Kippa, Reminders for Microsoft Teams.
The first post in this series introduced the course and this series of posts. The course, Take Control: Seven Steps to Independence© can be download for free without registering. This series of posts provides a practical example of how we applied the course’s theory to produce Klippas Technologies inc, Kippa – Reminders for Microsoft Teams.
When Rob and I decided to launch our 7th startup in April 2020, we spent a while thinking about the pandemic suddenly placing everyone under house arrest. What could we do to make life easier for these people? Most of the world was locked down and parents of young children were wrestling with how to keep their kids occupied without exceeding screen time limits. We set the goal of thinking of a non-computer-based game or activity that anyone from three years old to eighty could do, that the whole family could participate in, be cheap to mail, and retail for around $30. And then, an inspiration! We’d design and make some plastic clips which could be used to build a complex house of playing cards. Like this
Klipping – building a house of cards with Klips
Turns out my 3D printer needed 40 hours to produce the 165 clips in one kit. A quote from a professional printing company yielded a cost of Cad$1,200. Injection moulds would have lowered the cost to $12, packaged and ready to mail $15. But the moulds were $20,000.
We gave up on the physical product idea and returned to our world of software development. Then someone asked us to build a Reminder app for Microsoft Teams. Our app, Kippa, is the result. It’s Klippas Technologies inc’s Personal Assistant for Microsoft Teams.
We used the theory in the course, to validate our idea, by asking ourselves the following questions:
- Does the idea solve a real-world problem by addressing a known and definable pain point? Kippa – Reminders for Microsoft Teams, by definition does this as many potential users have asked us to build it. But, in addition, we researched the field of Reminders for Teams, Personal Assistants for Microsoft Teams, and of course the Microsoft communities and blogs. And they all need a PDA.
- Can we slice this market into a segment we can compete in? Our research revealed Microsoft Teams has at least 60 million users (larger numbers of people use it but are not likely to buy an app). We’ve been developing software for 40 years, and are passionate about the User eXperience (UX). Our apps are easy to use, and so is Kippa – Reminders for Microsoft Teams. So yes, we believe we can compete and win in this market segment.
- Is the market sized appropriately to support our goals? We’ll happily settle for a small percentage of this market.
- Can we identify and find prospects in affordable ways? Our search for people who need a Reminder app for Microsoft Teams is on. Read the course to learn how we go about it.
- Can we design, build and deliver it? We spent the first 3 months learning the Microsoft technology stack, and then digging deeper into Teams and Azur and Javascript. We’re delighted to tell you that Kippa is alive and reminding Teams with his trunk and trumpet, while his, ahem, we’ll… his back-end does its database shuffle in Azure.
- Can we make a profit? That’s the thing about software as a service. The only expenses tied to the growth of our user base is the bill we pay Microsoft for its cloud service, Azure. Microsoft takes a cut of our revenues but handles the billing and payment. We we spend on marketing and sales, but it’s still a healthy business, especially as the base grows.
Meet Kippa-Kippa – Reminders for Microsoft Teams.
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