[LRUG] Stop exchanging your time for money - seeking a long-term business partner (this is NOT a recruitment post)

[Matthew O'Riordan]

<TLDR>
In 2012 I founded a business, easyBacklog (http://easybacklog.com <http://easybacklog.com/>). It’s growing rapidly, but as I am in the process of launching Ably (https://ably.io <https://ably.io/>) I can’t invest the necessary time in easyBacklog.  I want to see easyBacklog succeed so I am looking for a business partner who wants to stop exchanging time for money and own a business that provides ongoing recurring income.
</TLDR>

Background

10 years ago I founded an agency that later became Aqueduct. Although I stopped working in the business 5 years ago (see ‘About me’ below), as part of my ongoing development work I was looking for a problem to solve. One of the problems we had in Aqueduct was that we were practicing Agile, yet our clients could never quite fully adopt Agile in the way we would have preferred. 

Our solution was to practise what we called ‘Fixed Cost Agile’ or ‘Agency Agile.’ Although our clients were willing to roll out a project in an ‘Agile’ way, they still needed to agree to a rough time line, and most importantly, to a cost that fitted with their budget.

Our original solution was to create a backlog. We story pointed the entire backlog and, together with the client, we worked out the cost based on our experience of the expected timescale. Once the project started we could always change the backlog, but were able to keep the price stable by keeping the number of stories consistent.  

easyBacklog was born out of this concept. easyBacklog is simply a backlog management tool designed primarily for Scrum Masters & Product Owners. It helps with estimation and cost control. Through the concept of snapshots & diffs, you can see how the backlog has changed and evolved over time and what impact that has had on timings and costs.  I have not come across another product like it.

Business progress to date

For the last 1.5 years, easyBacklog has remained largely dormant  in terms of development, yet its uptake and usage has consistently grown at an exponential rate.  2 years ago we had around 160 new users per month, 1 year ago almost 450 per month, and in September this year, we had 1,000 people register in one month alone. Projecting that rate 2 years forwards means we could potentially expect over 6,000 people to register each month.

And this is where things start getting interesting.

I ran a survey a few weeks ago with our customers to find out some ‘facts’ about easyBacklog. I found that: 

easyBacklog is useful to 84% of users: 44% of users said that easyBacklog was critical to their job, with a further 40% saying it was useful.
60% of users said they would be willing to pay for easyBacklog, ranging from $5 to $25 a month.
There are several features that we could add to improve easyBacklog which would be relatively easy to implement.
Our user base is international, with 27% of users from the US, 9% from the UK, and 6% from Holland & Germany respectively. Our growth potential is therefore global.
We have an amazing spread of companies using the product. Lots are individuals but we also have very large companies with over 50 people using a single account and sharing backlogs.

Outlook

I truly believe this product has potential to make some real money. With almost no effort to support it, evolve it or even market it, easyBacklog is a scalable, international product with a high proportion of users willing to pay to continue using it. 

I estimate based on the current rate of registrations that we should have 100,000 users within the next 2 years. If only 5% of those users pay $10 a month, easyBacklog will generate $50,000 a month. Given the business has just been myself so far, I believe there is real potential for the business with a full time team working on the product.

My business proposition for you

The reason I am posting here in LRUG is that I often read conversations on HackerNews and speak with people who talk about how they are willing to exchange time for money. A common complaint however is that the money they are making is not in proportion to the time they have invested.

I am offering you a way to build a business that will make you money without having to work each day, but it will require some level of sacrifice. I don’t have the time to develop easyBacklog right now, but I can’t bear to watch this opportunity go away.

What I am offering is:
I can help personally fund future development and can inject cash for marketing, design, materials if required.  
Equally, I have a genuinely interesting idea on how we can fundraise some initial working capital and raise most of the needed capital quickly.
I am happy to provide a very healthy chunk of equity in this business for someone who can make this business grow.
I will help with marketing, product development strategy, UX & UI, and technical discussions, although I cannot work on this full time.

What I am looking for is:
A strong full stack Rails developer who is not shy to think beyond code. The user experience, support, and communication with customers is paramount to the product’s success, so unless you can think beyond the code you deliver, this is not for you. Our stack is primarily Rails & BackboneJS.
Someone who is willing to earn a modest income while we build a business so that they can truly free themselves of the time for money burden. I am not interested in someone who is not willing to sacrifice something for this long-term goal.
Someone who can focus on this full time for at least 18 months to fully gauge if we can turn easyBacklog into a profitable revenue generating business. I appreciate everything needs to have a time limit, so my expectation would not be beyond that period if we have not been able to make it work.
Someone who has the stomach to participate in both the upside and downside of growing a business.

Next steps
If you are interested, please contact me and lets chat.

Email: matt at easybacklog.com <mailto:matt at easybacklog.com>
Skype: freeflymatt
Phone: 0793 534 713

**NB: Recruiters, please do not contact me**

About me

Co-founder and ongoing shareholder of Aqueduct, http://aqueduct.co.uk <http://aqueduct.co.uk/> 
CEO & CTO of Lemon from 2003 to 2007
Acquired by Aqueduct and become CTO from 2007 - 2009.
Co-founder of Econsultancy, http://econsultancy.com <http://econsultancy.com/> 
Sold to Centaur in 2013
CTO from 1999 to 2007, and then again from 2013 - 2014
Founder of easyBacklog, http://easybacklog.com <http://easybacklog.com/> 
Founder of Ably, http://ably.io <http://ably.io/> 

Linked in profile: http://linkedin.com/in/lemon <http://linkedin.com/in/lemon> 

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