Category: Running a Business

I’ve just launched Bidsketch!

It’s been a very exciting day today. Last night I was starting to get nervous thinking that no one would sign up for either the premium or free accounts. The premium is just $9/month which is really low, but it’ll be going up in three days.

The URL currently is:

http://launch.bidsketch.com

Signups have completely exceeded my expectations, and the feedback I’ve received has been awesome. I’m feeling pretty good about things right now 🙂

Anyways, I’m taking the rest of the night off but I’ll follow up with a post about my launch strategy later.

It just hit me that this will be the last post that I put in the “Before Launch” blog category. 🙂

So it’s been a few days since I posted the big news about my first acquisition. The last few days I’ve been lost in emails, tweets, and survey results.

At this point I have two proposal SaaS based apps that focus on designers. Obviously lots of overlap and I’m not going to be able to keep every part of both of these apps.

All of my research has led me to these conclusions about SixCentral:

• Users are disappointed in the lack of proposal features.
• Some people like invoicing built in, others would prefer integration to apps like Freshbooks.
• Client portal is a great feature.
• Users are disappointed in the lack of proposal features.

I repeated the lack of proposal features item twice because it’s the one most people are talking about. This is exactly where Bidsketch shines, so I’ve decided to move forward with Bidsketch as version 2 of SixCentral. I’m going to add some of the missing SixCentral features into Bidsketch to give users the best of both apps.

My decision was based on the fact that the proposal creation features that people want took a very long time to build into Bidsketch. It’s much easier (and faster) to add invoicing and a client portal to Bidsketch.

Which brand will I be using? Not sure right now. I still have some more thinking to do but I’ll post an update once I’ve decided.

In the meantime I’ll be focusing on getting ready for the official Bidsketch pre-launch! 🙂

These days I’m pretty busy wrapping up Bidsketch so I’ll just post a quick update on how I’m getting ready for the launch.

Initially I was going to launch to a public beta, slap a feedback form on my product and hope for great feedback. Two weeks of feedback and bug fixes/small enhancements would then put me in a place for the actual launch. 

A couple of things were making me uncomfortable about this. One of them was pricing (when to introduce or talk about it), the other was getting enough quality feedback. I’m enrolled in the Micropreneur Academy, and Rob has done this stuff a hundred times, so as usual I went to him for advice on this one. 

After talking it over with him, I came away with an awesome launch strategy. I’m even more excited about launching now; I can’t wait!

One of the things that came out of that was that changing it from a public to a private beta might help get the sort of feedback I was looking for. 

Slight Problem

One minor issue was that I recently added the option for people to opt-in to the beta when Bidsketch is ready. I found that 34 people had made their way into this list. That number is much higher than I expected, being that I added this option not too long ago. It’s actually very good thing, it means someone might actually pay for this 🙂

What was the solution?

I sent out the following email to the beta list:

Bidsketch is nearing private beta and I’m sending this email because you asked to be notified. Unfortunately I’ve received more signups for the beta than I had expected so I only have six available spots left.

If you’re really interested in giving feedback and testing the beta, please respond to this email. Everyone else will receive exclusive pre-launch access to Bidsketch before it goes live, but after the beta period.

Thanks and I’ll see you in a few weeks!

Ruben Gamez
Bidsketch – Simple proposal software made for designers.
www.bidsketch.com

 The responses I received back from that have been great — people are excited about it! I have to say that it’s extra motivating at this point to get that sort of response.