
Show HN: TakeAim – Expose your team's daily aims - bmark757
http://takeaim.io
======
bmark757
Hey, cofounders of TakeAim here.

We work for a small startup in SF and have been part of its growth from 4 to
40 employees. As it grew, we felt less connected to the company, and had less
opportunity to affect various projects and details of the business. We missed
that. We went from a single team standup of the whole company to multiple
different standups segmented by function. We saw a problem and decided we
wanted a solution.

We built a side project within 6 months and got buy-in and usage from our
current company. In fact, they ended up paying for it. We couldn't keep up the
nights and weekends though and worked on it less and less. While we still had
the 1 happy paying customer, we failed to get any more to stick. After a few
months of little to no work on it, we decided we wanted to make one more push
towards user acquisition. We asked for an 8 week part-time sabbatical and
compromised for a 1 week vacation. We are more than halfway through that week
and are still struggling to gain traction.

Here is what we have tried:

Cold emailing product managers on LinkedIn Content marketing with a blog post
about a common standup Posting in related sub reddits about startups and
project management / agile Emailing past users

We don't think we are a simple standup replacement or aid, but most people
view us as that. We do support stand-ups and make them better, but does our
product do too much? Or did we solve a problem that only exists at our
company?

~~~
alooPotato
A few thoughts:

\- if you can find a way for just a single user to get value out of the
product then you don't need to convince an entire team to adopt a new tool all
at once. It could happen organically instead and over time. It would also give
you a chance to slowly help/sell that team over time.

\- the homepage doesn't really tell you what the product does. After signing
up and playing a bit I now understand. Whats your conversion rate like from
homepage visit to signup?

\- I'd suggest telling users what the process is like. I didn't (and still
don't) know whether everyone on my team gets an email every evening to fill
out the info for the next day, or is it in the morning? Do you fill out what
you did yesterday and what you plan on doing today?

\- I think every companys process is slightly different, if you are convincing
them to use a tool AND change their process you might run into difficulty.
Maybe allow for different processes. We built an inhouse replacement for
iDoneThis because we wanted something slightly different.

\- The most important question is why do you only have one customer? Do they
signup but stop using it? Do you not get enough signups? Do they signup and
never invite their team? Have you asked them why? If all of the numbers in
your funnel are really small, I would focus on the later steps. Make sure you
built a product people want. Once your activation rate is high then start
worrying about top of the funnel.

\- forget the LinkedIn cold emailing. You're in the highest density startup
city in the world, just walk right into any startup office you see and ask
them to use the product

\- Ask your engineer friends and other startups what they use and how you
could get them to use your product instead

\- We (Streak) would def use this if you adapted it to our process. I think
our needs are very close to what you have. Find more customers like us and
build what they need. Ask them to prepay you for 6-12 months for you to custom
build whatever they need (we would do this). Reach out to me at aleem at
streak.

~~~
whatdoido
Thanks for the detailed feedback! We cleaned up the homepage a bit and added a
bit more of what the product does, but its probably still missing some
details.

We will definitely reach out to you soon, thanks for the offer.

~~~
wingerlang
I thought he posted about the current page, which still isn't totally clear.
How does one input stuff, when?

It is even possible it was there, but the cards looks mostly like
"testimonials" (which they aren't) so it feels really easy to skim it.

There's also loads of "standup" tools already, which I assume this is. And do
people like standups to begin with? I don't. Some of my days are just "still
working on X".

------
andysinclair
I think your homepage needs some work. You can't see what the product is
actually like, what problem(s) it solves and what features it has.

If I want to "Get Started" I need to sign up, I want to see what it is like
first. There are no details of what you do with my email address if I sign up;
Is there a trial? What can I do if I sign up but don't pay.

Small point: when I hover over the "cards" on the homepage in Chrome, the
cards pop out slightly but the text blurs.

I wish you luck!

~~~
whatdoido
Thanks for the feedback. We agree the homepage was a bit mysterious and have
updated it with some text about our feature set.

PS - We also fixed the hover :)

------
nekopa
Just an idea (I know, I know, ideas aren't worth shit on HN :) but is this use
case possible with what you have:

I'm trying to increase my productivity at the moment, so I'm creating 3 most
important todos for the day in the morning. Can I set up a 'what I'm working
on' card and have it publicly visible through an URL? So I can send the URL to
a mentor, friend etc and they can see what I'm doing without having an
account? Like a public view option...

~~~
rchiba
Related to increasing productivity and a public view option, one thing that
Ricardo Semler brings up in his book, Maverick, that is a big productivity
boost for teams is to incorporate regular public mood feedback to allow an
individual to communicate how they are generally feeling that day to the whole
team. It can put a lot of interactions in context and is something that's been
implemented by a number of companies, could be a potentially valuable addition
to the product!

~~~
whatdoido
Great idea -- this is something we have discussed before in the past and its
great to hear some positive sentiment around it

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cpeterso
Mozilla has a somewhat similar home-grown standup tool (Standup) that takes
input from an IRC bot. The website lets readers filter by projects, teams, or
individuals. I like how TakeAim's cards highlight on people's more recent
status, where Standup is more like Twitter, where some people post frequently
and drown out others' status comments.

[https://www.standu.ps/](https://www.standu.ps/)

------
user5994461
No screenshot page. No video.

=> Closed the site without looking further.

Not sure whether the product exists or whether this is only an announce for a
future thing they are building.

~~~
bmark757
Interesting, thanks for the feedback. The cards pictured are the core of the
actual product. Do you think we should make it look more like a screenshot or
declare that it is the actual product?

~~~
user5994461
I saw the cards.

After 30s I figured that all you have to offer is the ability to write a 3x5cm
sticky note. Useless. Ain't paying for it. (not to mention redundant with
Trello)

I worked in a 50 people company and I understand the issues with following
other people's work. That is a real problem to me. A sticky note is of no
help, if there is a workflow around that thing, I don't see it and it's not
explained.

~~~
bmark757
Got it. There is more to it. We'll work on demonstrating that more on the
landing page. Thanks!

------
danielkdewar
How do you see this integrating with wider project and issue tracking tools.
Most teams already rely heavily on these. Interesting to hear how you see this
complimenting already existing project management stacks.

------
gravypod
Why does the text go blurry for me when I hover over the cards?

~~~
brashaw

      transform: scale(1.01);
    

Looks terrible in Chrome. Also looks bad in Firefox, but less so.

------
throwawayReply
You have linked an http version of your site and your login page doesn't force
https.

Even if it's a side project, security matters.

