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Thank you. Yes, I need to work on the landing page and add more technical details there. I have been focusing on making API and infrastructure robust as well a

Thank you. Yes, I need to work on the landing page and add more technical details there. I have been focusing on making API and infrastructure robust as well as having a really good iOS app to go with the platform. Next I will need to focus on the website a bit more to make it look better as well as the admin dashboard. And after that, Android app.

brudgers 10y ago
Curious regarding current users and how user feedback is driving the priority of features.
- richardknop 10y ago
  I have only deployed the platform to production recently (couple weeks ago) so there are just few users now. Until I get more feedback from actual users / customers, I am trying to use common sense to decide which features should come first. I guess early customers could potentially have a big influence on how I prioritise upcoming features so I will wait for feedback. The reason why I haven't started working on Android app yet is because I have no experience with Android myself so I would have to outsource it to an expert. So far I have been able to do almost everything myself (I outsourced designs and initial mobile app but I have since taken over the iOS side as I know a bit of Objective C). It is getting a bit overwhelming as I need to handle infrastructure, backend, web app and iOS app at the moment just by myself. Plus I also have a full time job right now so the time is limited. I was also thinking about teaming up with somebody to help move forward faster ;)
  - brudgers 10y ago
    To me, the decision to move forward faster or not should be made in the context resource constraints and availability as well as long term goals. For a venture capital backed company, the investment provides the resources to move forward faster. For a bootstrapped or self-funded company, moving forward faster may not be a sound strategy. In an area like infrastructure monitoring, there probably aren't first mover opportunities to capture massive market share. The market is competitive and a company will probably succeed or fail based on how well their product meets the needs of a small slice of the overall market and the quality of its financial management. In general, talking to users is often harder for people than just building something...it's work and programming is fun. For some people, even spending money tends to be more fun than talking to users. Accounting isn't that fun, for many people, either. The cost of an Android or iPhone app isn't just development time. It also increases the support surface. Add a platform and to delight users, it has to get the latest version quickly. Web+iOS+Android is potentially 50% more support when something breaks [assuming that it is equally easy to fix on each platform and each platform is equally reliable]. Achieving roll-out is a huge accomplishment. The next important steps are less technical and more business and personal and financial.
    - richardknop 10y ago
      Thank you. Yes. That is what I am a bit worried about. Adding Android app would just introduce a new codebase to maintain and support and it would overwhelm me. I already have 3 different areas to maintain (API, web and iOS app). And I am at least familiar with all of these. But Android is completely out of my comfort zone. I have so far bootstrapped / self-funded everything so I think I can continue moving slowly as there isn't much pressure from anybody. I should probably continue slowly improving the API, web and iOS app and try to slowly organically grow early customers. I will worry about Android later. Perhaps I can set some sort of a milestone for myself. E.g. if I manage to get 500 customers, I will consider adding Android app. I have been looking at competition and I think they can be disrupted. One of the reasons why I started working on this was because I was using Pingdom before (which is one of the big players) but their mobile app was very bad and didn't work half of the time so I felt this can be done much better.
      - brudgers 10y ago
        That seems well thought out. Many overnight successes are ten years in the making. Running a business is hard.
- richardknop 10y ago
  I am mostly a backend / dev ops engineer though so that's where I can develop new features and iterate relatively quickly. Doing also front end is a bit out of my comfort zone (at least the iOS part, web is fine as I used to do a lot of Python and Django development back in the day before I switched to Golang). Another thing I was considering was potentially using crowdfunding to raise some money and hire one or two freelancers to help move things along faster. Especially the mobile side as I feel having really good mobile apps is the key differentiator from competition.
  - brudgers 10y ago
    My observation is that successful crowdfunding tends to require a lot of effort. Design, literature, marketing are pretty much necessary even for projects with an established community. Or to put it another way, most of the successful crowd funding projects I see have spent a lot of money on professional expertise for promotion. Even important open-source projects with many users often struggle without it.
    - richardknop 10y ago
      You are right. I should not get ahead of myself. I will continue slowly bootstrapping my company for now with my own funds.

brudgers 10y ago

Curious regarding current users and how user feedback is driving the priority of features.

richardknop 10y ago
I have only deployed the platform to production recently (couple weeks ago) so there are just few users now. Until I get more feedback from actual users / customers, I am trying to use common sense to decide which features should come first. I guess early customers could potentially have a big influence on how I prioritise upcoming features so I will wait for feedback. The reason why I haven't started working on Android app yet is because I have no experience with Android myself so I would have to outsource it to an expert. So far I have been able to do almost everything myself (I outsourced designs and initial mobile app but I have since taken over the iOS side as I know a bit of Objective C). It is getting a bit overwhelming as I need to handle infrastructure, backend, web app and iOS app at the moment just by myself. Plus I also have a full time job right now so the time is limited. I was also thinking about teaming up with somebody to help move forward faster ;)
- brudgers 10y ago
  To me, the decision to move forward faster or not should be made in the context resource constraints and availability as well as long term goals. For a venture capital backed company, the investment provides the resources to move forward faster. For a bootstrapped or self-funded company, moving forward faster may not be a sound strategy. In an area like infrastructure monitoring, there probably aren't first mover opportunities to capture massive market share. The market is competitive and a company will probably succeed or fail based on how well their product meets the needs of a small slice of the overall market and the quality of its financial management. In general, talking to users is often harder for people than just building something...it's work and programming is fun. For some people, even spending money tends to be more fun than talking to users. Accounting isn't that fun, for many people, either. The cost of an Android or iPhone app isn't just development time. It also increases the support surface. Add a platform and to delight users, it has to get the latest version quickly. Web+iOS+Android is potentially 50% more support when something breaks [assuming that it is equally easy to fix on each platform and each platform is equally reliable]. Achieving roll-out is a huge accomplishment. The next important steps are less technical and more business and personal and financial.
  - richardknop 10y ago
    Thank you. Yes. That is what I am a bit worried about. Adding Android app would just introduce a new codebase to maintain and support and it would overwhelm me. I already have 3 different areas to maintain (API, web and iOS app). And I am at least familiar with all of these. But Android is completely out of my comfort zone. I have so far bootstrapped / self-funded everything so I think I can continue moving slowly as there isn't much pressure from anybody. I should probably continue slowly improving the API, web and iOS app and try to slowly organically grow early customers. I will worry about Android later. Perhaps I can set some sort of a milestone for myself. E.g. if I manage to get 500 customers, I will consider adding Android app. I have been looking at competition and I think they can be disrupted. One of the reasons why I started working on this was because I was using Pingdom before (which is one of the big players) but their mobile app was very bad and didn't work half of the time so I felt this can be done much better.
    - brudgers 10y ago
      That seems well thought out. Many overnight successes are ten years in the making. Running a business is hard.
richardknop 10y ago
I am mostly a backend / dev ops engineer though so that's where I can develop new features and iterate relatively quickly. Doing also front end is a bit out of my comfort zone (at least the iOS part, web is fine as I used to do a lot of Python and Django development back in the day before I switched to Golang). Another thing I was considering was potentially using crowdfunding to raise some money and hire one or two freelancers to help move things along faster. Especially the mobile side as I feel having really good mobile apps is the key differentiator from competition.
- brudgers 10y ago
  My observation is that successful crowdfunding tends to require a lot of effort. Design, literature, marketing are pretty much necessary even for projects with an established community. Or to put it another way, most of the successful crowd funding projects I see have spent a lot of money on professional expertise for promotion. Even important open-source projects with many users often struggle without it.
  - richardknop 10y ago
    You are right. I should not get ahead of myself. I will continue slowly bootstrapping my company for now with my own funds.