Meedle: Documenting a New Start
The irony of this post is not lost on us
Things take time.
Sometimes, they take a long time.
Sometimes, time flies by so much you realise it’s been 8 months since you’ve worked on your side hustle.
Sometimes, you realise the irony of having made no progress on a side hustle aimed at people who don’t make any progress on their side hustle.
I guess you could say we know our audience.
Apologies and no dwelling
Alright, let’s get this out of the way then.
About 8 months ago, Joe and I had our last meeting around meedle (back then we still called it ‘Zero to Grow’). We had flown from London to New York for a couple of days of meetings and spent some time at the hotel brainstorming.
We had organised a series of features, a Trello board, and were ready to rock.
Then life happened. We won’t dwell on this. It happened, we’re moving on.
Starting from scratch
We’re starting from scratch.
As we met up to discuss our next move, we decided to take a step back. Let’s re-capture what we think meedle, the platform, should be. We’ll then compare that to our initial vision from 8ish months ago and see if we’re still excited about this.
Mission statement
What are we doing and for whom?
Meedle was always for people like us. People who love to launch a side hustle then somehow leave it gathering dust on the internet somewhere, never really doing anything with it.
We realised early on that the issue is most side hustles get no traction, which discourages the person who built it. Turns out, devs are great at building things but not that great at attracting users.
This is where meedle comes in. It’s a platform to help side hustlers figure out ways to grow their new project through experiments.
So, Joe took the pen and wrote:
User story: as a user, I can prepare and report on growth experiments in one central easy-to-use platform for any of my projects.
MVP
We need to learn from our 8-month hiatus. Clearly, we tried to do too much too early — even though we knew better.
What does the minimum viable product look like for meedle?
We started writing.
* Authentication: users need to be able to create an account and log in.
* Billing: users need to be able to pay us for accessing the platform.
* Experiment cards: users need to be able to…
Wait, wtf?
Authentication and billing? We’re still ‘whiteboarding’ and we’re talking about bloody billing? How is that an MVP?
*Scratch that*
Our real MVP is the experiment card. A platform where a user can create an experiment, name it, describe it, pick a few metrics to track, and get testing.
The experiment flow
The experiment flow is our key interaction. We have our two separate steps laid out and even started drawing the interface.
You, as a user, add a new experiment you’d like to try.
Step 1: the setup
You name it, describe what it is in a few words, and give it a PIE (Potential, Importance, Ease) score and hit next.
Step 2: the metrics
The PIE score is now visible as a computed number that will help with prioritising the experiments later down the line.
You pick a single key metric you’ll track throughout this experiment. You can also add secondary metrics.
Finally, you pick a duration the experiment should run (in days).
And you hit ‘Save to backlog’.
Backlog and swim lanes
As a user of the meedle platform, you are encouraged to add as many experiments and ideas as you’d like. We have an idea for this specific part of the platform which we’ll talk about in a later post.
If an experiment particularly catches your eye and you’re ready to rock’n’roll, you move the experiment card to the next swim lane — design.
In design, you finalise your card with the latest measurements you’ll use to benchmark the success (or failure) of your test. Once you’re ready, you move the card to the next swim lane which is, well, I’ll let you read the image to figure that one out for yourself.
Next steps and motivation
Interestingly, our vision for meedle hasn’t changed — at all.
That is very exciting to me. It means we’re both still interested in this idea and feel it’s worth pursuing.
We have a lot of work ahead. Joe needs to start building some features (he will update you on this decision and his progress). I need to start growing an audience and get the word out there.
We are taking this as a learning experience. We’re also not letting our ego stop us from admitting our fault. We lost 8 months faffing around. That is the reality of this world.
We’re not losing another minute. Let’s get to work.
