Good Bye Nights and Weekends: Hello Startup World!
This weekend is the first weekend of the school holidays and this is when you really notice the reality of being in a start-up kicking in. When other kids are out enjoying the sun, skating around town, going to a movie, or lying in bed till 2pm, we’re busy working, and sometimes it’s the little things that you don’t really think about, that take the longest amount of time.
So this weekend is also the first time our Developster platform has gone live. Sure, there’s not a lot for you to do, apart from read our Dev Blog and Register Your Interest, but it took a lot of work just to get to this point. Why have we made it public so early on? Because we really want to make this experience and the process as transparent as possible, so other kids can benefit. This is completely new to us!
Aside from all the obvious features we have to start working on, we have to think about our message as well. What do we want you to know when you come to visit the homepage? How much information do we need to get from you? Are you going to “get it” during your first visit and Register Your Interest, or are you going to wonder what the heck Developster is all about, click around, and realize there’s no public functionality yet, and are we going to lose the potential to build a relationship with you, forever? Well, the chances of that happening right now are high, but we hope not. We hope you’ll give us an opportunity to keep creating and get to know us, over time.
It’s just after 6pm on Sunday night. We’ve spent most of the weekend working on various tasks for the site, and we have a meeting with the Director at our school tomorrow, to talk about our fundraising campaign. Most of our time today, has been spent designing the Register Your Interest boxes, and thinking about the fields we need to display. It sounds simple enough, but we had lengthy discussions about what we should and shouldn’t include on these forms. We have two target audiences — students and businesses. The problem is, we need to communicate two different messages, and for businesses, we’re still working out how we can help to add value. Sure, we can add value, it’s more a question of can we think of more, outside-of-the-box ideas, and how should we present them. We’ll definitely talk more about our strategies over the next few weeks, and we encourage you to join the conversation on Twitter: @DevelopsterTeam #DVLPSTR. We would really appreciate any thoughts you might want to share with us.
Another thing we’ve been working on this weekend, is the home page message. Again, we’ve had lengthy discussions about what we need to communicate on the front page, especially at this point in the journey. Do we need to put more information out there?
The coolest thing we’re beginning to realize is, the power of teamwork, and just how much we LOVE #Slack! Having the right team is absolutely crucial and we can’t state that enough! Hence the picture from our #Slack conversations today :). You really need team members who are there, participating, and ready to jump into action; team members you can count on, and trust; team members that will listen to you, but don’t always have to agree with you. Every step we take, we take together. It’s pretty cool.
Lots of Love, The Developster Team: Asher, Eiko, Ben, Crispin, Kaleb, and Renea.
@DevelopsterTeam / @kohknowcolab / @kohknowco / @slackHQ
First published Sunday, 17th April, 2016.
