It’s January 2020. A very appropriate time for an update on where we stand in our efforts to bring you a better Skipti.
Skipti launched in Boston in August, and I have since moved into my new role as acting COO of Skipti. In my earliest days as Founder, my goals were to move Skipti forward by improving its foundations. In 2019 I set three goals as our priorities at launch:
To create a more coherent, more consistent Skipti experience; an experience that addresses the essential features on which our community has come to rely on
To change the way we work with our retailers, so we can deliver new products faster and with a better consumer experience
Commit to the improvement of the core infrastructure that powers Skipti, so we can deliver a service with the speed, reliability, and scalability that all of us expect
I’m pleased to say that we’ve made substantial progress against all of these goals, even beyond the progress we’ve shared over the course of last year.
In prep for our Boston launch, we had a bit of housekeeping to do to get ready for the community. Our year ended with significant accomplishments. Let me recap for a moment some of the highlights we experienced together in 2019:
Your collective reaction to the updated scheduling module has has been very positive. The methodical process we followed to beta test, gather feedback, make improvements, and incrementally release the new scheduler was very effective. And this first release of the scheduler is just the start; we plan to continue improving it in the months ahead.
With our new CEO at the helm, we made a shift from peer-to-peer to retail partners has had an extremely positive response as well. We modeled this release process on what we learned from loud-and-clear needs from national retailers that approached us early in the year. During our peer-to-peer beta - “Operation Spookyface” - we made changes to both functionality and direction to introduce improvements to relevancy algorithms as well as finding and fixing bugs.
We introduced our “Skipet” Widget and Smart Storage to our retail partners. As we continue to get feedback from customers and partners about how they imagine this interface supporting their needs, we will keep investing in upgrades in the months to come.
In November, we released a re-engineered version of our web experience to a small group of customers. And, as planned, they didn’t notice. On the outside, this version is almost indistinguishable from what our customers were used to seeing, but on the inside, its codebase has been substantially upgraded. This is a major deliverable against the third goal set for Skipti at the beginning of 2019 and I am happy to report that our tech team is rocking it.
In December, we ran a fun little sweater promo for the #twelvedaysofskipti that was far more fun than it should have been. It helped get the word out that we were pretty cool and that we are people that you kind-of-want-to hang with.
Skipti continued to grow. We ended 2019 with more than double the subscribers that we set out to generating positive buzz and growth in early referrals.
None of the above would have been possible without our Beta testers. Your feedback is critical to helping us build a platform that meet your needs, so please keep it coming. We still have work to do on both functionality and performance, but we will keep ramping releases of the new mobile apps through the coming months.
Big thanks to this awesome team that continues to make it happen day after day. These more recent accomplishments are foundational building blocks for delivering on the goals we continue set out for Skipti.
And a cheers to you, our investors. Thank you for your continued support. We are continuing to hustle hard to make you proud and the smiles on your faces during our updates mean the world to us and in 2020 we will continue to make strides ahead to keep earning the trust you’ve place in us.
Cheers to 2020!
