What happens after you match?
My role:
Co-founder; 3 years as Head of Product
Raised $400k
Led a team of 3 developers, 1 designer, and 1 PM
Struck an equity deal with Mira Tech Group
Designed 160 screens, and 12 user flows
Got approved in the Apple App Store
Our software team in Kiev Ukraine for Mira Fest. 2018.
Fundraising
We raised $400k from angel investors in Austin TX.
To raise money to finish development, we partnered with Seedrs, an equity crowdfunding platform.
Video pitch for Crowdfunding
Produced by Dave Huber
Pitch deck for angel investors
Produced by Dave Huber
User experience
As head of product, I was responsible for designing an exceptional onboarding and user experience.
Dan Olsen’s Product-Market Fit Pyarmid
Finding problem-solution fit and product-market fit were our main priorities.
This requires understanding the competitive landscape and knowing where to compete. For the dating app market, there was a void for users 35-55.
The British Council of Design’s Double Diamond Design Process
Get the right design before getting the design right.
Why is a design process a valuable tool for software development? Because building the wrong thing can be incredibly expensive. This is especially true for startups. When you have previous little resources, you can’t afford to build the wrong thing.
We raised some money from friends & family
A previous client of mine wanted to partner on a software project. He had a strong network and we raised $400k. We got accepted into Miratech’s R&D for Equity program and flew to Kiev to work with their developers.
What I learned
Manager your burn rate.
It’s a classic pitfall for startups. Money is a precious commodity for growth and if you run out, you’re stuck. We fell victim to feature-creep and failed to get a finished product into the market before running out of cash.
Focus on outcomes over output
Making a sweet app if a nice goal. Except it’s not. Your future customers don’t care about all the bells and whistles if you’re not helping them achieve their jobs-to-be-done. Outcomes are any user behavior that drive business results.
Have a North-star metric
Knowing what to focus on is incredibly important for all software endeavors because the sky can often be the limit. That’s where a north-star metric comes in handy. For us, it would have been number of dates booked. For Youtube, it’s the number of times the play button is pressed.