Our 16-week sprints at ConnectDome
Tags: startup, productivity, discuss, showdev
Published: 2022-05-07 05:16:24

For this post to make any sense, you need to know what [ConnectDome](connectdome.com) is.

It’s a platform for developers (like you) to:
- meet other developers **_1:1 every week_** and
- **_team up_** on pretty cool projects seamlessly (saving you hours of manual work) using AI.

> If this actually works (we’re trying to make it work haha), this would be super helpful with FoW (Future of Work) **especially good for developers like us**.

<hr>

### Anyway

> 💡 We are a team of three people including two co-founders.

And, we are doing a series of 16 sprints over the course of 16 weeks (May - August inclusive). We thought it’d be cool to make some of these updates public.

<hr>

## Our Objective

🚀 **making every interaction on ConnectDome** worthwhile. i.e. every interaction should align with our goal of fostering:

- a work environment where the socializing aspect is automated and easy,
- ability to work on ideas that are not necessarily open-source (not found on Github),
- more eureka moments among developers than ever!

There are a lot of other milestones to hit in terms of our KPIs but that first objective is what we truly care about and are going for here. 

**_Everything else is just a sub-task_ to get to that point.**

> Sub-goal: 💡 Grow to over 1000 users in our invite-only platform, have a 40%+ 30-day retention rate, add premium plans, and more!

<hr>

## Progress

Will post separate updates for every week’s sprint with a gist of how much progress we made and how far along we are from these product shipping milestones:

- SPA open to developers on waitlist (requested the invite code). (~week 3 sprint)
- iOS and Android apps. (~week 6 sprint)

There’s much more to dissect here but that’d probably make the updates less interesting so I’m thinking of keeping the following format here (won’t include any biz-dev updates possibly LOL):

```
[TITLE OF UPDATE 🚀]

[Gist of progress made, certain stuff we worked on]

[Current Estimate of next product milestone]
```
<hr>
## Other

The following is proving to be super helpful:

**for work (and the community):**

- **Techstars** (their invite-only startup pipeline program) most certainly helps with the generous free mentorship sessions with mentors within and without. It’s not documented very well but it’s still mentioned in certain places including:
    
    - [Largest Cohort of Student Entrepreneurs Chosen for Summer 2021 LaunchPad Fellowship - Blackstone Launchpad](https://www.blackstonelaunchpad.org/blog/largest-cohort-of-student-entrepreneurs-chosen-for-summer-2021-launchpad-fellowship/)
    
    - [Meet the Winners of the 2020 AWS U.S. University Startup Competition | Amazon Web Services](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/startups/meet-the-winners-of-the-2020-aws-u-s-university-startup-competition/)
    
    - [Entrepreneurship team takes third place in AWS U.S. University Startup Competition](https://harbert.auburn.edu/news/auburn-duo-takes-third-place-in-aws-us-university-startup-competition.html)
    

We got in through a different route, but well, it’s essentially the same thing.

**for the sense of community:**

- YC SUS events
- r/startup’s Discord server
- Buildergroop on Discord
- Gen Z Mafia on Discord
- [Our own Discord](discord.connectdo.me) (for feedback)

Being purposefully surrounded by the community that makes up the thriving startup ecosystem serves as a reminder that that this simply is what’s required to get to point B.

Hopefully, this blog serves the single purpose of archiving a journey, nothing more *or* less.

<hr>

**Post Notes:**
- Does the idea for [ConnectDome]() sound interesting to you?
- Would you be interested in following our journey?
(Genuinely, we do want to know why or why not!)

[Old 1.0v Demo (2.0v we are working on is **much** better)]
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-941hCWLhDs&list=PLBP1qeqax4-a0OdZLx2LbTlFZD_eZj--V)