These years gave us a lot and cost us a lot. Some things remained though — passion and perseverance. The experience we gained cannot be bought for money, researched in books or listened to at conferences. One has to live it, work hard and keep pushing the limits every day, taking advice from those who are better and learning from one’s own mistakes along the way. It’s critical not to lose devotion, even after several clients reject your product because they think they don’t need it: there are still numbers of others to whom Costlocker represents real value and who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars per month for.
The knowledge that you’re working on something that really helps someone gives you the strength and determination to continue and progressively improve it. It’s often the small things that show you it’s worth it — such as an email from a client who sends you a photo from a conference, where he persuasively talked about how Costlocker helps them with the financial management and evaluation of projects. We’ve come a long way and already made sure that Costlocker definitely has its place on the market.
This year’s challenge
So why am I writing about all this? It’s because we’re currently on the verge of a new stage. My biggest delight is that very early this year, we’ve been able to assemble a new team. A coordinated and experienced team, which we’ll be introducing very soon. This team will enable us to do things we only dreamt about last year.
Just imagine — only last year, our customers sent us 800 suggestions for improvements — and we were able to do almost nothing about it, simply because we didn’t have a dedicated team that could fully focus on Costlocker development. However, things are in motion already, and since the beginning of the year, we’ve been working on lots of improvements that we’re currently testing and getting ready to roll out.
Probably wondering what we’ve improved, right? Let’s mention the capability of advanced filtering through tags (include / exclude), bulk editing of timesheet entries (deleting, editing, moving), or the option to add all people to a project at the same time.
Because we already have quite a good image of our customers’ problems and wishes, as well as about the current app version limitations, we’ve decided to launch a new version, Costlocker 3.0. This will be no facelift, however. We’re going to take it from the ground up.
Our ambition is to document everything about this journey and let you peek under the hood. We want to show you the methods we work with, describe the mistakes we make and share our little victories as well. We want to inspire those of you who, like us, are working on your own product. Just watch our blog or become our fan on Facebook or Twitter.
We’ll soon describe the first phase — customer interviews — and what benefits it brought us.
Long live the year of the Rooster!
