The Bootstrapped Product
Welcome to part 2 of my bootstrapper’s diary, In part 1 I outlined what the aims and plans for this series were, and you can catch up on those here but in short I plan to create a series of different bootstrapped products.
To recap I chose to build a Micro Saas and decided that my target market for my bootstrapped product would be Freelancers and the pain I was planning to solve was cash flow.
To solve the cash flow problem, I am going to make a Micro Saas based on my personal system for managing cash flow.
The System
Firstly let me explain what my system doesn’t do. It doesn’t work with bank accounts or keeping track of monies held in bank accounts. It is more to do with knowing at any one time what work I have booked in, any invoices that need raising and What invoices I have outstanding. It also deals with what up and coming leads I have and helps me stay on top of that.
How it Works
I will outline my system here, and it is very simple. It consists of 4 lists one each for:
Leads
The Leads List has leads with amounts that I have either sent to clients or discussed. I also have estimated dates against leads and a date to follow up.
Booked
The booked List has work that has been booked in with prices and dates.
To Invoice
The “To invoice” List has projects that need an invoice raising with amounts.
Invoiced
The Invoiced List has all the outstanding invoices with amounts and due date.
All the lists also have a total value so that I know by glancing at my system where I am with cash flow. It helps me chase up leads, make sure invoices get issued and more importantly check when invoices are overdue and pursue any late payments right away.
This system is very simple, but it has helped stay me in business for the last ten years. In addition to the four list’s above, I have monthly lists containing what work had been booked and paid for each month which helps me look back and make decisions on holidays, etc.
The Challenge
Turning this system into a product is a challenge that I have been looking into for some time, and I have had a few attempts at designing a User Interface for it in the past (I am not a designer).
Below is an example of a design I did for this idea back in 2013.
With this product, I had always struggled with how to lay it out in a way that would make sense and was quick to manage and allow the user view what they needed quickly until one day I had a eureka moment 🙂
The story goes like this, I was looking for a way to manage projects, and it needed to be simple, be able to be picked up quickly and easy to administer. In my research, I came across people using Kanban systems and one thing led to another and I realised my cash flow system was essentially a Kanban system with different bins for Leads, Booked, To Invoice and Invoiced.
Now there are many different Kanban software solutions out there, and the User Interface pattern for these has pretty much become standard, this is the direction I am taking with the design.
The design below is for my MVP and uses a drag and drop system for moving projects between bins.
So what is the product going to be called
Drum roll, please
Kanban Cash Flow, so not only had Kanban given me a direction for the project but it had given me the name too. As you can imagine trying to find a name for a cash flow product with a domain that was still available was not easy. Thankfully Kanban Cash Flow solves this, and I was able to buy the domain too.
What next?
Now that I have a name, a domain name and design for my MVP, I needed a landing page. I have set one up on kanbancashflow.com, and you can sign up to my launch list there right now.
Stay tuned for next week’s post where I will share my story in building the MVP for Kanban Cash Flow.
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