This forum gave me great input on an app I created 2 years ago. So I figured I'd come and ask for your brutally honest thoughts again please.

The app is called Badger - the idea is that you send reminders to friends/family and work colleagues. They will receive the reminders as a text message at the time you schedule it.

For instance: "Please take out the trash." You send it to remind your roommates "weekly" at 8pm on a Wednesday night. The recipients receive it as a text at that time each week.

You can send one off, daily, weekly and monthly badgers.

It is on the iPhone app store. The Android is coming soon. If you can download it and give me some honest feedback and let me know what you think of it, what features you like, don’t like, what’s not intuitive and what you would like to see from it I would be really appreciative.

If you search for "Badger Inc" and it'll be the first one that comes up. If you search for "Badger" it'll be the 3rd or 4th I believe.

One of the thing I'm trying to learn is the different use cases for it.

Friends of mine use it to do anything from reminding their children to put their dental retainers on at nightly. Another person I know owns a restaurant and is using it to remind employees to clean out the ice machine once a month.

I used to be an online poker player and would be happy to answer questions on the transition from that to the technology world of Silicon Valley or anything to do with the technology community. I live in Palo Alto, CA.

Thanks

Tom

So you've (re)invented google calendar SMS notifications

https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/45351?hl=en

Here's another one http://www.un.4gettable.com/

Thanks for the response and the links. Personally, I don't want reminders on my calendar, I only want my events. The thought behind Badger is for tasks, not meetings between people.

I live and die by reminders, I just use Google calendar because centralized is easier and it let's me customize everything about it. Being tied into the Google Apps ecosystem is very useful and let's me easily add someone from my contacts to the notification.

Congrats on getting a finished app done.

One thing I'd suggest is looking at the suggestions and feedback threads for things like Google Calendar. You want features that people want in an app but the current free options aren't doing. That'll draw them over and get them to pay.

Small business owners seem to be a key part of your core reliable $ market. There are millions of them and most have iPhones. They also won't balk at paying $10 for an app or upgrading from the free version.

Thanks for the thoughts. Mind me asking, what kind of reminders are you sending out? Are they recurring ones?

Thanks for the tips. Do you have any website suggestions for learning more about Google Calendar and what people want from calendar and reminder based products?

One thing I have already learned is that we need to emphasize that Badger is about "Reminding Tasks" more so than "Reminding Events"

There is nothing wrong with the latter, it just blurs us into the crowd with Calendars.

Everything. Rent, taxes, birthdays, reminders, scheduled calls, reports due.

Someone on my team is scheduled to execute something, it will be put in a calendar deadline.

This is great because it's easy to scroll through Google and see the density of activity for given dates/weeks.

I'm an IP attorney and deal with all sorts of slogans and names in the trademark area. I like the Badger name FWIW.

Thanks for sharing. It's kind of amazing how reliant we are on our calendars now. I find it difficult to remember any meeting if it isn't on my calendar.

That makes two of us that like the Badger name

So since you made a thread, I would ask that you give back and answer some information:
-Have you raised funds? / Do you see this as an investible business?
-How did you get it coded?
-Are you planning pivots? How do you plan on creating something significantly better / differentiated than calendars?

I'm happy to share my thoughts.

No, we have not raised funds.

I do see it as an investable business. I'm not sure in the end whether it is a small business or a big business, but I do see that we are creating value for people that hasn't been created before. Badger is useful for a wide variety of people so the potential is there. The majority of the most successful mobile apps have a very wide appeal (e.g. Whatsapp). Badger also has a level of natural virality because you are literally sending others messages.

That being said, when you are operating on a freemium model basis it is dangerous and most startups shouldn't do it. Too many do this and it often doesn't make sense for that business (e.g. Jet.com with e-commerce is losing 20% per item they sell, which I think is nuts).

What happens in Silicon Valley is that in good times people become more and more optimistic about worse and worse business models.

In the long run we'll have ways to make a living. . e.g. an enterprise version of Badger.

I'm just not 100% sure what it'll be thus me recommending most people not wandering down the freemium model road. It's a dangerous road. I kind of had no option, but to do this in my mind. I wanted to see this exist and it was useful for me and we are willing to go for it.

How did I get this coded? Since I stopped playing poker 4 years ago I jumped into the world of Silicon Valley and am very fortunate to have found some excellent people to build with. I can build myself to a degree, but my co-founder is the one who is responsible for what we have.

No, we are not planning on pivots. I feel that mentality is bad in the early stages. It means that you have your thesis completely wrong and you should believe in your thesis. That being said, there are different mentalities that work. For instance at Ycombinator they teach people to experiment till something works, which there is nothing wrong with it. It's more of a personal preference thing. We know Badger is working, we just don't know whether it'll work in a big way or a smaller way.

