SprintDock

After a year building, and now with a launch date in sight (May 15th), partly thanks to some great content from YC's youtube channel, we decided to apply!

Will SprintDock have what it takes? We will know soon enough. And if it doesn't, then that's fine, we know we are building something great.

I just got an email from the good people of NameCheap saying that the sprintdock.app domain is up for renewal. So I guess, just like that it's been a year already, so time for a recap...

The Dark Times

Back in March last year, I was hating my job. I was overworked, frequently ignored (even though I was the CTO) and undermined daily by a boss who knew better about everything. Due to the constant undermining, I had lost all confidence in myself and my ability as a professional. My brain told me that this job was as good as it was gonna get because nobody else would hire me. Anyone who has felt this way before knows how dark these times can be.

Luckily, I had great people around me. I had my wife building me up daily. She created a jar of positive affirmations which is a mechanism for anyone who struggles with depression. I had also started with a great therapist who put me on anti-depressants. I was heading out of the dark into the light, but I wasn't quite there, yet.

The Workout Montage

I was feeling mentally better than I did. But I needed something that would give me purpose, that was fun and that would give me the confidence to do what I really needed to do... get the fuck out of my job.

It had been over a year since I had worked on any side projects, I needed something new. Something that may actually help me better organise my day, as being overwhelmed was maybe something at this point I could fix.

I had been trying to find a tool that would integrate with everything I used daily. I was spread across multiple different Jira boards. I had items personal notes in the mac notes app. I had personal to-do's in the Microsoft To-Do app and then I had my meetings. That was 4 separate apps, and I was always several clicks away from anything I needed. That's not great at the best of times, but when you suffer from ADHD the distraction opportunities between 4 clicks are high! Nothing was working, and it was chaos.

So, I started hacking together a MacOS app that would be accessible on my mac from any screen, via the menu bar or a keyboard shortcut. It would be integrated with Jira so I could add my tasks from multiple boards/projects in one place along with my calendar via the use of the Apple Calendar API. And it worked!

...Well, in theory, it did. I wasn't actually any more organised as I was now distracted by improving SprintDock.

Recap in a Recap. Recap-ception.

I had found a problem, a problem that I knew other people would, and I was already well on my way to having a solution. That was an assumption at this point, but one that proved to be right further down the line.

But equally as important, I had got my confidence and mojo back! I could tell myself again with confidence I was good at this shit, and this job that was killing me was not 'as good as it was gonna' get'.

I am sharing this extremely personal journey, as a reminder to myself and anyone else who is or has been in a similar boat, that you are not your job. But also how passion project, good people, and drive is all it really takes to change your path in life.

SprintDock changed my life, what will change yours?

Today the following notification came in from Telegram...

After a few teething issues with the payment functionality that undoubtedly lost me 1-2 other sales, I learned that the flow caused way too much friction.

So after following the most important Indie Hacker mantra of speaking to customers, I refined the checkout to only require an email address instead of SSO full signup. This meant the user did not have to be redirected and thus the total from choosing a number of licenses to entering a card number, it was just 3 clicks.

...And it worked!

I am still working out some of the other kinks and UI bugs on the website, but I am so happy with what I have built so far.

As for progress about the MacOS app itself, that is coming in a few days. So if you haven't signed up the SprintDock Mailing List

...At long last, of building quietly in silence I am so pleased to announce the release of the SprintDock website after months of work. Why months? Well, I will go into that in a follow-up article, but today I celebrate the huge founder win of going live! Next stop, the first sale...

Along with the launch, I am also experimenting with an 'Early Bird' 75% off discount for SprintDock, an app that is not out yet. Why? Well, as I heard on a fantastic [Twitter] Spaces with @I_Love_Sass & @BoringSaasGuy, it's not uncommon to in business to ask for the money up-front. The fast-food industry is a great example of that, so is construction. So why not with SaaS? It gives people who have emotionally invested in your product a chance to buy in early at a huge discount. And it is an incredible way for you to validate your product, as what is better validation than people actually putting their money where their mouths are?! A win win for all, or that's the hope at least.

In the coming weeks and months, I will be posting frequently as I retroactively, and presently build in public and all of these experiments and how they pan out. This is a learning curve for me, and I hope I can shed some light on things that work and things that don't along the way as we are all in this together. And with that, any thoughts, ideas and criticisms (as long as it's constructive) are encouraged.

So please, get typing fellow Hackers.