TaskRatchet

The folks at Beeminder kindly allowed me to guest publish a post on their blog announcing the new service, leading to many new signups. They also mentioned it in their newsletter. Announcing the product was scary since I knew there was still so much that needed to be done, but it was also exciting and the feedback I got from new users was extremely helpful!

After a year of work, the first version of the web app was launched, and I started onboarding existing alpha users. The product was still extremely rough and was missing many important features. The feedback that the alpha users gave me was super valuable as I started polishing the product.

I added a "Join Now" button to the website which allowed new users to pay me a dollar to join the alpha. This payment ensured I had their payment details and could manually charge them later if they failed to complete a task on time. When I got the notification, I entered their user details in AirTable and started emailing them manually to remind them about tasks that were due. They would email me to add tasks and tell me if tasks were completed. I eventually got the daily reminders automated, but the system was still largely manual.

And yet, even with all the manual back-and-forth over email, people used the service! Business idea verified.

On this date I posted on the Beeminder forum that I wanted to build something like Beeminder but for one-off tasks. Many Beeminder users wanted something like this to exist, including myself. I thought this would be a great way to invest in the community while simultaneously creating an income-generating side hustle.