Why we built a consumer messaging app for professionals.
It’s breathtaking if you pause to consider how many tools and technologies we have at our disposal today to help us connect with other people - personally, professionally, or otherwise.
This is especially true for professionals in and outside of the workplace. All kinds of useful channels and mediums (online & off) exist nowadays to help business people meet, network, talk shop, and help each other out.
Do you wish to commune with or enlist help from your fellow Marketers? Lawyers? IT professionals? Executive Assistants? Salespeople? Engineers? Corporate Executives? HR professionals? Finance people? Creatives? Et cetera? Congratulations - there are copious dedicated groups, meet-ups, and online destinations for all of the above.
All Bases Appear To Be Covered?
I’m going to use my own personal example here - because it served as the basis for the idea that eventually sparked Panel.
As a career enterprise sales person - I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt a need to confidentially express work-related questions and/or concerns to a highly qualified, experienced person who could offer private, unbiased professional guidance, and counsel. An exercise that would need to be approached thoughtfully, no doubt.
The primary predicament: How was someone supposed to get possibly sensitive work-related questions or concerns off their chest without the fear of it getting back to them detrimentally?
The options felt suffocating and painfully limited — I either had to 1) do an online search and hope that other professionals out there like me have experienced what I was up against and wrote about it. (Not enough context.) 2) Confide in a co-worker or colleague that I trust implicitly to see what they think. (Risky.) Or 3) go on a quest to find a business ‘mentor’. (Too time consuming.)
None of these options were appealing.
‘Loose Lips Sink Ships’
This is an interesting American English idiom meaning, “beware of unguarded talk”.
Naturally we all have professional reputations to manage. Yet, an extraordinary level of work and career-related questions and topics go undiscussed where unbiased and honest feedback would be helpful and categorically appreciated. So how does one safely unlock that vault, so to speak?
A discreet and alternative solution needed to exist that could enable me to put any business or work-related question or topic in front of any specific professional audience appropriate to nature of the message. Not rocket science, sure, but potentially complex to execute.
Taking Action
As a distance runner, I tend to do a lot of my best thinking and brainstorming while on the trail, and can vividly remember the moment while on a snowy winter run along Lake Harriet (here in Minneapolis), when all of the idea dots for Panel fully connected, and what needed to be built.
I got in touch with Mike Navarro, who I was only vaguely introduced to a year earlier. (How we met is a separate and interesting story altogether, and is totally worth sharing in a future post.)
We determined that we could build it together — and so we started talking to a lot of people to gauge interest levels and feedback as well as we reasonably could. We began in earnest on product almost immediately. (Almost fittingly, Mike and I both ran the 2014 Twin Cities Marathon last October.)
Along the way we enlisted the help of an exceptionally talented designer, Sarah Lutz.
Fast forward a few months, we released Panel in private beta to a group of friends, and 200+ enthusiastic people from my professional network who expressed interest in testing the product. The feedback was exceptional, and the beta period helped us to refine our design even further.
We were thrilled to see Panel launch into the U.S. App Store yesterday. Now, we’re in total growth mode!
