The Journey so Far.
By: Khaleef Junaid
Tags: Wealth, Fundall, Startup, Nigeria

Like they say the road to greatness is the least taken and often very rough.

We aim to be a financial partner for everyone

Our journey towards building a financial lifestyle that enables everyone to build wealth, grow businesses and live sustainable lifestyles began over a year ago and now all the pieces are falling into place. The decision to launch our web app was taken after a tedious meeting on Sunday, 25th of August at the family home of KpJ, to review our preparedness for our D Day. No one knew exactly if we were going to launch as it was all up to our readiness on certain metrics (engineering, customer service, Quality Control, Security check, back office preparedness etc). The webapp had gone through a series of rigorous tests on several fronts so we were quite confident of having a successful launch, however, we still prepared for curve balls and decided to have a staggered launch (web app soft launch, then mobile app soft launch and later full launch) as this would also enable us to reiterate based on feedback from members who have signed up at the pre-launch phase. After deliberations at about 11 pm, the decision was made to proceed with the soft launch of the web app on Monday, 26th August 2019.

For those who may be asking what a soft launch is? According to Dictionary.com, soft launch is the release of a new product or service to a restricted audience or market in advance of a full launch.

Here are my key takeaways from Fundall’s web app soft launch.

1. Creating Contingency Plans and Worst-Case Scenarios

It was very important for us to build in contingencies and go through various scenarios that may occur and what responses to have in place. We had documented responses for different queries and escalation processes. The engineering team though in different places where available 24 hours to provide support. The soft launch serves as a learning process to assist us get real time feedback on the product. With the soft launch we were able to add a few more exciting features based on the feedback and suggestions from our members etc…

2. Onward Together

Having a very competent team was really important to the company. I expected fatigue to kick in after several rounds of weekend marathons led by Obasan. You are probably wondering what a marathon is well think of it as a 24 hours vigil involving at least 3 people all in one location working on one objective (getting maybe 2–4 hours of sleep daily). At the end having a competent team that brings their ‘A game’ every day is critical to avoid fatigue which can creep in. A very high probability that you will receive a call, WhatsApp message or slack message from any of the team members at any time of the day is very high. Our typical daily routine includes having 2–3 hours 4-way call meetings to brainstorm.

3. Winking in the Dark

A common phrase that KpJ kept saying was “We have a great product, hence, we must communicate the value to all members effectively if we don’t — it is like a beautiful woman/man in the dark winking and says look at me I am beautiful.” So, watch us over the next few weeks as we roll out our marketing campaigns. At present our marketing involves social media announcements and emails pushed to the pre-launch members only.

4. The King will always be with us

Our turn around rates were swift with the immense messaging from the members to us through our live chat app. We made sure the response time was below 3 minutes; this was to send a message and show how serious we are about our members. The few comments and suggestions we received were very helpful and led to the updates that were made and are being made to the app. At the end the Customer is King!

That is all folks for now as I have to get back to preparing for the upcoming launch of the Mobile App on a date that I don’t know but confident that it is very close. In the meantime, visit https://fundall.Io and start building wealth.