Failed #5

Okay I failed, I left Delhi, a good paying job and came to Kolkata to start something of my own, to create something but I failed bad. It was not okay and comfortable to accept that I failed, but the reality is I did.
Now what?

From last 10 days I was drowning in my own darkness and heavily low in energy. I don't know what to do now and what to do next! Completely feeling lost somewhere. Talking to near by people and friends is only helping me cope up with the situation.

What are the points which led to this failure:

• I thought I would be able to start this thing but I was wrong and then I remember that one should never try to start a company all by itself, he or she needs more than one co-founder to keep the enthusiasm level high. 
• Moreover before starting up I should have done a ground study and research properly, I don't know how to conduct that as well.
• Checking whether the idea will work or not? conducting surveys and getting feedback from the potential users that whether they will be willing to pay for it or not.
• Is there any already working model (i.e. competitors). If so then that will validate that there is already a market for it, but now I should have looked that what they are offering and how they are offering? Might be my way would be incorrect.
• Location - yes it matter a lot because the mentality of the people depends as well, sometimes the community is not ready for that kind of product or service, hence one needs to identify where it will work. One can even solve this problem by educating the community about the product and services, spreading awareness about it, but the choice is always on the others hand whether to buy it or not.
• Hope - perseverance, I have less patience i.e. it would help me to go for a long run. An empire can't be built in one day, it takes time. I get fragile and impatient. I still haven't found a way how to fix this problem in me and figure out the process/ steps to follow to achieve where I want to reach.

Collectively all this has resulted in my failing, but at the end the major question is: Have I given up?

Starting-up and learning on ideation phase

Even 1 new registration fills so much of encouragement in me. When I open the form link to check how many has been registered yet, if the number remains the same as the last one then it really hurts some where, but if the number rises, then the encouragement and excitement gets multiplied with the increased number count.

Now this is dealing with a venture, when you start something there is a huge anxiety which we have and that thing spikes when there is a positive thing happening in the process. Now what to do when there isn't any positive happening and more drastically if there is a negative happening, then how you are going to deal with the your mind and fight with your anxiety.

First stop the thought because they are not going to help you anyway - meditate or best do a yoga.
Second instead of thinking useless thoughts, you need to brainstorm, now if you choose to do that in your mind box then it is of no use. Brainstorming should be in reality, not abstract. Take out a pen and paper, or white board and marker, start with writing there. Use colors (different color pens or markers), sticky notes like stuff. Don't represent your idea in a black and white fashion.

This brainstorming will help you think through the hurdles and sketch out what you may do next, hence in a separate paper list to-dos out of it.
Now, finding out how much time will it require to complete it. This is called effort estimation.
Last part, sequencing - until and unless you don't sequence it, how will you know what to do first and then after. You will be directionless.

Will soon post some image to this showing sample on how brainstorming looks like.. ;-)

Preparing the path to uncertainity

Soon I will be leaving my job to start something new in my life. Yes that's exciting as well as daunting too. Previously I was financially dependent on someone else now I have to take responsibility of my own income.
Throughout these years when I have been frustrated about not being able to make it through with an idea, now is the time when I am taking a full on complete risk to work on this venture, name: ReCoin Lab

This is a whole and sole try to entirely change the foundation of human grow in our civilized society i.e. education system. Every child goes through it, learn from it and that's where he or she get her nature shaped into.

While talking about today's education system, it's really lame and outdated, now there are a lot different sources from where a student gets to learn. Online courses, information on Facebook, video tutorials on YouTube, and etc. Lots of things are there. Now what content one needs to curate to, has become a huge question out there. One can either evolve or may get completely distracted using these information, the only thing which matters is where is the attention.

What is my vision is to convert the present way of learning i.e. where we make students sit in a closed room and expect them to be creative to making things happen in practical world and then helping them to learn, which is learning by doing.
One can understand a topic only when there is a curiosity in him or her, without actually giving a real world taste how can we generate curiosity in someone's mind!
Once this curiosity is being created, then reading about the topic, gaining theoretical knowledge will help them connect the dots.
Creating the dots is hardly done through sentences (i.e. theoretical knowledge), the impact comes from real world objects, hence practical exposure should come first and that's what ReCoin will do, flip the coin.

Habit Tracker version 0.7.4

Releasing version 0.7.0 which had the 21 days progress bar - that functionality didn't worked well. There was a slight glitch in it. Fixed it after 10 days.
My perception regarding 21 days was like keeping a challenge in-front of the user. But that didn't work. Two reason:

• 21 days should be used to build a habit, not to track something. That's the concept behind it.
• Plus, user don't know how to use the app or are not aware about the purpose of the 21 days functionality in the app.

I have decided to break the app in 3 different module. Habit building, Tracking something, & Challenge and Grow ;-)
Building this structure will take time.

First thing which I need to incorporate in the app is Tutorial - this will help user to understand what's the purpose of the app and how to use the app. The app with Tutorial version will come to the market on 2nd April 2017.

