Reflections on start-up life: Week 27

Straight up — we didn’t get the next beta out just yet. But it’s close! As I said to Alex, it will get closer and closer until one day it’s just done. That will be real soon.

This anticipation is kind of strange in a way. There’s no real consequence of it not being completed — sure, we have some customer commitment on this next version (yes, that’s right we should actually begin to sell Tribalytic) but a week or two won’t make a great deal of difference in the large scheme of things. It’s mostly about me wanting to start using it for real! I think the new beta version is a significant improvement on the first beta,

Much of the last week has been filled for me with marketing and customer focussed activities. I’ve had several meetings, getting some great feedback and even some firm commitments on the next beta. It’s clear there is a need for Tribalytic and one of the things we are proudest of is that people see a space for us alongside some of the market leading monitoring tools, which is vindicating our belief that PR and Market Research are different and need different tool sets.

We are also starting to plan ahead — we need a strong inbound marketing site now. Our discussions with beta testers are telling us what people think and like, now we need a site to replicate this and let people self-serve themselves into our product.

This led to a discussion about a slogan or tag line to go with “Tribalytic”. How can we sum it up in a few words for potential clients. To date I’m still not 100% happy with any we’ve come up with, I like ones that sound good but perhaps tend to be more literally meaningless, while Alex prefers something much more descriptive, but typically (in my view anyway) they aren’t as punchy. I think we’ll plug them into AdWords and see what click through we get — let the market decide. We have managed to get to two “Tribalytic: Tap the market pulse” or “Tribalytic: Real Opinions, Right Now”. Any feedback appreciated below in comments! Let us know.

Yes, I am wasting far too much time on this issue!

The vibe is very positive, we are on the cusp of a change from a pure engineering effort to now a marketing and sales one.

Highlights

• Great customer meetings — two people committing to buy on the next release.
• Enjoyed Melbourne Jelly for some co-working, although I didn’t get a lot of work actually done.
• Finding a write up on the Chirp site http://chirp.twitter.com/hack_day_apps.html which keeps leading to people registering.

Lowlights

• None really, a good week. Maybe the piling mounds of paperwork I need to get done, but don’t seem important enough yet.

Goal this week

• The beta of course, but also getting our inbound marketing site underway / commissioned.