Monthly Retrospective - July 2024

By Max Sherman ยท Aug 8, 2024

I'm hiring

Stats

  • Not sure how many hours worked
  • Streamed 0 hours on Twitch (-100% M/M)
  • Stripe payouts $1,738.06 (+49% M/M)
  • 475 Twitter followers (+8% M/M)
  • 171 Twitch followers (0% M/M)

I'm going to experiment with a new format for these retrospectives. My goal is to be slightly more expository so it's easier to write them. I also will likely ditch the grading template I've been following.

Hired an engineer

Last month, I wrote 'I'm optimistic that having more help on the engineering is going to accelerate the growth of the business dramatically.'

I hired an engineer on July 8, and it's been a good experience so far. Work doesn't happen as fast as it needs to yet, but I can see a world where I hire more, build out an engineering organization, and then things will go much faster. It's been very gratifying to see that work gets done even when I don't do it. It also helps motivate me to work when I can act in reaction to something, for example having code reviews requested.

I've also noticed that I need to spend more time thinking about developer experience/process type tasks, but these have been slowly getting ironed out, and I think will be mostly one-time-costs that subsequent employees won't need to worry about.

What else happened

  • We successfully migrated Stripe accounts after I set up a new one with Stripe Atlas.
  • Added a feature to regenerate minutes with feedback
  • Lowered the USD price to $15/$25.
  • Grew by $400 MRR, 2-4x'ing our normal M/M MRR growth
  • Set up Github, started tracking work in Issues
  • Started working on a paywall abandonment email campaign

Pay as you go pricing

I think we can increase paywall conversions by offering a pay as you go option that is not a subscription. I want to test this soon. Another nice element of this would be that we can offer preferred rates for subscribers.

For example, $7/hr on the free tier, $4/hr on Basic, and $1/hr on Pro.

We can also add a calculator to the landing page where users put in their meeting frequency, and we tell them the most economical plan.

Other things I want to do

  • Optimize time to paywall
  • Collect feedback from regenerate minutes prompts
  • Build a referral system
  • Ship paywall abandonment emails
  • Automatically collect testimonials
  • Let users "try the product on the landing page"
  • Hire another engineer

Goals for August

  • Hire and onboard another engineer
  • Ship two major features