Still Kicking
Wow, it’s been forever since I’ve posted a status update! Fear not: I haven’t given up!
Back when I was posting here regularly I was focused on building a launch list and testing Munchkin Report’s value prop. I did that fairly quickly and since then I’ve been heads down on product development. When I’m coding and designing, I never want to break, even to write these short updates.
Some stats:
- Launch list sign-ups: 103
- Leads from resource downloads: 34
- Blog posts written: 9
- Monthly uniques: ~125
I’m about a week or two away from letting early access customers run amok! I’ve had people on the list email me itching to see the product (one of them is a preschool), so I’m super motivated.
Clearly I have a lot of marketing work to do–125 uniques per month will not cut it–but I felt I was in a decent enough spot to make a push to get the product ready. Marketing is going to be much more fun with a product to point to, for sure. I’ve got some really cool stuff planned.
Lesson learned:
Despite all the awesomeness of Rails and AWS and JavaScript frameworks, there’s still a ton of grunt work you need to do with a SaaS: authentication, authorization, multi-tenancy, transaction email hookup (and templates), timezone stuff, etc. Plan for this!
I suspect this stuff is much quicker for someone who is a full-time dev in their day job and has done these things 100 times, but for someone who doesn’t code everyday anymore, it’s been slow.
What I want to do this week:
- Send out a pre-launch email to my launch list with a product update
- Send a non-pitch email to my resource list
- Keep working on the dev tasks required for early access to begin
- Hopefully get some responses from 1.) and setup calls with people who want in
- Purchase a PO box (I don’t want my home address in CAN-SPAM email footer)
Onward!