Let's start the week off right!
Saturday morning, I grabbed my usual cup of tea, and started to catch up on what I missed in internet land - the usual routine. However...
Saturday morning, I grabbed my usual cup of tea, and started to catch up on what I missed in internet land - the usual routine. However...
š A very good morning to you!
I hope you had a spectacular, restful, and productive weekend; but if you didnāt, why not, and how can you the next one better?
I must confess, originally I was struggling to think of things to write about for this newsletter. I was thinking about it all of last week. How can I be succinct, deliver value and keep it interesting? I love writing, so I thought Iād give it a crack with what comes naturally to me.
Thereās a feedback form link at the bottom of this email - when you have a chance, I would greatly appreciate it if you could let me know your thoughts, and how I could improve?
With that, letās get cracking. š
I woke up Saturday morning, grabbed my usual cup of tea, and started to catch up on what I missed in internet land - the usual routine. However, it wasnāt soon after I got a text message from Observer alerting me that one of the production services for Imperial Wealth went down - a critical piece of infrastructure that powers many of our most valuable offerings.
What used to happen was Iād get a frantic call from a director, who had been fielding questions and concern from our customer base, and Iād rush to get a patch together before too many people had missed opportunities.
Not this morning.
Rather, even before clients realized, I was on AWS restarting servers, reading logs, and pushing a fix. Next thing I know, Bing!, Observer had sent me another message to let me know that the service was back up.
When I first started as CTO at this company, it was all about speed. Speed to iterate, to release, to get onto the next project. Admittedly, weāve got some tech debt to pay off, but thatās the price of small, agile teams with ambitions of taking over the world.
(For the uninitiated, ātech debtā refers to the additional work that youāll need to do or things you will need to fix for the sake of getting something done faster)
Weāre now starting to pay it off, but for me, the knowledge that Iāll be warned about a service having an issue is something that really helps me sleep at night. No more need to rely on clients to be our canaries. š
Service, server, and API monitoring make sense for the tech world, but this newsletter is filled with people from all walks of life - I would love to know how you are monitoring the important things in your world. Please, let me know!
Iām very excited to say that for those already on the platform, itās only getting better. This week weāre releasing three major, and much needed upgrades:
(name certainly pendingā¦)
Iāve had questions about what startup is coming for Mayās installment of 12 startups in 12 months. Iām excited to share that this monthās efforts have been around political transparency.
snoooooooore š“ - I know, I know; I like to think of myself as a politically-charged person (read: someone who thinks that done right, a great chance can come from our parliament), but I definitely agree, the lead up to elections can be a little much. However, this isnāt meant to change your vote.
This monthās SAP (startup, app, or program) is about helping you connect with your representative.
When you sign up, youāll be able to take a simple quiz on issues that have gone through parliament. Weāll then show you how well your representativeā¦ well, represents you.
When they are on something, youāll get a push notification explaining the topic, the issue, and ask how youād vote on it - then weāll show you how they voted.
This has come out of my spite for the media circus, the āX-Factorā-like performance our politics has become. Politics, as aptly summarized by Adam Bandt, āshould be a contest of big ideas that will change our lives for the better.ā I couldnāt agree more with this statement, and rather than just complain, I want to have a shot at giving people a different way to engage with their representative that is more substantive than Facebook and billboard advertising.
I would really love to hear your feedback on this - whether youāre politically charged like me, or you couldnāt give two hoots, let me know (reply to this email)!
I have always found that my most used project ideas come from problems that I solve for myself. Recently, in my talk Concept to Production, I spoke about how to have good ideas.
One of the easiest ways to find problems to solve is to be conscious in our day-to-day lives. Find better and different ways to do things youāre already doing.
As I rebuild yFocus āļø, I canāt wait to be able to use the platform to help validate ideas even before I start them. However, how can I stay customer-driven once the idea is launched?
I always tell my mentees to listen to their customers for the features that matter to them - build your roadmap lean, fast, and focused.
Itās got me thinkingā¦ more to come on this.
If youāve made it this far - thank you! ā¤ļø It would mean so much to me if you could fill out this feedback form. Itās a quick one, promise. I want to make sure this is interesting for you and find ways that I can improve.
I hope you have an awesome week. Thanks for starting it with me. ā¤ļø