Barry: why can’t we figure a solution for our own problems?
Hey there! Have you heard about Barry Allen aka The Flash? If you have been following Angry Ventures, you probably noticed that he was the inspiration for our most recent product.
But there is more to tell. In this blog post, we would like to guide you through the human process of making the SMS marketing tool and explain the reasons why we decided to build it.
But first, what is Barry?
If you choose the quickest explanation (pun intended), we might tell you that Barry is a tool that allows you to text people.
If you want the technical one (I needed Joana’s help here), it is a platform that allows us to import contact numbers, program a message and send it by connecting to Amazon Web Services API.
Long story short: Barry allows us to send SMS’s in a very simple way without any additional fees from other third parties. Yes, we still depend on Amazon — and the cost of sending the SMS varies from country to country — but we no longer need to rely on other third parties.
The Aha Moment behind Barry
Recently, we have been thinking about opening a new spot on the team. This process means a lot of internal dynamics and questioning the reasons why we do what we do.
Among the things that we have been discussing, we have mentioned the need to create our own products and create solutions for our own products.
In other words, the point is: if we are struggling with a tool or we think that something isn’t worth the money we have to pay for it, why not to go the other way and craft the solution we are seeking.
The same goes for our clients: if we can’t find a solution that fits their needs, why not to embrace the opportunity and create a completely new product?
And so Barry was born, an SMS tool that gives us almost total control over what we send. The tool can either be used for our clients and for our own projects, and we can decide to make it whatever we want.
Learn when to stop and enjoy the process
When we are our own clients it is not always easy to know when to stop. Because we are used to thinking further, we easily fall into our own trap and start thinking about cool features that a product could have.
Yes, most of them are pretty cool, but they would also require tons of time to be developed. If we waited for them to be ready in order to launch the platform, we would be waiting for years until we could send the first SMS.
So, the process of making Barry made us stop to think about what is truly essential and what can be developed next. Not to be forgotten or abandoned… Simply to be put on hold.
There are new features on the making, but right now we already have a fully functional SMS tool, and like someone told me today that’s more than 90% of the companies. We should be happy, shouldn’t we?
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