Aloha,
I’m looking forward to when we have our product dialed in and can really turn on the marketing heat. We’re not there yet - but every day brings us closer.
Last week, we dedicated significant effort to making sure that our corporate website is working the way we want it to. On the front end - the changes look good - but most of the work we did remains invisible because it was all about the platform, the hosting, and the little things users rarely see on the internet.
Here’s a first look: https://www.iwahai.com
As a company, we plan on building many great apps in the future. VoiceMarkr is our first. We are going to get it right. Drip by drip…the ocean fills. One of the big challenges in building a tech company from scratch without funding is making sure that the ‘drip by drip’ isn’t money going out. We are forced each day to make decisions that keep our overhead as near to zero as possible. The reason this is challenging is that there are a lot of really great services and options out there that don’t cost much - but that add up over time.
The first tech company I built found this process to be fatal. My developers told me that I needed to have this little service that cost just $6 per month or to be set up on this essential platform that was only $120 per year, or to have this ‘can’t survive without’ feature that would cost us $400 upfront but pay for itself over time. Then there were the business decisions that I didn’t know about - the cost of incorporating, the cost of consulting lawyers, the cost of taxes, the cost of accounting, the cost of promotion. With that company, I had what seems like a huge budget to play with (even though it wasn’t) and those little drip by drips just kept going and going until finally - I was put in the position of either personally funding it out of pocket or killing it. I funded it for as long as I could and then finally, I sat down and had the hard conversation with my investors - and we shut it down. I won’t lie, it felt terrible.
I learned a lot through that process however. Mainly and most importantly, I learned to keep expenses as close to nothing as possible. Maybe someday we’ll be successful enough to be working from the picture below, but not yet. For now, it makes a pretty great zoom background though! :)
My point in telling you all of that is just so you understand why we don’t have big flashy bells, expensive Adwords campaigns, or million dollar graphic design. We are boot-strapping. The good news is that by doing it this way, we don’t have to compromise and we can go at the pace we need to.
The other reason I wanted to tell you about our budget is because I wanted you to know how important you are to us. You are the earliest users and backers of this project. Thank you!
We would love to hear from you. It’s easy, just respond to this newsletter and I will get your email.
And if you could go back to Voicemarkr (formerly the Iwahai App) and let us know what you think, that would be amazing.
Finally, if you could share our app with people you know - I will be very grateful. We want to make this a product that you and your friends and family can use, want to use, and get benefit from. What would make you excited about VoiceMarkr?
I hope you all have a wonderful week.
Christopher Damitio
CEO - Iwahai, Inc.
Links to our sites and social accounts: