Why do we excuse busyness as a proxy for productivity? Here's a brief guide on what personal productivity is and examples that can help you get started.
We're a small group of people (3 to be exact) who got frustrated with having our work and personal notes, tasks, files, and projects scattered all over the place.
So we decided to do something about it, or at least try!
The product is in beta, but we would love any feedback, suggestions, comments, anything that comes to mind.
The hard question is, if this was a problem I had, why wouldn't I use Microsoft OneNote? (That's what came to mind).
This is a form of a more general question. Considering how much time and energy it takes to organize the fragments of my life and that the timeline on which I am working is (hopefully) many many years, why would I accept the risk that an unproven software tool is abandoned by its makers during the (hopefully) many many years of my life? (This is a version of "How will you make money?")
The value proposition is $0 price but unknown cost in a market with existing established tooling. To a first approximation a better tool won't grow on the assumption that supply and demand are already met by well funded suppliers. The fastest way to see if there's a possibility of a business to be built is to start charging meaningful money.
For 3 engineers @ $100k x 1.6 carrying cost, that's $480,000 per year, or $40,000 per month. Or 1000 users @ $40 a month. Or 40 users at $1000 per month. It's 8000 users at $5 a month and an infinite number at free.
A product that is worth $1000 a month only requires 40 sales. Users will be more invested. The will provide better feedback. They will be more available for research. And they will complain less.
Anyway, charge money and find out if what you are doing is a business, if you want it to be a business and not just for fun. There's nothing wrong with fun, it often makes sense to know that's what you're doing. Good luck.
Thanks for the feedback! We felt that although it's a very competitive market, many tools out there look the same and are often outdated (with the exception of Notion).
A low priced product does have some drawbacks (at least in SaaS), as you say, and churn is likely to be high. We'll know once we go commercial.
On the way there we want to gather as much feedback as we possibly can, both from our users and communities like this.
It's part fun/part business, but isn't that what it always should be when you launch a startup? :)
Learn how to give and receive feedback, both privately and at work
Too many times do we give feedback to people we both care of (and don't) in a way that hurts the individual rather than help them.
If the aim is to create better relationships with those you care for, then study feedback techniques, so you can deliver it in a constructive, radical candor way.
