17 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F4

We’re on track. It’s been a really good two weeks of progress towards our plan to have a sellable version 1 of Mayday Recharger live by the end of the year. Here’s the latest fortnightly progress, problems and plans (PPP) post. It covers progress and problems from building Mayday over the last two weeks. And plans for the coming two.

Goals For The Quarter

The first PPP post provided more detail on our goals for the end of the year. To summarise, these are:

• Have a sellable version 1 of Mayday Recharger live;

• Have an initial go to market plan for Mayday Recharger and activities for Q1 of 2022;

• Have a long term technical leader/Co-Founder in place (or in notice period);

• Have an initial advisory board in place;

• Have at least one potential candidate for our future transfer pricing team member we will need for our second product;

• Have written version 1 of an intro guide to transfer pricing for startups and SMEs that can serve as a pillar piece of content for us.

Goals For the Last Two Weeks

These were the goals set in the previous PPP post:

• Maintain and increase momentum with product development of version 1 of Mayday Recharger so that we remain on track for our end of year sellable product live goal - in particular preparing demo account scenarios and starting the work to connect Mayday Recharger to Xero met;

• On track to have all website content prepared by the end of November. And have the first draft of our Ultimate Guide To Transfer Pricing for Startups & SMEs circulated for feedback - not met;

• Find some part-time elastic content writing capacity - partially met;

• Get SEO and PPC advice - met;

• Complete SEIS advance assurance application - not met;

• Find an additional great fit business for the Partnering Accountants: Amplification coaching programme I’m spending 20% of my time running - not met.

Progress

I’m a bit behind where I’d like to be on a couple of things. All are manageable delays and were in some cases conscious choices to defer. Overall I’m delighted with the progress over the last two weeks and we’re on track for our ambitious goal to have version 1 of Mayday Recharger live by the end of the year:

• The build of Mayday Recharger is going excellently. We needed to rethink the final stage of the product, where we display to our users the intra-group recharges that we’ve calculated for them. We realised this was more complex than we had originally mocked up in our Figma screenshots. We’ve come up with an elegant solution that we’re now proceeding to build. We’ve got extensive demo scenarios for testing purposes that cover a range of edge cases and complex interactions of our recharge rules. We’ve started the work to connect Mayday Recharger to Xero (see image below);

• I’ve made a lot of progress with the Ultimate Guide To Transfer Pricing for Startups & SMEs. It’s a much bigger piece of work than I anticipated. The guide needs to deliver a great base understanding to our audience of non-transfer pricing and non-tax specialists. I need to understand the content really well so as to be able to weed out what’s not important for our audience, and then explain what they do need to know in clear and simple terms. I’m so pleased I’ve done it myself. Whilst it’s taken a lot of time, it has massively enhanced my understanding of the subject. I have the final (of five) sections to write, which I will do at the start of next week. And then the first draft will be complete and I will circulate it for feedback from both transfer pricing experts as well as startup/SME finance leaders;

• We’ve made excellent progress finding elastic content capacity. I’ve realised there are two distinct areas of elastic capacity we need. One to write a series of posts about relevant categories of Xero-integrating technology products for our target customers at the largest end of Xero’s user base. The other is to write about transfer pricing and broader topics around expanding internationally as a startup/SME. For the Xero content, we need someone who knows Xero. So this will likely be an accountant or bookkeeper who enjoys writing and has capacity to do some freelance work alongside their job. For the transfer pricing and international expansion content, we’re looking for a student or recent graduate who has a business, economics and/or accounting background. From posting and connecting with people on LinkedIn, I’ve got an exciting pipeline of interest for both;

• I got some great SEO and PPC advice from a former colleague. He suggested some excellent ways we can use the content from the Ultimate Guide in other written as well as video forms;

• We had a response from the Intellectual Property Office to our trademark application for Mayday. They identified two other Mayday trademarks where there could be a potential conflict - i.e. someone else got there first and our application rejected. One is a German events company that has a festival called Mayday. The other is Amazon who had a, now discontinued, support service for the Kindle Fire called Mayday. I was aware of both beforehand and am comfortable there is no overlap. There is now a two month cooling off period where our proposed trademark is published for objections to be raised. Amazon and the German events company will be specifically notified as part of this. I spoke to a very helpful lady at the Intellectual Property Office. Apparently objections are raised in less than 5% of cases. So rather than make any revisions to our application in light of the potential conflicts, I’m confident to press ahead and hopefully our trademark will be fully registered in two months’ time;

• I’m now a couple of weeks into my Partnering Accountants: Amplification coaching programme with the two businesses I have on it so far. I’m delighted with how it’s going. They are both great businesses. Within the format I’ve designed, it feels like I’m able to deliver a lot of value with my expertise on how best to partner with accountants as a channel to market.

Problems

• I haven’t got into the broader website content yet, having prioritised the Ultimate Guide. This has been a conscious decision. I’ve broken down the broader website content so I know what’s involved. And am comfortable it’s manageable to get it all done in time for launch. In an ideal world, I’d just be a bit further ahead on it;

• I submitted an SEIS advance assurance application. I did it too quickly and consequently missed a checklist I needed to submit. I can reuse the work I did on it. But next time, less sloppiness!;

• I haven’t found an additional great fit business for the Partnering Accountants: Amplification. But equally I haven’t spent much time looking! I decided with everything else that needed to be done, it was going to take too much time to effectively prospect for this. So I’m going to focus on doing a great job for the rest of 2021 with the two businesses I’m working with right now, and then look to broaden out in 2022;

• If I look at the goals for the end of the year/quarter, there is only one where I feel like I’m fundamentally off track. That is identifying at least one potential candidate for the transfer pricing team member we will need next year for our second product. This is a classic “important but not ostensibly urgent” situation that I need to make sure I don’t let slip.

Plans

Goals for the next two weeks are:

• Maintain and increase momentum with product development of version 1 of Mayday Recharger so that we remain on track for our end of year sellable product live goal;

• Finish the first draft of the Ultimate Guide and have all website content on track for launch;

• I’m going to AccountingWebLive next week. It is the last accounting conference before we launch. I want to do the best job I can of spreading the buzz about Mayday Recharger and getting people signed up to our waitlist. I’ve got my Mayday t-shirts ordered as well as some flyers. I’m going to do this Calendly event for attendees to book in to get an exclusive demo of Recharger;

• Identify both the Xero and transfer pricing/international expansion content people for us to work with as elastic capacity;

• Resubmit our SEIS application;

• Have a new plan that I am enacting for finding our future transfer pricing team member.

That’s everything for now. Hopefully another great couple of weeks ahead as we get closer and closer to launch. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next Progress, Problems, Plans post!