in DSP2017

Squadron – First steps

Yesterday’s tasks

Those were my yesterday’s tasks, check out the outcome.

trello-kick-off

Measure people interest and start gathering information about customers

As you might have read in the previous blog post, I want to be very focused on building the product from the beginning. It means one thing, marketing and proper product building. I will try to use my “engineering” point of view to a minimum.

That means I have to deliver product features quickly and check if my potential customers like it, but how can I check if people like the product or a feature?

I am going to start with two tools, Google Analytics and MailChimp. For a now I will use just one main feature of google analytics, tracking how many users was on my website. That way I can simply know if people get interested in what I am doing or not.

MailChimp, that is simply to build up my database of potential users, I will share with them with some insights of my current work and they will get early access.

Those two basic tools will help you to kick off gathering very useful information and metrics. Every time you publish something or change, you will know if your changes or features drives more users or not.

The first iteration, make it simple!

The first iteration should be quick, it shouldn’t be perfect, it can be crap, it’s the internet you have many lives to launch a product, idea. If this time you will not be lucky you can try another time, and another time, and another time. IT’S FINE!

I took Amy’s advice to my heart, so that way I published getsquadron.io, in less than 2hrs. That includes:

  • Get a domain getsquadron.io
  • Setup repository
  • Setup & customise Jekyll website
  • Setup mail server & MailChimp mailing list

I keep most of my personal stuff on AWS, I know that tool well so I will stay there at least for a while. I got domain via Route53 and the mail server via WorkMail, I was kind of amazed how easy those tools are nowadays, especially mail server and domain it has always been a pain in the ass.

Outcomes

After 24hr from publishing getsquadron.io, I am able to say that I got some traffic and 3 new users at my mailing list!!

squadron-first-ga

mailchimp-first-ss

Books

Books that helped me a lot to understand what is actually a problem of product development and how you should do it if you build product or company that sell on the internet. Tech is not a problem at all, tech is just your toolbox.