It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But mostly the best.

It’s been a while since we posted an inploi progress update, and one is certainly overdue! It is fair to say that the past few months, in the run up to launch and in the ensuing weeks, has been the best of times, and the worst of times (with apologies to Dickens, and the people of pre-revolution Paris & London).

We have been working gruelling hours and spent a fair few nights in the office as we sprinted to release v1.0. Caffeine and nicotine were the order of the day. And night. More than ever before it was a case of juggling the tasks of tens of people between our little team – tweaking the app, researching and preparing pitches to journalists, lining up employers with jobs to go live, building up databases of job seekers, learning how to implement App Store Optimisation, logging feedback from private testers, fixing problems with functionality etc. etc. etc. We prepared a comprehensive plan for the run up to launch and the few weeks immediately beyond it, which laid out what everyone was expected to do. This was helpful as, when faced with a fire-hose level flow of things that needed doing, we could buckle down and focus on what had each of us had to get done.

We ran a private test period, roping in friends, family, and people who had been kind enough to register for early access. Their feedback was gathered via a Google form and logged methodically – was it a UI or a UX comment? Was it launch critical? Was it a functional problem or a matter of preference? We then drew up a triage list so that we could focus in the things we needed to fix/address in order to go live. Finally, when we were satisfied that inploi’s first iteration was ready for public consumption, the app was submitted to the app store for review by Apple’s elves. It disappeared into the black box, pending review, and emerged ready to be released. The team assembled. The button was pressed. Champagne was drunk. We had been working for months to reach this point and at long last we were going live! It was a remarkable moment – the culmination of months of hard work. We had reached base camp and felt relief that we had got here. We’d achieved a great deal on limited resources in a short amount of time, due to the sterling efforts of an all-star team.

However, above base camp towers the lofty heights of Everest – ethereal, enchanted; seemingly impossibly far away. There was no time to rest as we strapped on the crampons and marched forth to the summit. If launching one audience product is the normal ascent up the mountain, releasing and developing a marketplace solution is like climbing it during a gale. In a t-shirt. We’re making good progress though, and are now approaching our fist thousand users! People are connecting, inChats are happening, profiles are being built and jobs are being posted! It is a beautiful thing to see people using what we have built – something that was just an idea a year ago.

We’re building the future of work at inploi, bit by bit. And we’re off to a good start. Join us!

P.S. Indeed, the rest of the extract from Dickens' opening chapter has much resemblance with early startup life and bares repeating. Here it is in full:  "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."

inploi is currently raising seed funding. Please get in touch if you would like to be involved with our fundraising.

About the author: Matt de la Hey is co-founder & CEO of inploi.

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