VolunteerReminder

VolunteerReminder was created for a specific, niche market that was discovered when spreading the word about our heavier volunteer management system called WhoCanBeThere. We learned through talking to local, smaller non-profits that they have legitimate needs that are unmet by software with a lot of bells and whistles. These organizations are typically run by people who are volunteers themselves; they don't want to dedicate hours to learning complicated software and they don't want to add additional steps to their current system. They don't need a lot of functions; they simply need to stay organized and have volunteers that they can depend on. Creator, Scott Juranek, took this opportunity to work alongside a local soup kitchen to create their ideal software that only does what they want it to: schedules volunteers and automatically reminds them before their shifts.

Building our product in collaboration with our first early adopter has been very beneficial for us. We have gotten direct feedback to make our product a perfect fit for our niche, we have clarity on who are target market is and what their pain points are, and we have guaranteed proof of concept.

Through our experience, we learned that start-ups don't need to start with a brilliant idea. They can start by realizing a problem and working WITH your customer to create a solution for them. Additionally, we learned that great products don't always need to do MORE than the competition, they can improve by doing LESS.

The biggest challenge when creating and designing VolunteerReminder was knowing when to stop. It is easy to get sucked into adding feature after feature to ensure that you can meet everybody's needs. By working alongside our first user, we were able to step back and with the help of their feedback, determine what the essentials were for our specific market niche. We placed the highest value on keeping our software as intuitive as possible. We learned that the perfect software for our customers does not go beyond what they want it to do, it does exactly what they want it to do. Anything in addition to that simply adds friction.

The bottom line: Extra features = extra friction; don't underestimate the benefit of high ease of use.