Hello All,
This update is a bit overdue and will be a template for updates to come at a monthly interval.
The sections are as follows:
TL;DR
Primary Updates
Accomplishments and Wins
Failures and Learnings
Upcoming Priorities and Planning
Asks
Gratitude
I first want to acknowledge all the help, support, and encouragement we’ve received since announcing the ACX Grant. Specific acknowledgments are in the “Gratitude” section below. I’ve gotten great feedback and spoken with some very thoughtful current and future collaborators. All signals have been positive, and progress is ramping up.
TL;DR
For the past month, we’ve defined, re-designed, and restructured how Spartacus.app will work on web and mobile, including all of the features and settings we’ll include in the MVP and several more in the roadmap.
One of the trickiest issues - how to incorporate high-grade data privacy and security mechanisms to protect user anonymity while preventing fake accounts and bot problems, has (hopefully) been worked out.
We plan to have the MVP operational by April 30 and ready for closed beta testing.
We’ll be applying to the Summer ’24 YC batch.
We’ve received additional standing offers of angel investment.
Primary Updates
Here’s an overview of how Spartacus is shaping up:
After a lot of learning-by-doing, it turns out (according to a UX/UI design consultant we’re working with) that we won’t have to allocate a huge portion of our budget to hire a designer for a high-fidelity prototype, saving us many thousands of dollars. Our current designs, coupled with limiting ourselves to using pre-existing UX/UI libraries and continuing to receive some excellent consulting, means we don’t require the level of visual customization that would normally necessitate a high-fidelity Figma project. We will need some ad-hoc help, but building a fancy mock-up of the web app is not required.
Our user flows and user stories are about 80% complete. Most of what remains is minutiae, such as transitions, transactional message screens, state changes, notification message screens (in-app and text/email), and error message screens. A few alternate user journeys need to be built out.
Here’s a breakdown:
Complete
Main User Journeys
Create public campaign
Create private campaign
Create local/in-person campaign
Join public campaign
Join private campaign
Join local/in-person campaign
Campaign Dashboard
Account Management/Settings
Misc Features and Options
2-factor authentication
Unique User ID Verification
Custom Risk Tolerance
Search/Browse
Create from template
Remaining:
AI-assisted content generation
Chain of Trust Referral system
Participant Forum / Polls
Monetization
Accomplishments and Wins
After sufficient research on UX/UI best practices and being as thorough as possible at my current (and growing) level of competence, I found that we don’t need nearly as much outside help in this area as we thought. This saves us a lot of money for higher-leverage projects, tasks, and expenses. It also allows us to pull in the development timeline instead of waiting for the design project to be complete.
Failures and Learnings
The past 6 weeks have hammered home exactly how much of a productivity bottleneck not having a division of labor can be. There’s an endless, mounting list of to-dos involved in getting a startup off the ground, and if each one requires my full attention, it puts everything else on hold for however long that task takes. It’s a single-lane traffic jam that’s already become unsustainable based on the simple math of to-dos multiplying faster than I can complete them. This has caused many avoidable slowdowns that I plan to remedy ASAP, as detailed in the “Asks” section below.
It’s also difficult to move fast when operating outside your expertise and constantly context-switching. I’m unwilling to make uninformed consequential decisions that may come back to haunt the project because I neglected to consider unknown unknowns. Absent having a pre-built team of vetted and committed collaborators with diverse skill sets, I’ve needed to seek out expert opinions on an ad-hoc basis and decide how to adjudicate when those opinions conflict.
Mistakes are inevitable, but one rule I try to live by is to avoid DUMB mistakes (mistakes of haste, negligence, or arrogance), which means I have to acquire at least enough knowledge about my options to have the confidence I’m not making one. This is time-consuming.
Luckily, I’ve encountered nothing but generosity when reaching out for help and advice, and I’m fortunate to have a network of accomplished friends and former colleagues to tap into. Figuring out who can help with what and finding new sources of expertise takes time. The bigger our network of helpers and collaborators grows, the faster decisions can be made going forward.
Upcoming Priorities and Planning
Team
The search for a full-time committed co-founder is ongoing. We don’t have plans to add full-time team members in the short term, but there are plenty of opportunities for freelance paid and volunteer work (see “Asks” below)
Growth
Our prioritization of design and building has meant that growth-generating activity has taken a back seat. This will change soon - I will actively shift to doing more aggressive outreach and bring help on board to assist with posting content, social media engagement, and scouting beta testers, early adopters, signal boosters, and advisors.
No, we are not making the common mistake of overbuilding before we validate our product's usefulness. I know from a multitude of interviews and feedback sessions that the Proof-of-Concept was not robust enough for real-world use cases. The MVP is the minimally viable instantiation of Spartacus that can deliver value.
Our goal over the coming weeks is to populate a waitlist for the first cohort of users and carefully manage the launch and progress of specific campaigns, several of which will be turned into case studies.
Product
April 30: MVP ready for private beta testing.
Misc
Applying to the upcoming YC program.
Investigating alternative accelerator programs.
Bringing new freelancers, interns, and volunteers on board for misc projects.
Asks
We have a variety of miscellaneous projects and tasks that we’re looking to outsource/delegate. Depending on the scope of work involved, many of these can be PAID gigs. Some of them could evolve into full-time roles if everything goes really well.
Grant Research:
We want to find out what other grants we might be eligible for. We need help researching and indexing grant-giving organizations whose missions would make them inclined to fund social impact projects like Spartacus.
Accelerator Research:
There are many programs outside of the YCs and Techstars of the world that we may nonetheless be a good fit for. I don’t have the time to do all the research and prepare applications. We could use some help identifying and applying to other suitable options.
Social Media/PR/Signal Boosting:
Right now, Spartacus doesn’t have a strong social media presence, and I don’t have the online clout to do the signal-boosting necessary to generate word-of-mouth momentum. While I intend to be much more active in cultivating this, I don’t have the time to do it alone. We need help with growing an audience, posting content, engaging with high-profile accounts, and becoming a known quantity in relevant online communities and groups so that when the time comes to launch the MVP officially, we can leverage that visibility.
Outreach:
We need to contact and schedule meetings with hundreds of potential early adopters. I’ll be doing a lot of this work, but it would be foolish not to augment my efforts. We’ll be reaching out via LinkedIn, X, Instagram…any and all means to contact folks who match our ideal user profiles to generate a healthy waitlist for the MVP.
Website Revisions:
The current site at Spartacus.app has served our purposes as an introduction to the concept and a place to host the Airtable proof of concept. We’ll need a more comprehensive site in preparation for the web app launch. We can do this work ourselves, but we would be open to outsourcing.
SEO:
It's not a near-term priority, but we’ll need help with SEO to capture inbound interest from search inquiries into the use cases we’re targeting.
Brainstorming and Red-Teaming:
We want to hear from anyone with thoughts on coordination problems they care about. These can range from trivial group decision-making paradoxes to moonshot global-scale problems. We also want to engage with skeptics sensitive to user concerns or problem areas to which we may not be giving sufficient attention.
Gratitude
Thank you, Patrick Purvis, for your incredibly thoughtful feedback and support.
Thank you, Josh Lee, for your guidance and expertise.
Thank you, Arsen Yeremin, Sean Gartland, Lance Ding, Zach Oliver, Charles Blass, James Grom, Leo Ratte, Tomasz Steifer, Dony Christie, Jamie Pond and many others, for your help and support, current and future.
Thank you, Tetra, for bearing with me so far.
That’s it for now! Expect the next update in early May.