Shaped

At the end of last year, I finished working for a startup as Head of Product, having experienced first-hand the pain of working with Jira and other planning tools. Tools which are just too heavy for small teams that need to move quickly.

So this year I have decided to roll my sleeves up and start working on a new project to build a product development management tool for startups.

First though, I had to remind myself how to code (I used to be a web developer back in the day). After much research I went with Laravel and Vue, which so far is very nice. Even if I'm sooo slow and creaky after all these years!

I created a Laravel site to launch my initial landing page. Then I started building out the skeleton of the web app itself with Laravel.

Now, I know the first thing I should do is validate that there is actually a market for my idea and not jump straight into building. But

a) I still needed to reassure myself that I could actually build a basic first version, and
b) it was too fun!

Plus, it allowed me to design and build the main Projects page, which I could then screenshot and post on the landing page.

This week though, I decided I had to move into marketing/validation mode and see if I could actually find someone who was willing to part with an email address.

Today, I decided to create a survey about how development teams work, what processes and tools they use, and what challenges they face.

The idea being that
a) it would be useful market research for the product,
b) it gives me permission to ask for help on various communities and
c) I would be able to later create an article and other content based on the survey results.

So far I've had 28 responses (and counting)...

And yes, I also got my first email sign-up on the website!

It's a tiny win, but I'm happy.