Launching UpdateZen to the World

A few thoughts as we introduce our startup to the market…

Almost exactly one year ago today, I met with two developers in a small, but welcoming new office to officially kick off design and development of UpdateZen.

The mission was simple. Create the simplest status reporting solution ever created.

The vision was ambitious. Completely reimagine the way executives are updated by those who report to them.

Seven months later, we launched Version 1 of UpdateZen to BETA. And over the past 5 months, we received volumes of feedback from our beta participants. We listened closely, asked lots of questions, and let the answers guide our product roadmap. The feedback has been invaluable in helping us refine and enhance what we hope is indeed the simplest status reporting solution ever created. You’ll let us know if we hit the mark!

And today, we launched UpdateZen officially to the market. Anyone who wants to try UpdateZen can sign up for a free trial at www.updatezen.com.

We are far from done. And our 12-month product roadmap right now looks even more audacious than the first 12 months of product development.

Our users have not been shy in throwing out feature request after feature request. We say yes to some, we say no to some. Why would we say no to some requests? Not because we don’t want to say yes, and not because we think we know better, but because we need to make sure each feature aligns with our product vision and solves a key problem for a great many of our users. Just as importantly, our guiding design principle is simplicity. Beautiful simplicity. Early users have been enamored with, and I might even say blown away by, our super-clean, minimalistic design and simplicity.

Nothing gets added to the user interface that isn’t absolutely essential to our mission of creating the simplest status reporting solution ever created. We will never muddy up the user interface with superfluous text, buttons or other kinds of busy-ness.

We limit updates to 250 characters. That’s kind of revolutionary in the business world where 3-page single-spaced updates from “Marcia in Marketing” is commonplace. And we limit updates to 250 characters so that they include only what is absolutely essential for the executive to read and respond to. You’re not going to cut down information overload by trimming around the edges of the information you receive. You are only going to reduce the relentless influx of incoming information by taking a sledgehammer to the amount of information allowed in, and by encouraging your people to edit their words down to only what’s absolutely essential.

I always tell my team that we’re building UpdateZen for the next 5 years, not the last 5 years. In the next 5 years, information overload is only going to get worse by an order of magnitude. Already updates coming in every format imaginable… emails, text messages, instant messages, spreadsheets and status documents, weekly status reports, PPT’s, in-person meetings, phone calls, scheduled meetings, impromptu meetings, and on and on. UpdateZen is cutting through this onslaught of information overload with a velvet-covered sledgehammer. Go into the app on the iPhone or the web, and be greeted by calmness, by order, by simplicity, by clarity, and by minimalism. Get all the information you need, get the latest status on anything your people are working on, quickly and easily and effortlessly and enjoyably. Sounds impossible, right? Give us a shot and let us know.

Sign up for a free trial at www.updatezen.com today.

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Sign up for a free trial at www.updatezen.com today.

Request: If you enjoyed this post, please “Recommend” it below so others can more easily discover it. Also, you might like my other posts.