This is part of a series of monthly updates I write for friends, family, and anyone else that’s interested in following along. For the previous installment, check out my January 2022 Update.
I thought I was going to spend the month working on sales/marketing, but I ended up focusing on development after getting feedback that the product just wasn’t there yet. I’m a little disappointed in my lack of progress, but it was a short month, I spent a week of it traveling, and SAML SSO was a much bigger chunk of work than I expected.
I’m really hopeful that I’ll be able to onboard a couple teams this month, assuming there are no more SAML-sized surprises!
I also applied for PIE, a Portland-based startup accelerator. They don’t actually invest, so Teaminal will continue to be a side-project either way, but I’m excited about the potential mentorship and networking opportunities they could provide.
The Numbers
Bottom Line
- There are still 0 teams using Teaminal.
- I still have $0 in MRR.
Sales/Marketing
- I got 38 unique visitors and 342 pageviews on www.teaminal.com (vs. 22 uniques and 75 pageviews last month).
- I published 2 blog posts and 0 landing pages.
- I had no demo calls, but did get feedback on features from potential users via Slack.
Development
- I made 42 commits to the app repo (vs. 216 last month, though I think I was taking credit for December work as well).
- I made 42 commits to the marketing site repo (vs. 56 last month).
Marketing Progress
Early in the month I spent some time polishing up the marketing site and tweaking copy, and I’m no longer embarrassed to share it, which is really helpful for actually feeling good when I reach out to potential customers!
I also put together a pricing page, which is still somewhat tentative considering I haven’t added Stripe to the app yet, but the plans feel inline with competitors.
Product Progress
SAML SSO ended up being a bigger lift than I expected, and I didn’t get as much other work done this month as I would’ve liked.
The second biggest feature I added is comment replies and likes, so you can now have a more readable back-and-forth when you’re talking with your team on pointings, retros, or status updates. Likes are also a nice way to upvote items you’d like to talk about for retros.
Additionally, I made story points and retro prompts configurable in team settings and cleaned up some team management settings.
March Goals
My goal for March is, once again, to get my first team signed up. I have a couple teams who are interested in beta testing that were waiting on SAML SSO and some pointing features to be complete, so I’m fairly confident it’ll happen.
Bottom Line
- At least 1 team using Teaminal.
- $0 in MRR.
Sales/Marketing
I appreciate the enthusiasm I had when I set goals for February, and I definitely want to revisit some of that stuff, but right now my focus is on talking to engineering managers in my network. I probably know 15-20 managers or directors who I could email and set up a call with, so I’m going to try my best to do calls with all of them.
I’m planning on giving any beta users 6 months free, so it’s a fairly low-risk proposition for them to try it out, though I do acknowledge it takes some social capital on their part to pitch this to their orgs.
Development
There are several things I want to work on:
- Jira webhooks. This is now fully specced out, and probably only a day’s work, I just have to do it.
- Stripe integration. I think I can just create Stripe customers on signup, then use the customer portal to let users manage their plan, but there will be some callbacks and stuff I have to set up.
- User roles. Right now everyone is effectively an admin, which isn’t great.
- Clean up some known issues with SAML SSO.
- Publish the Slack app and Jira app to their respective directories.
Update: The March 2022 Update is the next post in this series.