Blog archive for May, 2009

So today I received an email from Jason at spunky Kiwi startup TeamEffect encouraging us to post an update – and he’s right, we really need to get better at this. In the past month, we’ve probably put in some of the longest hours so far, preparing the application for its soft launch. It’s one thing relying on the comfort of the “beta” moniker, and we’ve realised how much work the final 2% can be in going from beta to production.

With the help of our growing beta userbase (5394 at time of writing), we’re sharpening up features and making adjustments based on user recommendations. We’re now on UserVoice for feature requests and bug reports, which has been an excellent substitute for our own home-rolled feedback system.

As a slight aside, Vincent just rolled in to give us a sneak preview of our very first sponsorship deal – his and Francois’ soccer team, World Crew! It was a tough decision between this and co-branding an F1 car alongside Red Bull, but I think we made the right choice.

We’re also very fortunate to have Kiwi expat to Silicon Valley Stephen Weir come hang out with us at The Distiller, and lend us his connections and expertise around launch strategy and Google Adwords. Stephen’s a serial entrepreneur whose next adventure leads him to a venture here in Dunedin (see, it’s all happening right here!)

As much as we love to travel and sometimes wish that we were a part of a larger environment where the buzz and energy of tech entrepreneurship is infectious, Dunedin has been an ideal location for us to start up and make rapid gains on the market due to one important factor: we’re not distracted. We have a highly productive environment and are uninhibited by long commute times, furthermore we’re fortunate not be focusing on the notion and hype of building a startup, as much as focusing on building a product that our users will love, and on top of this, a profitable company.

We still do business with people in the valley and around the world; we just don’t pull ourselves out of the office to do coffee with them too often! When we’ve built some stability into the business, it’s one of my dreams to do a PocketSmith world tour where we organise meetups in various cities to catch up with our users and partners. I think that would be a lot of fun.

Well, time to get back to work. Keep an eye out for a number of retrospective posts – we’ve been lecturing quite a bit at the University, and I might post a bit about that too. It’s a cold, overcast autumn day down here, and the fall colours outside are absolutely beautiful. Have a lovely weekend, people.