writers will share their tips about how they are nurturing growth cultures in their companies.

This will also be important to start generating more traffic. SEO is hard, takes a long time to see traction so the sooner I start working on that the better!

This also forces me to research even further what my audience enjoys reading.

For the first post, I made a list: https://pluckd.co/blog/10-reasons-why-your-team-building-activities-fail/

As for the stack, the blog is built with Wagtail CMS. I was wondering whether I should have used Ghost or Wordpress instead, but ultimately I was already using Django and Wagtail would allow me to keep everything in a single codebase.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25760728

To tell you the truth, this is not a community I usually hang out in, so I totally forgot about it until today.

Obviously, the HN crowd may not be my target audience, but then again, testing won't hurt. Whenever I get myself wondering whether or not I should post my product somewhere, I remember all those great products I've never heard about because their makers were silent about it.

This is my first real launch and I couldn't be more nervous!

I even faced my fear of speaking English out loud in a video demo. 😅

https://www.producthunt.com/posts/pluckd

Public launching is nerve-wracking. It's like your son's first day in school. Will people like it? Will it be completely ignored or, worse, despised?

Pluckd has been totally bootstrapped and has already cost me many nights and weekends. I honestly believe in its vision. But will others? I have some validation, which is great, but I also know all its little flaws and bugs I wasn't able to fix yet.

If you have and like it any support, like sharing or commenting, will be much appreciated! 😊

And please, leave some feedback too!

https://tinyurl.com/yxetpfx5

This is the second step of our self improvement roadmap: to commit publicly to a goal.

Research shows that, by demonstrating your intentions publicly, you get a heightened sense of responsibility, which also increases your chances of reaching your goals.

Or, as Peter Drucker would have said: "Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes… but no plans."

That's why the personal goals created on Pluckd are public and can all be seen in the Feed.

That's also the place to show your support 👏 and celebrate when other reaches their goals. Motivate your colleagues!

This first release is a simplified version to get some feedback from users. If everything goes well, we plan on adding comments, upvotes/downvotes and moderation as well.