21 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F6

Here we are! The final progress, problems, plans (PPP) post of 2021. It’s been a brilliant two weeks (and a brilliant quarter). We still have a few loose ends to tie up after Christmas. But are on track to reach our ambitious goal to have Mayday Recharger live by the end of the year. I’m so excited for 2022! Here’s the latest fortnightly 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:

• Complete the build of the first version of Mayday Recharger so that it can be used by initial users - on track for end of year target;

• Complete the setup of our social media and website, including related items like our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy - on track for end of year;

• Choose and get everything in place with my five businesses for Partnering Accountants: Amplification, so that we can start working together from January - met;

• Decide on and start working with a writer for the Xero related content for our target customers - met

Progress

It’s been a really exciting and manageably hectic last two weeks:

• We’ve completed the initial build of Mayday Recharger and are now bug fixing and tweaking. We built in some automated unit tests as part of the product. I’ve also been busy extensively manually testing the product (see screenshot below). It’s looking superb. I’m fortunate that I get to experience it in a great way. Having not been actively involved in writing the code. I get to see it as a grand unveil. It’s so thrilling to see six months of work and planning come to life. There are bugs - there are always lots of bugs in the initial internal version of a new product. I’ve learnt the most important thing is to document meticulously the steps I went through that led to encountering the bug. And also to think with the widest possible frame of all the different ways in which someone could use the product. As well as all of the things that could change that might impact it - e.g. someone changing or deleting something in Xero, the accounting system we’re integrating with to start, which has a knock-on impact on Mayday Recharger. I really enjoy the testing side of things and trying to conceive of these scenarios. And then seeing the relevant changes quickly made and improved in the product. There is an unrivalled steep trajectory of product progress at the stage we’re at, which is thrilling; 

• We’ve now finished our work with William, who we’ve been working with as a contract Software Engineer for the last two months. Having his help has been invaluable. He was kind enough to stay on for a couple of extra days to get us where we needed to, which was really good of him;

• Our waitlist continues to grow. We’re now over 20 people on it which is fantastic - lots of people in for a start of 2022 treat when it comes to their intercompany recharges!;

• We’re making great progress on getting our website live to go with our launch. We’ve got a great combination of funny (I think!) graphics that we’ve been using to build out our social media presence on LinkedIn and Twitter. We’re already over 100 followers on LinkedIn, which I’m happy with pre-launch. We’re a bit further behind on Twitter followers;

• Feels like we’ve lucked out in finding Alice, the second year university student we’re working with. She’s done a brilliant job on the social media graphics. And has now taken the lead on building out our website using the Wix template we’ve selected. This has been a brilliant bonus, enabling me to be able to focus on the Mayday Recharger product testing without needing to deeply immerse myself in simultaneously learning another product in Wix;

• Delighted to have got everything in place for my Partnering Accountants: Amplification coaching programme that I am going to spend up to 20% of my time on for the first half of 2022. Got some brilliant businesses who I’m really excited to work with. And this means I’m not in a situation where I need to raise investment for Mayday in order to pay bills at home. Which is a really welcome flexibility;

• We’ve found an accountant to work with to help write the Xero related content for our target customers on other relevant software product categories for them. We’re going to kick that off in the new year;

• We’ve had our SEIS advance assurance back from HMRC, which came incredibly quickly within the week that we submitted it. That’s great as it gives us the ability to move quickly to raise a small round of investment if we decide that’s the right approach post a successful launch;

• I’ve had some great feedback on the Ultimate Guide To Transfer Pricing from a broad range of transfer pricing specialists to non-specialists. We’re in great shape to take that forward in the new year. We likely won’t start publishing any transfer pricing content immediately. We want to establish Mayday Recharger and our intercompany recharge focus in peoples’ minds before we start talking more broadly about transfer pricing;

• Had a couple of really exciting introductions and conversations with transfer pricing professionals in relation to the transfer pricing team member we will want and need in 2022 as we start work on our second product. One is in his notice period after deciding he wants a career switch. There might be some opportunities for us to collaborate in the first quarter that I’m excited to explore in the new year.

Problems

• Very few. Time mainly. We haven’t had a chance to properly plan and set goals for Q1, which we’ve intended to do. That’s going to end up being a Christmas Eve virtual coffee discussion!;

• We spent $140 on an experiment boosting this LinkedIn post to a relevant audience. It got good engagement with 45 clicks but very few of those clicks converted to waiting list sign ups on our website. It will be good to try this again when we have a proper website to point the clicks to.

Plans

Goals for the next two weeks are:

• Put the finishing touches to the product and website so that we are fully launched;

• Have at least 10 businesses who are either a) already setup on Mayday Recharger, or b) have calls or meetings booked in to set them up

• Set goals for Q1;

• Personally recharge(!) ahead of what should hopefully be a very busy Q1.

That’s everything for now. Look forward to updating you in 2022! I’ll do a review of the 2021 Q4 goals in the next post. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next Progress, Problems, Plans post!