A new idea which came in my mind today was - Track with your friend. If you and your friend are tracking a same habit or an activity then both can be notified on completing it everyday i.e. when the user mark as done, this will trigger a notification to the friend, asking "your friend marked for today, have you?"
This may encourage friendly competition among two of them and hence will help them achieve the goal or task through surrounding support.

Losing motivation - next release version 0.7.0

March 17, 9:00 PM:
In the next release I was planning to release notes, one can add some notes while marking yes or no, but I dumped that plan.
Now will be releasing 21 days habit tracking functionality in the app.

March 18, 5:00 PM:
Completely loosing the motivation, why am I working on this app!!!! What is the use of it? Will this app help anyone get better?

March 19, 1:44 AM:
 Finally published the app with the 21 days challenge functionality, the concept behind this is - to adapt any habit one needs to keep doing it consistently for 21 days. Once he/ she achieve this - that means one don't need to be reminded for that habit henceforth.
Using this principle, app will encourage users to achieve the habit which they are tracking for at-least 21 days via push notification and progress bar percentage display.

Glad that even though I lost the motivation in the evening but was able to pull it off by mid-night and complete the functionality. The version 0.7.0 has been deployed and published to the market. Hope user will like it and I am gonna send a push notification asking for feedback as we are running out of motivation. Along with this I will also send a mail to all the users who has registered so far giving them a story to read and encouraging them how to take advantage of the app to achieve their goals (i.e. inculcating new habits or eliminating bad ones)

Moreover, got a chance to talk to other person who can help me with the android app development part for Habit Tracker, I have asked him to take time and put down a duration of from when and till when if possible, don't want to keep loose ends. Hope so he gets ready and multiply the output which I am doing on a weekly basis.

God bless everyone. Peace. :-)

After a tiring event, getting back to Habit Tracker

On March 14th, night:
Sometimes I think, why habit tracker?
Recently, I was in an event called Jugaadathon, a medical healthcare related hackathon. What I like the most about the event is the way it is being structured and kept forward.

Digging deep in the problem. Understanding why the problem exists, what is the impact of the problem then coming up with solution. This model is one of the helpful way to create a valuable product.

Continuing the same post on March 15th:
Coming back to habit tracking, one of the reason which I learned is user stop using the app after sometime as they loose interest out of it as the same text is being displayed on the notification bar, hence the usage of the app starts declining after few days of installing the app.
There is no on-boarding mechanism in the app as well.
Moreover to take the app to the market, once you have reached to a functional milestone then you can start asking people in your network to download the app and test it. If one doesn't market the app or the product or the services then it is really difficult to expect or set goal of # of downloads within a targeted date.
Today as in 15th March, I want to cross 100 downloads on Playstore, right now it is 72 and I have 47 users registered. By the end of the day I want to acquire 100 users and cross 100 downloads as well. Let's see if that happens.
Just calculating in my mind that do I need to do something in the app before spreading it in the market?
Will try to keep it minimal so that I can start sharing the app with users as soon as possible. This much for now, will update at night where I reached.

Release and the struggle with Habit Tracker version 0.6.0

It's 1:06 AM and few hours back we released the version 0.6.0, notified all the users that a new version is on Playstore, please download and update.
Working full Sunday to implement the functionality which we decided i.e. on click of Not Done, record that as well and mark with a light orange background for that date on calendar.

Now, made those changes along with some other changes. Without testing much, and following any protocol check, built the app and published on playstore.

The movie starts now, at 11 PM, a friend of mine, roommate, informed me about a severe bug! Damn!
It was a core functionality where we mark YES or NO on the notification everyday. On click of YES it was taking no, but NO action was working fine. Tried to think of how to solve it, but couldn't.
It was late and I had to finish off some other important task as well, status mail!!!

At 12 shifted my attention to the other task, in 30 minutes completed it. It was quite late and was feeling exhausted. Thought of going back to sleep and look at this matter tomorrow. Took a break, re-imagined the possible problems which might be happening due to which this issue is coming. At 1 AM, came up with some idea after reading some manuals and tutorials. Tried, tried, tried. It was 1:30 AM and nothing which I was able to achieve.
1:36 AM, bang!!! solved it. Checked through the code if I am missing something, forgetting something, made any changes which I should revert, tested the app twice or thrice, bug was resolved. Phewwww!
Compiled, built and yes something which I missed to revert. Rectified it, 1 line of change, compiled the code again, built it and yessss finally released on Playstore.

Lessons learned:

• Having a test case and getting it tested before generating a release version.
• Following a protocol while going or releasing to live, like version code and name is upgraded and all the FIXME block as has been fixed.
• Once released even, get it tested from couple of near by users, then send a push notification to all your users.

Finally, version 0.6.1 is out there. Khooolll!
It's 2:10 AM, off to sleep.
Good night.