Branding + first beta customer
I missed my Sunday update deadline this week, but better late than never. This week I’ve been focused on building product and talking to customers.
The new logo:
The app is slowly beginning to look like a real product:
What did the Maker do? #
I wrote a lot of code last week which felt really great. It’s been hard for me to get a lot of product work done while having calls. It’s just too distracting for me and prevents me from really getting into “flow”. I started designing the app as well. I decided to use a template as the base, just to save some time. You can see how it’s starting to look in the beginning of this post.
I also started playing around with a 3rd prototype of the build server. This one is using an existing cloud provider to run the build and will be much more expensive. However it might be a way to have a stable build server in a much shorter time frame. It may sound a bit silly to build 3 different prototypes instead of just shipping one. However I’m learning so much from each of these iterations and it will make for a much smoother product experience when I start the beta (hopefully).
What did the Manager do? #
Most exciting maker thing last week was visiting Design33 in Edinburgh (which is an hour from where I live). I figured it’d be an interesting experience to physically go and watch the workflow of a potential customer. It was a super interesting experience and I really appreciate that Jason from Design33 would let me stop by and bug him for 1.5 hours! What was even more exciting was that Jason wanted to commit to a paid beta after the new year. First customer, yay!
Another manager thing I did last week was outsourcing the design of the Branch logo. I had this idea of using “Git branches” as the concept of the logo and I’m super excited about how it turned out. You can see the logo in the beginning of this post.
I didn’t have any customer calls last week, which is fine since I’m trying to prioritize my time and work on the product. However I have a few calls this week - one is with a very well-known agency that I’m really excited to talk to.
Info: The beta #
Now that the first people are beginning to commit to the beta, I think it’s time to share the overall details:
- It’s going to be a paid beta at a $99 flat fee to join. This is a way for me to validate that folks are actually interested in this. So far I haven’t had any push back on this.
- Beta will begin end of January / beginning of February
- First step will be to book an on-boarding call with me (I will send out invites after xmas or new years).
- Beta will involve a lot of sparring with me about workflow etc.
- It’s going to be a very tight group and I have an idea of doing optional masterminds with as many people as possible to discuss CI/CD in WordPress.
Thanks for following along! 🙏