Qajack on YouTube & Twitter
We will be continualy posting selected TOP ANSWERS from qajack to the Qajacker youtube channel.
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/user/Qajackers
Make sure you are also following us on Twitter:Â http://twitter.com/qajack
Week One?
Why the ‘?’ in the Title? Because it’s time for a little Qajack self-analysis, or compulsive gambling introspection and reflection if you will.
We’re a week post-soft-launch and this is what we’ve learned, in no particular order:
Video Q&A… it’s so much more than that, with 100 users the platform will take on a whole new life.
We gotta change the Hello page, people don’t get what it’s about, I get that and I geddit - we’re on it.
I’m nearly bankrupt and now charged with testing the Qajack loan system.
Why is co-founder Daniel the best Qajacker? He gives answers so good they make me weep, and all with the same deadpan intonation… genius.
I hadn’t realised other co-founder David was so ‘right-on’ , damnation man, get yourself to a pharmacy and take something manufactured! Qajack needs you!
Marketing a start-up is damn hard.
My wife is actually using it which means she won’t leave me, though she hasn’t said that in so many words.
God love early adopters, I would adopt you all and then sell you to Madonna.
Giving Baby Up For Adoption - Launch Day
So on Monday we launched Qajack. Treat her well and pay her lots of attention and she’ll reward you. Stick a dummy in and you’ll find social services have taken her away.
David is sleep deprived and wakes up screaming when he does sleep, scaring his wife.
Daniel has suspected carpal tunnel syndrome and a cat that eats all his food.
I need to poop a lot, which is down to nervous excitement or bad eggs.
I think it’s 12 months since we first started this process talking about a video dating site, then video wall Facebook App, via a Football fan site and sign language community, until we settled on Q&A with some video steroids and gaming mechanics.
I’ve written executive summaries (we’re on v.9.1 now), whored myself at tech conventions, talked to VC’s, nearly snared an angel and we’ve all juggled hectic day pay jobs.
We bootstrapped with old boots, a kindly grandparent and selling pretty much everything we owned.
My wife has threatened to leave me, until I persuaded her I could make iPhone Apps for comedians to pay the bills and feed our kids. All the while Qajack bubbled away. We talked about a launch in July 08, what were we thinking?! We’ve iterated, procrastinated (mostly me), master…ed the art of UI simplicity and like feral parents bombed on smack we’re now giving our child up for adoption.
So come and take a look, whilst the parents are pooped, stressed, narcoleptics, the kid is kinda cute and very clever. She’s like Che Guevara and Monica Bellucci’s love child, if such a thing were even possible.
If Twitter is about brevity and inanity, Qajack is about authenticity and rich relevance.
Social experiment? or Social phenomena? Whatever the outcome we’ve built something we’re damn proud off.
Procrastination…
… is one word for it, perfectionist is another. A handy visual guide to not realising your start-up shower idea, or should that be shower start-up idea? as it seems a lot of entrepreneurs have ideas whilst lathering up.
Iterate, iterate, iterate…
Qajack is 9 months old, which means it’s about ready to be born, in fact it’s overdue so we’re looking at inducing it. Except a lot can change in 9 months and it has.
Live video is near completion, private testing has thrown up some very interesting feedback and we’re about to significantly re-think the beta product.
We’re making changes or we’re suffering stage fright, therein lies the start-up dilemma. 9 months ago when David, Daniel and I talked about gaming mechanics, the immediacy of video and re-inventing the over subscribed Q & A site - we mapped out a clear path and planned to launch in July of last year.
Things changed, when you can change things because there’s no client involved and you’re spending your own money, you do… a lot. Whereas video began as our true differentiator, it was swiftly surpassed in my eyes at least by the notion of a game about what you know.
In the background, the economy crumbled and Twitter reached uber fandom status. Seemingly un-connected events? No, it meant our video heavy baby would be costly to run, we set no limit on video length, we aimed highbrow, we aimed for genuinely informative, and maybe, we aimed niche. We also had an ad based business model which meant we’d be pre-money for a while and thus need finance to support the growing user base.
No money, but video as key component, meant we needed a re-think.
I began dabbling in Twitter in May of last year, but initially struggled to know what the hell to write. What am I doing? Getting sick of 140 character missives about drinking coffee. But I could see it’s appeal, it was my Facebook update on steroids and how I delighted in penning such witty bon mots as Enjoying Steve’s marmalade (trust me it made sense at the time and note to Steve, more whiskey in the marmalade). It also made real-time the new buzz phrase and I love a buzz phrase, social media anyone?
Twitter’s model is also a good one to follow, they have certainly popularized swift api release to enable people to build services around your own. They also succinctly captured the mood for brevity online. WE truly are the time poor attention deficit generation.
Twitter is also the first major crossover mobile application. Applications like Twinkle for the iPhone are demonstrative of how a single personal feed is the future of interface design. With Qajack we always talked of mobile being the primary interface in the future.
So we’ve reached a big decision, to either roll out what we have, now with only minimal funds to sustain it until we attract angel investment or we take what’ve got and re-package it for the webosphere in late February 09 and create a video crunched real-time social media game.
It helps that David, Daniel and myself all adhere to the 37Signals, Getting Real ethos, which is to iterate, iterate, iterate.
Whilst I have always had absolute confidence in Qajack I now also have a feeling that we’re going to launch something ground breaking and to coin business plan parlance, we’re building something disruptive.
Now to set ourselves a deadline of 2 months to test, beta and launch Qajack, write a business plan and find some kindly angel to invest.
No pressure then!
Qajack - Teaser
Here it is in all it’s glory, now no longer featuring my 3 year old daughter as David and I both concurred it looked like she was being held for ransom.
It is literally a teaser, Qajack is teasing me.
Full disclaimer I’M BIASED, but it’s going to be a game changer, fusing information exchange and search with game play and social networking.
We’re days away from internal testing, now video has been implemented and then weeks away from opening it up to beta testers and then, all being well, we’re going to push forward with open beta and encourage everyone to play with what they know, even if it’s just stuff about Britney, Brangelina, TomKat and Pocks (I made that one up, Posh n’ Becks?).
Thanks to everyone who contributed video.
Qajack - The Teaser from David Okuniev on Vimeo.
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