I'm not confident I have a good answer to your final question. I mainly liked Badger because I wanted something simple that anyone could use, whereas I view Calendar's as cumbersome and full of options, but that really only works for power users. I have a friend who has 17 different calendars going and has all kinds of things in there. For me, I want to have my events and meetings on my calendar.

One thing we have done is add a Badger yourself button. There are many products to remind yourself to do things so it has been surprising to see how many of our earliest users have added their own phone number to Badger themselves. I think it is because people want to do all of their reminding in one app.

seems like a good idea. I put recurring things at work in my calendar as a one minute appointment, but I don't like having that stuff in my calendar. I'd rather keep it separate.

Right, that's what I was doing. It was frustrating.

Btw I think we used to play 8 game against each other years ago. I recognize your handle from somewhere. Did you used to play 8 game on Stars?

Very interesting stuff, thanks for sharing. Couple of things I thought of:
I think Speek is an analogous startup for you. I use conference lines all the time and this was a perfect example of "enough better" to really stand out. Saving a link is easier than meeting details, saves in a browser, clickable on mobile (SO much better), enter phone # to get into the call (which you never forget unlike details) to "dial in". Great organic viral component as well (I experienced how easy it was originally by logging on to someone's call with no previous knowledge).

I'm actually really personally intrigued now (Android unfortunately and yeah I know...), once I can get access I'd be happy to run some tests with my team. I can tell you my personal use is going to depend on how fast/simple I can get a basic notification set up while not being restricted on key options for repeating, notification type, etc.. I'll also want to easily add someone who isn't a Badger user smoothly without confusion.

I'll have a good look at Speek, thanks!

We will have the Android version out within a few weeks. I'll PM you with a link when it is out.

I'm bias, but I think Badger is very easy to use.

1) You hit "create a reminder".
2) You pick the people you want to send the reminder from your address book.
3) You write the message
4) You schedule the time you want them to receive it and you pick whether you want it to send out "Once" "Daily" "Weekly" or "Monthly"

If you want to edit a badger, you can go into it and change recipients or the time it goes out in a couple of presses.

We're striving to create a simple app. We think that is very important. We want the least technical people to be able to use it. It's a fault of Silicon Valley in general. Engineers tend to overestimate how easy something is for others to use mainly because they find it straightforward. Most people bloat products too much with too many features or they try to build the ultimate control panel to do absolutely everything.

I think the mobile apps that have won do one thing extremely well. e.g. Shazam is my most favorite example of this. Uber and Tinder are other great example. I'm sure some would argue the opposite due to facebook's success on mobile. I think the applications that started out as a desktop product are in a different category.

Just my two cents..

stud forum maybe? I didn't really play on Stars, I was almost exclusively on Full Tilt.

ahh perhaps. I didn't play much on FTP.

i plan on using your app OP, daily reminders to my wife at 7:45 am that will simply read "blowjob"

Hi OP,

I think it's been said before but it's definitely not an original or overly creative idea, which I don't think you are claiming at all.

Lots of sites and businesses do this already, for example my football team used a site called teamer that would send out sms's automatically, as does my dentist.

So I think you essentially you are taking an idea which has been used and marketed primarily to businesses and formalised groups, and modifying it so it can be used for family and friends. I think that early on it is therefore very important to focus very strongly on this group and make sure it has a clear, simple message.

The name Badger is brilliant, and suits your needs perfectly. I think the format and branding needs to be focused very much on simplicity and colourful aesthetics, again to fit this group.

There seems to be a good chance this takes off and captures enough market share to be worthwhile to me.

Reading the OP it sounds like this is all stuff you believe as well, so maybe the jist of this post is actually just 'I agree, and gl'.

Who cares if an idea is original or creative? That has little to no correlation to it's success. Very often the creativity and innovation comes long after a startup is launched.

Um.... yep.

That was the rest of my post. =/

Basically all I'm saying is that due to not being original it needs a very clear focus and direction in the early marketing phase in order to differentiate and make sure it doesn't get confused with competing products. An original idea would have an entirely different set of obstacles to overcome. I think it's a great idea, concept and name.

Adding "yearly" might be worth it as someone who always forgets valentines day, birthdays, etc lol.

Cool idea and congrats on getting a product published. Does it accept replies? For example, if the reminder is a manager telling an employee to clean the ice machine, can the employee confirm it was done? I'm thinking it could be especially useful for managers to track what tasks are done (or not done) in industries where computers/email are not normally used by the staff. Maybe a dashboard to view incomplete and recently completed tasks. I don't have an iPhone but will check it out when the Android version is available.