Stagger, stand up and introduce yourself.
Today’s the day and I’m so excited to announce the opening of our private beta of Stagger’s web app . We’ve done it. Well, some of it. Okay, a tiny bit of it. But I couldn’t be more proud of the team working to get to this point of giving a set of keys to users who aren’t in the Stagger employee directory. (There’s a grand total of three of us in that directory, btw.)
I’ve been designing products for companies ranging from startups to large enterprises throughout my entire career. Every single launch day was the same. It came with an inner dialog of “What if this fails? What if the users hate it? Is it going to break?” Today is no different and that inner dialog is on a loudspeaker this time.
Stagger has been a year in the making — almost to the day. On July 22, 2019, I launched the iOS app into the App store. It launched three months after a personal travel project turned into a product designed to help users tell their story differently on Instagram. I quickly saw the need for brands and marketers having a need to tell their story online and stand out in the crowd of competition. I shifted my focus to build a web app to satisfy that need.
Like every founder story you read, mine is no different. The amount of self-doubt, constant questioning if this was worth it all the way to telling my story and why this product will make a difference to investors took a toll mentally and physically. With a some amazing team members and people who have invested their time and money into Stagger, it’s absolutely been worth it.
What a time to build a company and a product. We’ve worked while navigating a pandemic, being confined to our houses in complete isolation and fighting for equality in every single human walking the planet. On that same note, what a time to build a company that is centered around storytelling. We’re giving people a voice within their digital platforms to give them an opportunity for their voice to be heard and their brand to shine through.
When you can’t take a team picture in person on launch day, you take the next best thing — a Zoom screenshot.
Say hello to Stagger, your brand’s visual storytelling platform.
For the creatives, this is your tool to show off your work. For the business owners, this is the tool to create engagement and convert. For the marketers, this is the tool to set your clients up for success. For everyone, this is the tool that teaches you what’s working (and what’s not) about the story you tell to your audience.
For most of the living breathing population, digital media is being consumed everywhere throughout the web. Social media. Blogs. E-commerce sites. Podcasts. YouTube. We’re making it easy for brands to tell their story using their own creative expression while guiding them through the proven formulas of effective storytelling.
We know not everyone is a creative and can design. Believe me, the last thing I want to do is show my mom how to use Sketch or Figma while she’s designing assets to promote her self-published book. Our design team has worked energetically to provide an on-going set of templates to make it easy for your brand’s story to come to life. We also know that some people are more inspired with a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.
For this private beta, we’re staying true to our roots. Users can export the individual images of their Stagger to post on their social media for the stitched together creative. Our embed functionality will let you create your story and publish it to any site that you can copy and paste code. Think Squaresspace, Wix, Webflow, etc. This feature will be released within the coming weeks.
Feedback is our jam
As we continue down our product roadmap, we’re building out features that I’m not quite ready to unveil but excited to put in the hands of our users. With that said, we’re listening to feedback. And we want to hear all of it. We know some features can be enhanced, some things might be wonky, so don’t be afraid to point them out. Our skin is thick.
Huge thank you to our early customers who said yes to testing us out and sticking with us as we ironed out the kinks. Without you, this private beta wouldn’t be possible. Want to be part of the private beta? We’d love to have you.
We can’t wait to help you create your story and have you be a part of ours.
All my best,
Chrissy Cowdrey
CEO/Founder of Stagger
