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Hello from Melbourne, Australia. This weekend it finally started to feel warm, and I'm ready for summer. I ran a software development agency for 8 years, sold

Hello from Melbourne, Australia. This weekend it finally started to feel warm, and I'm ready for summer. I ran a software development agency for 8 years, sold it at the start of the pandemic, and been travelling with my wife in an RV around Australia thinking about what's next. One of the issues we faced in our business was around centralising project requirements, and ensuring both our clients and our team could refer to a source of truth. I spent years thinking documentation was bad, but slowly started to realise in an agency setting, when you're working on possibly many a few long-term projects - it's impossible to keep it all in your head. So my wife and I started building Userdoc (https://userdoc.fyi https://userdoc.fyi), and over the last few months have been doing a lot of customer interviews and and demos, along with finalising the product. This weekend we've finished the last couple of items on our todo list, and rolling it out to our initial users very soon.

frans 4y ago
Great story and best of luck with your launch. Are you part of any online communities to share your progress? I am currently a member of MicroConf [1] and getting a lot of help from it. - [1] https://microconf.com/ https://microconf.com/
- chrisrickard 4y ago
  Awesome, thanks frans - I'll check it out.
dbetteridge 4y ago
How are you finding RV life? Wife and I finished a Nullarbor run to Perth recently from NSW and camped along the way, mulling over picking up a sprinter van in the near future and remote working around Australia as theres so much to see and do.
- chrisrickard 4y ago
  Yeah it was amazing. Finished the lap of Aus and a little more, and now pretty happy to be back in an apartment (at least for a while!) Started of with a converted Toyota Hi-ace, but upgraded to a beast https://twitter.com/chrisrickard/status/1527521824430608384 https://twitter.com/chrisrickard/status/1527521824430608384
  - dbetteridge 4y ago
    Awesome stuff, that's a decent sized rig! Enjoy the 'stable' life for a bit
RonaldOlzheim 4y ago
Hello, I´m looking at it right now. 1: Centralising project requirements, 2: Ensuring both our clients and our team could refer to a source of truth. 3: When you're working on possibly many a few long-term projects +4: When Scaling is a issue. ==== My remarks: 1: Which audience are you targetting? --> Is it a dev tool? 2: Does the current pricing and business model make sense? --> It´s advantage is that is longterm, but that is also the reason people would not like to hold on to contracts. 3: Product simplicity? --> I would like to do just play around with it. People like me might not use it ourselves, but if we like it we will share it with those people we think might benefit from it. Let´s Connect on linkedin and talk more. bye, Ron.
- chrisrickard 4y ago
  Hey Ronald, thanks for checking out Userdoc. No it's not a dev tool specifically, I would say more for project and product managers, however the strength is involving the whole team. My initial customer development has been with agency owners and CTO's, as that's my background. Regarding the pricing model, our initial thinking is a monthly subscription (with your plan denoting how many projects you can add) - but I hear you, we are currently testing this pricing model and open to feedback. I can see how having a demo would be beneficial, perhaps a middleground would be having a demo video (as making our private app public would take a bit of work). Happy to connect! https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrickard https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrickard Thanks again mate.

frans 4y ago

Great story and best of luck with your launch. Are you part of any online communities to share your progress? I am currently a member of MicroConf [1] and getting a lot of help from it. - [1] https://microconf.com/ https://microconf.com/

chrisrickard 4y ago
Awesome, thanks frans - I'll check it out.

dbetteridge 4y ago

How are you finding RV life? Wife and I finished a Nullarbor run to Perth recently from NSW and camped along the way, mulling over picking up a sprinter van in the near future and remote working around Australia as theres so much to see and do.

chrisrickard 4y ago
Yeah it was amazing. Finished the lap of Aus and a little more, and now pretty happy to be back in an apartment (at least for a while!) Started of with a converted Toyota Hi-ace, but upgraded to a beast https://twitter.com/chrisrickard/status/1527521824430608384 https://twitter.com/chrisrickard/status/1527521824430608384
- dbetteridge 4y ago
  Awesome stuff, that's a decent sized rig! Enjoy the 'stable' life for a bit

RonaldOlzheim 4y ago

Hello, I´m looking at it right now. 1: Centralising project requirements, 2: Ensuring both our clients and our team could refer to a source of truth. 3: When you're working on possibly many a few long-term projects +4: When Scaling is a issue. ==== My remarks: 1: Which audience are you targetting? --> Is it a dev tool? 2: Does the current pricing and business model make sense? --> It´s advantage is that is longterm, but that is also the reason people would not like to hold on to contracts. 3: Product simplicity? --> I would like to do just play around with it. People like me might not use it ourselves, but if we like it we will share it with those people we think might benefit from it. Let´s Connect on linkedin and talk more. bye, Ron.

chrisrickard 4y ago
Hey Ronald, thanks for checking out Userdoc. No it's not a dev tool specifically, I would say more for project and product managers, however the strength is involving the whole team. My initial customer development has been with agency owners and CTO's, as that's my background. Regarding the pricing model, our initial thinking is a monthly subscription (with your plan denoting how many projects you can add) - but I hear you, we are currently testing this pricing model and open to feedback. I can see how having a demo would be beneficial, perhaps a middleground would be having a demo video (as making our private app public would take a bit of work). Happy to connect! https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrickard https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrickard Thanks again mate.