It was my goal last year to launch one product. It came up in a conversation with my friend Murray at 2am on his balcony on New Year’s Eve. More or less, he told me to just do it (shoutout to Nike). After that, my business partner James and I agreed that we were going to ship one product. We felt this was an achievable goal for 2014.
The background is that I had been doing a lot of consulting work in 2013. I had decided that I was going to work on one of my own projects. I had previously made language games for my business Native Tongue which are still being downloaded to this day. In fact, I’ve received an email today from an elementary teacher in the US. She informed me that she had installed the Spanish Smash app on 4 ipad’s for her Spanish class. I’ve had a lot of fun doing consulting and working on various projects. But I’ve also had this itch that I needed to make something new.
So in-between consulting work in 2014, we created an app called “Haha”. Its a fun, cheeky little app that sends infectious laughter to your friends. Its a consumer app. We submitted to the app store last week and I’m proud to say its now available! If you have an iPhone/iPad, get it here. For Google Play, download it here. There’s a screenshot below of one of the screens in the app. Its an awesome app 🙂
I’m also working on another product for teams that do agile software development. Its SAAS (software as a service) and more business-y.You’ll be the first to know when its available if you subscribe to my email list! Its my goal for 2015 to launch this product. We’re continuing to do consulting work and ALSO working on our own products. A lot of people said that we wouldn’t be able to do it. However, we have proven them wrong 🙂
We did everything by bootstrapping. We do consulting work creating web/mobile products for businesses. The Tapmint business gives us the platform to do creative stuff and to employ a team. This is the path we’ve chosen and it works for us. Its a slower journey and fueled by organic growth. Also, if we weren’t doing software consulting, we might not have come up with the second product which solves a problem that we have.
Startups for the rest of us! Shoutout to Rob Walling.
Plans for 2015
I’ve got some more things planned for 2015. I will be creating a podcast called “This Mobile Life”. Its about two topics: 1) Mobile Apps 2) Being Mobile i.e having a mobile work environment and working remotely. I’ve recorded the first episode but we’re going to re-do it to make it shorter and snappier. That’s because I want to make it more punchier for you 🙂 I’ll give you a sneak peak of the podcast cover design.
Towards the end of last year, I also wanted to write a ebook about mobile apps. However, I’ve decided to take a shorter route and start with something simpler. I’ve written a 5 day email crash course on launching mobile apps which you can find on our Tapmint website. It now has 15 subscribers in the past few weeks with very little promotion from me. I’ll be applying everything I know to launching both apps and will be adding more content to the email course. If you are interested in launching a mobile app, join the course! I’ll be spending more time in 2015 refining the course.
In 2014, I started to see a pattern of people asking about analytics. So I made it my goal in 2015 to do more in this area. An opportunity came up with General Assembly to teach a course on mobile analytics as they saw my email course. Its an area that I have experience in. So I’ll be teaching a course on “Intro to Mobile Analytics” in February 2015. It is the first time its been taught in Australia. I believe its an area of GREAT importance to businesses and startups. It is also not very well understood. I will be developing more authority in this area along with Mobile UX. I will also be offering a consulting service on mobile UX that combines with mobile analytics. I’m in the process of defining what this service is so watch this space!
Did you achieve your goals in 2014? What are your plans for 2015?
I’d love to hear from you!
