Why I decided on “Build in Public” for Recess?

After working 5 grueling years on my previous startup www.skedonline.com I have so many lessons that I could write a book. I’d probably name it “Founder Fuck ups for Dummies”. One of the major fails with building SKED was the idea that everything had to be perfect before I shared it. Now needless to say an under-resourced, scrappy start-up from out of the Caribbean could never be perfect. I could write an entire series on the pursuit of perfectionism as entrepreneurs but I’ll leave that for another blog.

The point is though, I struggled to find a voice for myself. I also struggled to find the right voice for SKED as well, which was apparent from our low conversion rates and high customer acquisition cost.

For Recess, my passion and excitement are coming through my pores and I genuinely believe that any entrepreneur, high performer, or anyone that aims to do more in their life needs to use the Recess app. This time around rather than waiting till my well-crafted plans are executed I want to challenge myself to be more transparent and more vulnerable. But more than ANYTHING for the company, I want us to connect deeply with our users.

Strategically, we believe that building in public can give us valuable data that can help us accelerate through the iteration process. I hope to determine who are our early adopters, refine our ideal customer profiles, and more than anything gain feedback early so that we can iterate the product as we build.

Transparency

Being transparent can make me feel super vulnerable and I hate being vulnerable. Which makes me realize the interconnection between our psychology and how we build our businesses. For me, building in public is not only a challenge to myself but I also believe this transparency would allow for a deeper connection with other entrepreneurs and start-up founders who like me struggle with similar things.

I know I am an ideal customer for Recess but I want to learn more about other entrepreneurs, founders, executives, and creatives to find out more about their relationship with mental health, and how they optimize themselves for consistent performance throughout their entrepreneurial journey.

Accelerate towards Product Market Fit

Although we have a well-crafted ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)Framework for Recess, from my experience one can never be too sure. True Product-market fit can only be understood in the marketplace. My decision to build in public is so we can accelerate through product-market fit, get feedback early.

Testing with Early Adopters

The truth is, with Recess our team is full of experts in psychology & neuroscience and after a full calendar year of research, we have built a piece of science-backed tech that can really help entrepreneurs maintain a flow state to perform at optimal levels throughout the day.

We are super excited about we are at with the project but getting more access to early testers is imperative to optimize engagement metrics to ensure stickiness and reduction in churn. For us, metrics like churn have even more weight, as this metric is not only tied to marketing KPIs but also to the behavioral and psychological change that measures the efficacy of our technology.

What does this mean? We need more people to test our app at alpha and beta than any other project as our commitment to helping entrepreneurs maintain productivity and reduce stress at scale requires it. For us, building in public is a tool to open up the doors to access to more early adopters.

Now What?

If you are an entrepreneur, business owner, high performer, executive, creative, or if this post resonated with you in any way I invite you to follow along as I document our journey to building Recess. I will also share resources on entrepreneurial mental health, optimal performance, tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up growth as well. I commit to a new blog post every Sunday and to tweet my journey daily.

Follow me — -> www.twitter.com/kelzbethel

Til next time; Kelz.