Focusmate News – October 2017

Dear Focusmate family,

I love and massively appreciate how engaged many of you are in our Facebook group.

Building on that, I’m going to start doing monthly-ish updates as a way of engaging in a more structured dialogue with you about what’s happening.

Highlights

• We’ve been approached by professors at NYU and Columbia interested researching our model. The Columbia introduction was made by Cecilia Pineda, demonstrating yet again the power of our community!
• Earlier this month, Wall Street Journal bestselling author and behavioral designer Nir Eyal listed Focusmate as one of his top apps for eliminating distractions, in a blog post on workplace attention and focus.
• We crossed the threshold of 525,600 minutes users spent in virtual co-working sessions. Like the cast of the musical Rent, we’re proud to celebrated over one full calendar year of accountability and productivity!
• We launched the 3rd iteration of Focusmate.com, which now includes a video introduction and an easier signup process that allows users to choose whether they sign up with email, Google, or their Facebook account.
• We’ve assembled a team that combines experienced hands in engineering, product development, and marketing, bringing on first FTE, and adding two dynamic marketing fellows who are helping us explore new uses.

We’ve also been growing quickly, 17% per week, on average, over the last 12 weeks. And it shows. Here’s a snapshot of the Focusmate calendar, taken just a few days ago, PACKED with users ready to partner up!

What’s Next?

• In the coming months, I’ll be writing and speaking about my findings on accountability and productivity.
• Later this fall, I’m publishing my first major work, a guide to boosting productivity.
• We’re ramping up new user acquisition efforts, including finding ways to make it easier and more seamless to invite friends to work with you on Focusmate.

New Features

• Message your partner directly from the appointment card (chat icon)
• Report no-shows, late-shows and misconduct directly from the appointment card (stop sign icon with !)
• Display your profile photo to other users when signed up with a Facebook or Google account that has a profile photo, and see other users’ photos
• Take a “tour” of Focusmate (accessible in the dashboard menu at top-right)
• “Invite a friend” link with email template, added at the top-right of your dashboard
• See your last 7 days worth of past sessions

Upcoming Features

• Auto-add sessions to your calendar – COMING SOON!!
• Invite a friend directly to join a specific session / view all of your sessions
• Create a deeper profile and see other users’ profiles

How You Can Help

These are a few valuable ways you can help strengthen the Focusmate community, right now!

• Keep using it, sharing your feedback, and inviting friends to co-work with you!
• Write a review of Focusmate on your blog, like this one by super-user Jordan Georgiev.
• Join the Facebook group to provide real-time input on questions I post there, share articles and insights about productivity, and help support new users as they join.
• “Like” the Facebook page — this helps keep Focusmate free by bringing down the cost of reaching new audiences and growing the community.
• Post and share articles, books and other resources from thought leaders, writers and journalists, on topics related to productivity, procrastination, freelancing and the like. If you know any writers/press personally, I’d love your help connecting with them to get the word out!

That’s it for this first edition of Focusmate News.

Thanks for all your support. I hope to see you on a Focusmate session soon!

Best,

Taylor