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I'm in the process of launching my first project, Spanner. It's an online based Planned Maintenance for ships and mining and the like. It's a field saturated with overpriced solutions, and I wanted to try and tap into the lower end of the market that is typically stuck doing pretty much everything by hand because they can't afford to use any of the solutions out there. I got my domain experience from working on non profit sail training ships for about 8 years, and I saw an opportunity for some fresh ideas and approaches in the domain. I'm in the somewhat difficult position of having started this project with only rudimentary programming and design skills. Also, I have pretty much zero capital, I look after my son by day while my wife wins the bread so at the moment I just keep working as hard as I can, being as thrifty as I can. I'm not really trying to garner sympathy or make excuses for myself, it's more or less a statement of fact and affects my approach to what I'm doing. That said, it's been a year and I've decided to pull the trigger and just start making things happen. Those I've talked to have had positive feedback, but it's been slow so far. I'm doing my marketing through Facebook and email at present, once again the whole no budget thing comes in here at the moment. While the fact that my being cheaper than the competition is a selling point, I'm not aiming on that being the focus of my marketing efforts. I think I have a quality product that can stand on it's own merits, the price is just meant to make it accessible to the lower end of the market. If anyone has some thoughts about what they see or think about what I'm doing go for it, working on your own tends to make it hard to be objective. Please be gentle. 
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Aug 14, 2012 06:16
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musclecoder posted:Actually, I dig the design of your site. It's a refreshing change from every single other SaaS site out there. I especially dig the pricing page, a nice change from the vertical tables seen everywhere else. Cheers, I was a bit uncertain because my design is very basic, but I'm mainly trying to work within my limitations without it looking straight out crap. As far as being ready, basically I'm just in tidy up phase at the moment, the software is largely ready, (of course I couldn't have done the demo video if it wasn't), but I just have to clean up some interface elements, primarily in account management and other bits and pieces. I'll be pulling the trigger before the end of this month, and then we'll see how things go. I was hoping to make it happen earlier but I didn't quite hit my target, so I'm just using this brief promotion period to gauge interest with my various contacts in the industry, and then make a concerted push once it's go time.
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Aug 14, 2012 09:59
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Konstantin posted:First of all, are you sure that all your potential customers will have access to the Internet whenever they need to use your application? A paper checklist works everywhere, and ships are mobile. I know nothing about how connected marinas generally are, but I can envision situations where smaller ships may be without Internet access for extended periods. In the future I'd like to set up an offline sync setup with HTML5 and Offline Storage, but Min Viable Product at the moment. quote:Second, one thing that would be convenient would be to have default maintenance schedules that correspond to government regulations and industry standards. It's a lot easier for users to modify good defaults rather than start from scratch. quote:Third, on your front page, the phrase "Spanner is designed and developed by James Rakich, that's me!" sounds rather unprofessional. I don't think a description of you really needs to be on the front page at all, I'd put a brief professional biography on an "about us" page instead.
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Aug 17, 2012 03:55
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unixbeard posted:Most companies wont care if you're one man or not, and the ones that do you wont be working with anyway, so I'd leave it out. You should disassociate "you" from "a company that provides a useful service" because they are different things. It doesn't have to be a big thing, but people who will use your service want to deal with the latter, so you should try to present it as such. Fair enough. I don't want to separate myself too much as I want to draw upon my own experience in the industry as a selling point, but I hear what you're saying.
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Aug 17, 2012 13:13
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Cheers. I'm doing some testing in a couple of days and then its go go go after making adjustments from the feedback. I will keep coming back here, I don't really have friends in tech or design, seeing as how the majority of my life has been out of the field, so it's good to run ideas and implementations past people with more experience than myself. Also I reorganized the site with an about page to cover what was in the footer.
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Aug 19, 2012 15:36
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So, a couple of months ago I was working on a web application for Planned Maintenance on ships, called Spanner. Things are slow going with it, it's a somewhat conservative market and I really need field testing on board a ship to really get it out there. To that end, it's looking like I'll be rolling it out on my old employer's ship soon, which will provide me with real world user feedback, and some good case study stuff for marketing. On the other hand, I have another child on the way and my wife will soon to be going on maternity leave and then hoping to stop working. That has meant I really need to get something happening in the near future, or get a real job . I decided to work on another project in a different market, with a broader potential audience. That also means more competition especially is the space I've chosen, but I think there are certain concepts I've used that are pretty unique in this fairly samey and saturated market.What it is, is a personal organiser that uses Getting Things Done principles, it has note taking, calendars, projects and tasks. This is a proof of concept that is entirely offline based using HTML5. It'll cache the whole website so you can take it offline, and the only functionality you'll lose is the embedded Google Maps and Directions. The unique aspect of it is how you enter information into the system. All input is done through the same text entry system, the app parses the text to turn it into calendar entries, projects and next actions. Here's an example:  It's not exactly conventional, which is why I've built a proof of concept to get feedback and see whether it's the kind of thing people would use. Personally I've been using it for real while developing it, and it feels pretty good being able to enter information without switching contexts all the time, and just see it self organize actions using @Contexts, #Topics and +Contacts. I'm making the prototype freely available at http://elephantneverforgets.com.au if you want to have a play with it. At this point it's only Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome, due to the storage medium I'm using to keep everything on the browser. That wouldn't be the case when I build a commercial release product.  ------------------------------------- My plan as it stands is to market this prototype to gather interest and narrow down my target market and get a bit of support. Off the back of this I intend to run a crowd funding campaign using Pozible, the idea being to secure enough funds to buy me the time I need to develop this into a fully fledged product, a HTML 5 desktop/tablet app, a HTML5 mobile app and a web server to synchronise it all. That should take me about 3-4 months, so my target is $25,000, which is allowing for fees and poo poo happens, and would cover keeping a roof over my family's head while I work on this full time. If the campaign falls through, I've made some diverse contacts in the Startup community here in Hobart (Tasmania, Australia) since we moved here 2 months ago. They'd be able to get me in contact with investors if it comes to that. If all falls down then I'll just have to sideline the thing while I get a real job, and work on it during my spare time. Anyway, that's where I'm at. I'm pretty optimistic that whatever happens I'll be able to make things work. My prototype is ready so now it's an exercise in research and marketing. I definitely need a video to better explain the product to people who are trying out, that's my next task, and then It's a case of gathering feedback and seeing how people respond to the product.
