Diary of a Startup - "In the aftermath of disaster"

by Startacus Admin

Vincent Haywood from Braqes continues his epic startup journey... Missed out so far? Don't fear! Here are quick links to Diary entries  1, 2, and 3 !

Vincent begins...

In the aftermath of disaster.

Pretty dramatic title I think.
Last week’s post was panic stations, with Google reader shutting down, a large chunk of Braqes’ functionality was put on hold.

Notice I’ve said hold. To think last week I was in a place where I was going to shut it all down and start from scratch. Many phone calls and emails sent later we are taking Braqes back into the garage and starting development on version two a whole lot earlier than expected.

Yes, we are still raising funds to make the big changes and new functionalities, but the goalposts have shifted. This is a good thing, even though official launch dates are now moving and we remain in beta, the site as it stands will become a signup page. Braqes can still work as a demo so that will still be live but hidden from view as we build on to it.

It’s a pretty big decision to take something down after spending time getting it up there. Funny thing is, I use Timehop – basically a system that emails me what I said on social channels a year on the day. The day I made the decision to take Braqes back to development was exactly a year ago I tweeted:

Finally, after over a year of development @braqesapp is ready to go into beta. Good times!

— Vincenthaywood (@vincenthaywood) July 1, 2012

Sad times. But all for good, Google reader shutting down has now moved development into creating our own equivalent of sorts. By doing so we cut out another step for our users. I have wireframed the process in creating the alerts or keyword monitoring setups and it’s going to be amazing. During my research for this I’ve discovered even more sources to achieve better ways of Braqes’ V2’s functionality.

It’s quite cool seeing the reactions to Google shutting yet another tool down, but the likes of Feedly and other tools embracing this and making an opportunity out of it has inspired us to rise to the occasion.

One of the reasons I signed up for this blog and keeping a journey was that I hoped it would show us getting closer to investment and then rolling out the new and improved version. However it looks like it’s turned into a pretty cool documentation of shit hitting the fan and how we pick ourselves up. I think the common theme running through the past entries is just to keep going, make some changes, keep moving.

Still chasing the investment, we have two potentials (if I’m optimistic) and thanks to ‘my speak to 5 people a week’ rule, it looks like I’m pitching at two investor events towards the end of the month.
A short post this week, I have to go and build a signup page now for the beta and move the main files somewhere else. Good to get my developer hat back on – might even get on a couple tutorials and code this bad boy myself. On the back of that we are still going to run our blog, start getting that indexed and gain more signups – so when V2 is good to go, everyone is waiting and excited. Well that’s the plan anyway.

Next week I should have the beta signup page ready to go – you best signup or spread the word yeah.

Stay positive, keep at it – there’s always a solution. Always.

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Published on: 10th July 2013