TeamMood

A great milestone reached, with $20k MRR, which allows us to secure some funds, especially during the covid-19 crisis.
But it happens that the covid-19 crisis was an opportunity for us, as companies were moving to work from home policies, and TeamMood helps companies to keep an eye on their people morale.

I reached more than $10k in MRR when I signed my first big customer (several $k).
I also convinced a colleague and friend of mine to join me on the adventure, as a business partner, so that I'd not feel too alone on the business and also to secure the business (and to be able to spend more "mind free" holidays 😀)

After the first year, the MRR was growing slowly and regularly, reaching $3300.
It was time to quit my job as an employee and to work full-time of the project, which I did at the end of January 2017.
Wanted to do some consulting gigs on the side to secure revenue, which I did, but finally, I stopped after June as it was a loss of focus.

I negotiated with my employer to work part time, at 1 day a week on TeamMood and 4 days on my daily job, so that I could add more features needed by the customers.
The MRR exceeded the $500 this month, I was still amazed that people were willing to pay for what I built.

I got my first paying subscriber! 💪
Got my first 20€, really proud of it, and spent it by buying a beer to some friends 🤪
Finally got 3 new paying customers on the first month, and a bit more the next month.
I was still working on the product when I had some time.
Was aiming to make about $500 a month.

I integrated Stripe in order to accept credit cards for subscriptions.
The product now offer a 30 days free trial period, and companies have to buy a subscription to continue using it after the end of the trial.
Let's wait a month to see if companies are willing to pay for it, fingers crossed!!

The product had some users for some time, and it was still free.
I had other product ideas to explore, but I was still an employee, with 2 young kids, so not much time to spend on it.
I decided to try a new experiment: add a subscription to the product. Either companies would start to pay, and then it will buy me time to work on TeamMood, or if no one wanted to pay, I'd kill the product.

Built a first version of the product and made it available for free for some teams who were on the waiting list.
I opened access to people who were willing to get constructive feedback. The ones who did not answered to me did not get an invite.
As a side project, I was not planning to make it business.

Trying to validate the value proposition by getting some emails.
I had a conversion rate of 17%, then I started to interview the people who left their email.
I ran about 30 interviews to get a better understanding about what people wanted to do with the idea I had.