We launched Kin one week ago yesterday. It was a quick ten months to get us to that one magical day where we could send an email to people around the world exclaiming “come ‘n get it!”, albeit in less colloquial english.
Lot’s of folks did, indeed, come and get it. We’ve had hundreds of companies in close to 60 countries sign up for Kin to learn how it fits into their unique workplaces.
How’s our team been during the first week?
Nose to the grindstone. We launched a secure, well-vetted application and have seen no downtime and, without exception, no major bugs. That hasn’t slowed us down though. We’re improving the existing feature set, and we’re well on our way to the next round of updates, due out in just a week’s time.
After ten months of discussing, designing, throwing out, prioritizing, arguing and building, it feels seriously grrrreat to have a beautiful, functioning application out the door and used by real people with real needs. It’s not something someone gets to feel too often in life.
Hearing thoughts from 59 countries
The feedback so far has been helpful, honest, patient, and best of all, plentiful! Kin’s young. Everyone gets that. We’ve got some work to do. Yep. The feedback, though, has been much more than pointing out those facts. Customers are spending huge amounts of time to share their thoughts about what’s working, what’s not, and why. To lodge a gripe or share a compliment takes only a couple of seconds. To dig down and really get to the why’s and how’s of why an experience is working or not takes lot’s of time. We’re getting a lot of that goodness.
What’s most encouraging to us (and for the future of Kin) is that everyone, without exception, notices and appreciates Kin’s beautiful interface and the fact that we’ve placed a huge value on how employees experience the app, not just the power user base of owners and operations people.
The mission
Kin isn’t perfect. Nor are the companies using it. But together, we’re on a mutual mission to improve the experience employees have at small companies around the world. We’re in it together, and that’s the most gratifying experience of all. It’s great having Kin out in the world. It’s a starting point in the mission. What’s even better is having the world respond, understand, and rally around the mission.