Kinopio Future Paths

Options

Future Goals

Context

ya kinopio doesn’t cost that much to keep running, it’s pretty efficient

the pitch here may remain more consumer focused:

organize your life, plan your projects, collect inspiration, get your thoughts and feelings out make better decisions, express yourself. ideation tool

There’s a never ending stream of feature requests, and some big tent pole releases I’m really excited about

💐 Kinopio Roadmap

cushion app?

There’s still lots I want to build, but I can’t both build the app, and grow/market it at the same time, by myself

I’ve been working on Kinopio on-and-off for ~5 years. But it hasn’t really been economically sustainable. So I need to decide what to do about that going forwards

Kinopio is a super fully featured app, it’s more flexible and more powerful than most of it’s competition – but it’s the only commercial canvas/whiteboard app that doesn’t have millions$ in funding and a staff of 10+

the pitch here may remain more consumer focused: organize your life, plan your projects, collect inspiration, get your thoughts and feelings out make better decisions, express yourself. ideation tool

Want to be able to afford to keep working on Kinopio

Really interesting option. Tinyseed applications start in feb so I just signed up for a reminder for then

Applied and was rejected for tinyseed

While parttime is possible, the overhead of finding new jobs is high and continuing this approach makes me feel like I’m trapped by Kinopio

This is the least immediately stressful option, but the long/medium-term implications are unclear

+ crowdfunding: I can only think of one example, but software (non games) can also be crowdfunded through a kickstarter-like process where backers get equity

:) I try and keep things really small and efficient

both personal users, but especially businesses/teams because kinopio collaborators have a nimble-ness advantage and more efficient decisions

Want to grow the audience for it and bring in new users,

This approach is more gathering up many small amounts that can add up to something significant

do you know of other app crowdfunding platforms?

they also dipped in and out of working on it, during the last tech recession

did crowdfunding after 7 yrs, many founders, was doing 10k$ MRR per quarter

And gives me the resources to build a small growth focused team

We’ve got stricter free limits planned here. That said I’m not seeing a lot of user data showing ppl with a bunch of cards that also aren’t upgraded. I think the more impactful thing to optimize right now is top of funnel.

Stricter free user limits

I would like to keep working on it and I would like help, but I can’t do that on the current path I’m on

Kinopio has social elements but it’s definitely not social media. So I’m not really optimizing for that model

contact republik to assess viability

try to find more angel investors. do you know any?

there’s a big scary risk that if you’re not constantly moving forward you’ll get left behind and forgotten. But there’s also the possibility that it grows like a cactus and all it needs to do is outlive the dry season to flourish

while $10k~ is a lot of money, it’s not nearly enough to make longer-term strategic changes

Possibly this might be a more viable path when Kinopio is a little older and the economy is in a less dire place

angels: There are some really nice well-off people out there happy to give 10k to 15k to support projects they enjoy

While this has the most ideal incentives, I’m not optimistic about this because

In my recent experiences, most VCs are looking exclusively at AI startups, or new products currently riding a huge hype wave (which are usually AI based w big promises)

based on similar points made in my recent blog post, the app would be pitched as ‘slack for whiteboards’, bringing a high design, easier to use product, to a space where the options aren’t great from an end user perspective

Towards a Better Whiteboard

early indications are that I wouldn’t get enough support to meet any significant funding goal

Piri / X

If I held a Kinopio crowdfunding campaign, with a minimum $100 investment, would you be interested in helping shape its future as an investor?

When Kinopio launched growth was slow and steady but upwards. For the last two years, growth has been pretty flat

republik link

Are.na

gumroad?

are.na is the only example i can think of. Do you know any others?

We are now letting anyone invest in Are.na. Here's why. | Ar…

I don’t want to surprise announce funding, or some other major decision. I’d rather lay out the situation and discuss pros/cons and other possible paths

This would also take away growth pressure which could potentially be a good thing really long term

hire a small staff so we can build and grow at the same time

yup, nothing beats word of mouth

good crowdfunding resource! thx

ya it’s a hard problem for sure

oh the kinopio-client source code is already public. If a vc doesn’t like that then that’s a helpful red flag

Making the Kinopio Source Code Public

The NeverEnding Story

another crowdfunding example:

Reflect: We've created a note-taking app designed to mirror …

I’m leaning towards that (3). Outside of power users, I think the app is more than full featured enough for most ppl. It’s possible that ppl wouldn’t even notice really so long as the discord and support emails were well tended to

This gives me the ability to continue working on Kinopio full time

A $500k to $1million investment to grow the app and reach new b2b markets

3 options under consideration

Another thing I’ve thought about is inviting other ppl to be partners that would be interested in helping me focus on growth. More a profit share than a salary thing. Not sure if that’s compelling to anyone tho

I can come back when the economy isn’t so dire and consumers are more open to spending

The obvious implications of this are a much slower rate of dev

Get a fulltime job and work on Kinopio on the side

I don’t think I could build a team with this money, but it could give the latitude to work towards sustainability

Ya looks like he was able to get a decent amount done despite working at medium

arena?

That said, with reliable money from a job there’s other classes of features I can do much more easily, like frames and possibly commissioned webgl backgrounds

what I do know is that I don’t want to spend months chasing investors to find out if there’s interest. Any investigation down this path will be time-boxed. Either I fail quickly, or succeed quickly at finding funding – otherwise it’s not worth it

legal constraints of investment crowdfunding only allow americans to invest

I’ve seen native app devs do this, but I don’t know of many SaaS apps as complex as Kinopio that have done this tho?

That said, there may not be any interested investors that share that vision, and with whom I share principles with