Part of the #FAMPANY
Joining the ustwo adventure
I remember standing on the corner of Shoreditch High Street, bicycle leaning precariously against a nearby wall, looking directly upward at the building in front of me; The Tea Building. We didn’t know it at that point, but for Jamie and I, this would be our second home for the coming months.
Two months earlier, Jamie and I had bailed on our existing jobs as product designer & developer at Dojo to kick the tyres on our little music discovery app, Combo.fm. Two months, six days, three hours and an outlandish amount of caffeine later, we’d thrown together our first MVP — and we were ready to show it off.
We’d gone back to strut our stuff at Dojo, and they were kind enough to give us an introduction to some people who might help us on our journey. As it happens, one of those individuals happened to be Mills, one of the cofounders of ustwo.
We didn’t really know what to expect from Mills. Our confusion thickened even further when we received our first ever email from him:
Meeting Mills
The first time Jamie and I met Mills, we were in one of the ustwo meeting rooms, sat either side of the table — basically doing our best to explain our convoluted vision to someone we’d never imagined we’d have the opportunity to meet.
Mills was electric.
We’d mention a feature, future plans or just a point on our roadmap, and he’d nod, frantically grab his laptop, occasionally chipping in with a frantic “I know someone you guys HAVE to meet”, drafting emails on his MacBook across the table. We didn’t know it, but we’d expand our network tenfold from those introductions alone.
At the end of the meeting, Mills put forward his proposal for us; inviting Jamie and I to take part in ustwo’s Adventure floor, a designated space for curated startups to meet and share expertise to improve them all.
To put it lightly, we were chuffed.
Testing stuff out
After humbly prowling the floors of ustwo for a few weeks, we asked Esha on how we should rally together some ustwo feedback for Combo.fm.
She suggested setting up a “lemonade stand” on the ground floor of the office for people to come over and test out the app, so we stuck some signs up around the office earlier in the day, and crossed our fingers we’d get a couple of friendly ustwobies to help us out.
Things started a little…ahem…slowly…
…but after 15–20 minutes, our fudged-together app testing table gained a couple of interested ustwobies. Then some more arrived. Then some more.
I swear, at one point, we actually had a bit of a queue going.
All of the feedback we got from the testing session was gold. We got crashes, bugs, performance issues, usability quirks and sometimes just blank stares of “I don’t know what to do” — all of which we ended up fixing in interim updates.
Not only that, it actually helped us realise some huge product-changing things — which ended up contributing to the new design of the app (coming in a couple of months time…!)
Marketing
As a designer-and-developer duo, we’re dab hands in Xcode and Sketch, and we know what makes a good product; but the world of marketing is a somewhat terrifying and unfamiliar place to us. I remember we finished the first release of Combo.fm, hit the Release to App Store button, and sat back on our chairs.
The feeling of accomplishment rose…then almost immediately drained.
Uh…what happens now?
When Rikke came over to our desk to congratulate us on our launch (and found me frantically scrolling through tech publications to reach out to), she put us forward to Steve and Matthew; ustwo’s marketing arm.
Almost immediately, both of them jumped on the project as if it were their own. Matthew made suggestions for us to reach out to smaller bloggers to elevate our brand presence. Steve gave us pointers on our press release, helping us understand how publications and editors work to form an ideal structure for the document.
They could field all of our questions with no trouble; when should we send it? Should we send lots of images, or just a few? Is this story enough; does it need more?
Since then, we’ve pitched our story to a tech publication, and we’re keeping our fingers firmly crossed. Without ustwo’s help, I’m not even sure if we’d know how to put together a press release; let alone sending it to the right people.
Culture
If we’ve learnt anything over the last couple of months, it’s the importance of internal culture.
ustwo’s output is clearly impressive, but we never had much of an idea where that all really came from. The moment you stop to look at the meme-ridden walls and countless in-jokes scattered around the studio, you know there’s something a bit odd about the place.
Along with the product feedback, business advice and general awesomeness the fampany has given us, it’s actually been the atmosphere and positivity that’s arguably kept us going the most.
As a super small team, it can be pretty difficult to keep up motivation sometimes; you’re constantly questioning decisions, or even whether what you’re doing is something that people will be interested in — and having a group of incredibly motivated and talented individuals around you can be an absolute life-saver in those situations. I won’t pretend to know how they do it, but everyone just seems to get along and want to help each other out, it’s infectious!
On the first evening in the studio, we had to quietly shuffle past a painting class, the next morning there was a meditation workshop…it’s pretty much as far as you can get from a traditional office.
ustwo and us two
Mills and Sinx open the floodgates (aka second-floor-doors) in a couple of weeks, and then we’ll be part of the ustwo adventure for real.
Combo.fm is unashamedly a super small operation with literally no cash or resources whatsoever. And ustwo and their amazing community have basically helped us go from zero to one in the world of business.
We’ve met with people we would have never spoken to, have our own space slap-bang in the middle of the startup capital of the city, and we’ve got the badass fampany cheering us on.
Thanks, fampany.
Thampany.
Crikey, still here? Time to do some shameless self-plugging, then. Jamie Shoard and I started building an app called Combo.fm a few months back, and we’re trying to make it the best darn music discovery tool out there.
If you’d like to give us a hand in doing that, giving it a download and giving any feedback would be awesome. We’re entirely bootstrapped — so any sort of help we can get is massively appreciated ✌️
