Iām building HelloHailey in public.
I share my metrics, successes, failures, and all the ups and downs of being a bootstrapped solopreneur.
Want to follow along?
Hailey is coming to life!
After six weeks of researching, interviewing, and writing, I finally got to start coding š¤
Two weeks later, Hailey is a living, breathing (not reallyā¦) office puppy.
As a personified, (remote) office dog, she kickstarts conversations and makes people laugh. But sheās not ready for the big leagues yetā¦
In this update, Iāll share what sheās learned so far and how sheāll be introduced to the world in a four-stage rollout plan.
Hailey is the perfect (Slack) party host
In my last update, I set my vision - to create fun and fulfilling remote workplaces.
I believe the āSlack Partyā concept will do just that for remote teams.
Two weeks of progress
Haileyās already learned a few tricks š¶ (after lots of patience and treats):
š» She can be installed via a custom dashboard.
āļø She lives in the cloud (on Heroku).
š¬ She engages directly with new team members when they join her Slack channel.
š§ She learned twenty conversation prompts - with gifs and her own responses - and sends them on a schedule.
But progress wasnāt made without a few unplanned surprises:
I need a custom dashboard - I initially planned on having users download the app from the Slack App Directory rather than building out a custom flow. But I decided to build one to avoid delays related to their submission and review process and, eventually, more flexibility in customizing my onboarding flow.
Scheduling is hard - I wanted to support custom time zones and working hours on a team-by-team basis. For now, Hailey will only send messages at fixed times that make sense for US time zones.
Hailey is nearly ready to be released to the world. But sheāll start with baby (puppy?) steps.
Releasing in stages
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, once said:
If you arenāt embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late.
I agree with this sentiment, but that doesnāt mean Iāll be opening up to everyone on day one. Iāll release to just enough users to learn. Then Iāll go through cycles of iterating and releasing to more.
Eventually, Iāll run out of early users and launch to the world.
Stage 1ļøā£ - Friends
No, Iām not talking about Ross, Joey, and Rachel š
Iāll start by using the product myself in Slack workspaces full of personal friends. Itās a different dynamic than the professional teams Iām building for, but Iāll still learn a few things (and fix some bugs).
Goal - launch before Christmas š (December 25).
Stage 2ļøā£ - Friendsā Teams
A handful of close engineering/product manager friends will try out HelloHailey with their teams.
This will be my first opportunity to learn from a real team of unbiased users that donāt know me.
Goal - launch by January 15.
Stage 3ļøā£ - Waitlist Users
Sixty people have filled out the waitlist survey. Iāll gradually release to my waitlist users over 2-4 weeks.
Want to be one of the first users to try out HelloHailey with your team?
Stage 4ļøā£ - Open the Floodgates
After exhausting my waitlist, Iāll open up HelloHailey to anybody on the internet!
New Year, New Users
Iāve switched to bi-weekly updates on two-week sprint cycles. I prefer higher quality (but less frequent) updates.
My next update will be in 2021. I hope to have some valuable product learnings to share with you by then.
More importantly, weāll all be able to put 2020 behind usā¦hindsight is 2020, right?
Want to find out what I learn from my Stage 1 launch?