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Jan 13, 2013 23:18
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paperchaseguy posted:I have used this a little and like it. I need something to help me keep track of things to do at work, and most of the tools available are either too simple or don't fit. Some of the 37signals tools sort of do what I want, but the free versions aren't big enough and they don't work well enough to pay for. Cheers. I was shooting for a system that hopefully doesn't break down when you really start filling it up like other tools. As you said, they end up a little too simple of you have too much going on, that you may as well use paper for what they do. This is trying to work with a middle ground that wants a comprehensive getting things done style system, but doesn't want to constantly be babysitting it, configuring it and what not. Please pass it on of you reckon you know others who'd like it.
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Jan 18, 2013 06:06
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I posted about an application I'm working on a few weeks ago, anyway I was planning on running a crowdfunding campaign to make the launch possible, now it's live. The app is called Elephant and it's a productivity application that makes your note taking much more powerful. Rather than having a different interface for notes, calendars, and tasks, you can manage the whole lot using plain text; meaning you can keep your hands on the keyboard and stay focused, getting it organized faster. Here's a demo video: http://youtu.be/NLT0TlCm5SU You can try the prototype at http://elephantneverforgets.com.au as well, it's an offline application so none of your data leaves your computer. I want to take what's in the prototype and build it up into a full service that covers desktop and mobile with sync and backup between the two. The crowdfunding campaign I'm running on Pozible will give me enough of a cash reserve to work on it full time to completion, as well as covering development costs, hosting and so forth. Also, it's a Fixed Funding campaign so no IndieGogo dodginess here. Anyway, check out the campaign at http://pozible.com/elephantneverforgets, please pledge if you can, or share it around if you can't. Thanks heaps!
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Feb 20, 2013 23:14
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Good questions, and no it's not immediately evident what my end goal or motivations are. First of all, I'd love to be able to build software and keep a roof over my head. Being able to do it on my own terms would me even better. If I became successful enough to require staff, I would turn the company into a worker owned, equal share equal vote company, because it's my firm belief that that's the direction the world should be working towards. Naive perhaps, but eh, I always stand up for my beliefs. As such, I'm not interested in building a mega growth business or anything, enough to turn over the bills sustainably is fine by me. While it may seem like I'm building and building, I put together this prototype over the course of 4 months, part time only. I built with the express purpose of getting the project far enough along for me to test it on customers to hone in on a market and see how it is received. That's why it's freely available, and that's why I'm running this crowdfunding campaign. If it fails, then I'm going to have to move onto finding some stable work any how, but at least I gave it a shot. As for the target market, there's a midzone between the low level power user like yourself, and people who are starting to organize their life. The simple tools, which seem to be the main offering these days, are always prone to the same weakness, once you get serious about really recording everything you have on your plate the simple lists become more cumbersome than genuinely useful. The complex tools, things like OmniFocus, MyLifeOrganized and so on are very selective on platforms, don't always have good reliable sync solutions, and still require a lot of configuration to get a good working system. I believe there are enough people out there, especially in 'Getting Things Done' circles, who want a more powerful consolidated alternative without the mountain of configuration, an app that provides a solid sensible default for the user wanting more from their task system. On top of that It'd aim to provide the best of both worlds when it comes to web apps. Genuine offline functionality from the ground up, with sync and backup when connected. Add to that an API and connection to services to make it easier to get on board, and also to pull inputs from email and other services, via ifttt.com or similar, and I think there's enough there to entice the middle ground. Of course, I don't know this for sure, but with this campaign I'll be able to find out whether I'm seeing things right or not.
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Feb 21, 2013 09:15
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mcsuede posted:The idea your brand is trying to operate with (elephants have great memories) is pretty much on lockdown by Evernote, who obviously also dominate the space you're trying to operate in. Not directly, but close enough that I'd look for another identity idea. I hear you. Either way I've got to put this on the backburner anyway, the Pozible campaign didn't get any attention at all so I'm just gonna have to look for work for now. It's unfortunate but I've learned a ton in the development and communication side of things, and I know what I'm gonna move towards as a project during my spare time. I just need to make sure a roof is kept over my family's head first.
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Mar 18, 2013 22:29
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semicolonsrock posted:I actually really would like to complete 2-3 years at my current job for the experience, but this does make a lot of sense eventually. Yeah, you really never know how much runway you'll need, because the whole point of a startup is you're testing an unproven idea that may or may not be sustainable. If you have an idea figure out how to test the idea with the resources you have available. If you don't, learn what you can from work and stash cash til you've figured out what you want to do. How you save / invest is for someone who knows money better than I.
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Oct 5, 2014 06:43
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