24 - Progress, Problems, Plans - F8

We’ve hit a couple of massive milestones with our first users set up and our website live. That said, it’s been a challenging couple of weeks. It feels like we’ve been wading through tar a little bit and haven’t yet got our heads properly up and into 2022 proper. With hindsight this was inevitable and I’m still thrilled with the macro level progress we’re making. Here’s the latest fortnightly progress, problems, plans (PPP) post. It covers progress and problems from building Mayday over the last two weeks.

Goals For the Last Two Weeks

These were the goals set in the previous PPP post:

• Have 10 alpha users set up and using Mayday Recharger - partially met. We’re at 5 but have a limitation that prevents us from getting to 10 at present (see below)

• Have our website live - met;

• Have moved as far as we can with the process to be approved by Xero, the initial accounting system we’re integrating with - met

• Finalise goals for Q1 that I can cover in detail in the next PPP post - not met

Progress

Lots of progress in the last two weeks:

• We’ve got 5 brilliant alpha users setup on Mayday Recharger. They’ve created their recharge groups and connected the relevant connected entity Xero (the sole accounting system we’re integrating with to begin with) accounts. It’s been fantastic to see intercompany recharge rules being created and calculations being run;

• We’re getting lots of great feedback from these alpha users. Lots of validation of the need we’re addressing. Lots more we can do to develop the product to cater to their requirements. It’s not just about the number of alpha testers, but how deeply and eagerly they are willing to engage with the product and provide feedback. We are really lucky with the 5 alpha users we have so far;

• We’ve submitted our approval with Xero to become a certified app integration with them. This is a precursor to full commercial launch. We had an incredibly useful call with one of their team on Wednesday;

• We’ve got our website live, which I’m really pleased with. For now, the call to action is to join our waitlist. Until we’re certified by Xero, we’re limited in how many Xero users can connect to us;

• In the last PPP post I mentioned our hypothesis that partnerships are going to be an important near term go to market strategy. And that I had some exciting meetings booked for next week with consolidation/reporting software applications and CFO networks - two groups that are central to that strategy. The software ones got pushed back. The two CFO network calls went brilliantly. And we have tangible next actions booked in to enable us to communicate as Mayday to both. After seeing a demo to Mayday Recharger, one even asked about angel investing in Mayday which was a nice validation;

• We’re having good discussions with a potential future transfer pricing team member. He spoke to an advisor of ours who is a retired transfer pricing partner. He was really positive in his feedback. So I’m excited to continue that conversation;

• My Partnering Accountants: Amplification coaching programme is now into its third week of the year with a cohort of four tech businesses looking to work more effectively with accountants as a channel to market. It’s going really well and I seem to be delivering them a lot of value.

Problems

• We tested the product exhaustively before setting up any alpha users. All of the different permutations for using our recharge rules and edge cases we could think of. We used fictitious demo organisations for these purposes. The thing we weren’t able to test was how the product would work, and connect with Xero, with real life organisations with extensive transaction histories. Since connecting our first alpha users on Wednesday 12 January, we’ve needed to make a lot of enhancements to how we pull data from Xero and sync with it. This is one off infrastructure work that with hindsight was inevitable. Thrilled with where we are now and that our alpha users are able to use the product as they need to;

• I mentioned in the last PPP post about Xero limiting us to 25 users prior to being a certified app. It’s actually 25 Xero separate organisations being connected. We have alpha users with 10+ organisations in their recharge group! So this limit is constraining us from bringing on the full range of alpha users we want and need. Xero have been great about this. We mentioned it to them on the call we had on Wednesday and given the nature of our product, they are hopefully going to increase our limit to 250 organisations;

• We’ve not yet got social media going for 2022. I’ve let it be crowded out.

Plans

Goals for the next two weeks are:

• Have 10 alpha users setup and using Mayday Recharger with calls booked in to setup a further 10;

• Done everything we can to be as far through the Xero app certification process;

• Finalise goals and roadmap for Q1 that I can cover in detail in the next PPP post.

And that’s that. Thanks for reading and stay tuned for the next Progress, Problems, Plans post!