Late last week Hype caught up with Switchyards Founder & Startup x Month CEO, Michael Tavani, to find out about the 3rd week of the Startup x Month project. In the first week a team of nine was formed to build a product to be launched at the end of the month. The product, named slingput, is a platform where budding innovators can post their nascent ideas to gain support. Tavani describes this “Kickstarter light” type platform as a facilitator of feedback loops, email signups, and pre-purchase or donation payments. In the second week of the project, the team launched the slingput landing page and honed in on messaging.
Read our week one recap & week two recap and then check out the week 3 progress report below:
- The project is in “crunch time” and currently has a strong focus on details and functionality.
- All of the folks that applied, but weren’t chosen to be a part of the team, have been invited to come in and mentor.
- Slingput intends to engage approximately 10 launch teams to set the tone for different possible use cases of the platform. Tavani’s own On Doers video project and Switchyards founders campaign will be two of the 10. Last week slingput reached out to 80 potential use cases to gauge interest in participating as well.
- A Sept 3rd launch day will coincide with a doers-get-together where slingput’s offerings will be showcased. If you want to go, sign up here with your name and email address.
Tavani and I also discussed the future of Startup x Month and slingput. As of right now he is considering running Startup x Month every other month and possibly taking slingput and working on its different pain points in each month-long iteration. The participant cohort would fluctuate to reflect the needed skill set to solve the specific pain point while keeping some original team members to provide consistency as well.
