ShopMe turns your phone into a mobile self-checkout device
To be announced ;)
Since we are getting some traction, I decided to look for a CTO to spearhead the development moving forward. The freelancer that I hired initially will still stay onboard until my two month trial with our CTO ends just in case. Maybe he'll get to join us full time later as VP of Engineering, but it remains to be seen!
After months of back and forths, we finally signed a huge contract with one of the biggest mall developers in the world for a property in the Netherlands. The mall will open on March 2021 and will feature almost 300 stores (260 of which will be retail).
We finally launched on Product Hunt even though we are still working on our MVP. The app already had its core functions and we were already integrated with a couple of major Point-of-Sale brands. Even though it was not finished, I decided to launch it anyway to elicit interest from potential development partners in the future.
After coming up with the pivot, I did more market research on both consumers and retailers. After I was convinced that the idea has legs, I hired a freelancer to help me build the MVP feature by feature.
We'd build a feature, go back to retailers and consumers to get their feedback, and tweak it depending on what they say/their reaction to what we've built.
I was working on RefundMe, a digital VAT refund platform, for a good 2 and a half years. Back in late 2018, we received funding from Startupbootcamp and decided to go full-time!
2020 was supposed to be our launch year in the Netherlands after conducting functional pilots, getting feedback and testing with retailers, airports, tourists, and governments. The Dutch government, specifically, was supposed to launch a tender in May that was cancelled because of COVID.
I spent almost three months thinking of a new problem to solve and eventually came up with ShopMe after a serendipitous trip to the supermarket.....
To be announced ;)