RachelThis is a post just for those who are interested in following our journey.
Since my last blog post a while ago, I have been busy formalizing market research, applying for trademarks, and wrapping up a prototype version of the first product.
Market research
Great news: Teachers sound excited to try out our product after receiving a description of the product and it’s applicability in a wide variety of STEM fields.
More great news: More than half of our 400 market research respondents are keen on (very or extremely interested in) getting a copy too!
We have a few trailblazing teachers willing to test prototypes in the classroom locally and give us feedback to improve the design or experience. So far as we have control over it, we will have these to hand out in the Spring!
Depending on the price of prototypes we will be seeking individuals for prototype testing as well. I am drafting a signup page for testers now.
As an aside, I was surprised to find a distinct gender difference in expected pricing. Males generally estimated the price 33% higher than females. Why do you think that is?
Trademarks
Other time has been critically spent applying for trademarks. If you’ve done this before you can understand that with our limited capital, we did choke a bit on requiring THREE class codes. At this point everything has been submitted and we are saving up for the product name…
Email list coming soon. Very soon.
And finally, why do we not have an email list yet?! I went to set this up a while back and discovered a few things. First, anti-SPAM laws in the United States require a physical address at the bottom of the email. Huh. Since we work from home at this point and don’t have office space or warehouse space yet, that felt awkward. In the end, we signed up for iPostal1. Hence if you map us you will be very confused.
Second, I had to learn about SPAM and email validation. DMARC and SPF. I had never heard of these but now have set them up so you can actually receive our emails! And then did it some more with MailChimp so that, once again, you can receive our emails. Without these set, it is pretty much direct-to-SPAM mail.
Now that the physical address and security / validation issues have been squared away I have been orienting myself with actually sending out newsletters. I want it to work right by the time I add a signup to the website! Look forward to that very soon. This is just me on part time of part time so things take longer that I’d hope sometimes, but all good things are worth doing, even if they take a while!
Cheers and thanks for reading!