Again, AlhamduliLlaah.
TLDR; This time, the network was better, so good to the extent that I got around 40Mbps. The event was outside under a tent, no place for a projector, I had just 5 minutes and they stuck to that time.
The Prep
This time, as I had to travel to another state, I didn't bother prepping too much. I just got a very good projector, way better than the one I used previously.
The actual demo
This time, the opening question worked, and almost everyone put their hands up. Someone even mentioned just four or three schools that handle their bills and receipts with an Excel sheet. I then sprinted through the features, and I can't really remember the rest since I'm penning this down after almost a day. But what I do remember well, is someone asking:
You've told us all the financial aspects of what EduHisab does, what other things can it do?
I responded:
nothing else, that's just what it does.
I got resounding "hmmm"s and head nods. I prefer to interpret as a good sign.
The numbers
- The coordinator told me about 80 schools would be present, from my estimation, he seemed to be correct.
- 18 responses from the Google Form. Not bad if you ask me, the reason being that, most of the schools there are less developed.
- I'm not able to calculate the percentage since I used the same google form, so, I'll just list the actual numbers.
- All responders are the proprietors except 4 that are principals/headteachers.
- All of them handle their billing systems manually (pen and paper) except two schools which use Excel.
- They unanimously agreed that their current method is unsatisfying and more than 5 schools explictly stated "no". With the exception of 4 schools, the first one has between 30 to 50 students (understandable), the second has between 50 to 80 students, and the remaining had 200+ students.
- Seven schools have 200+ students, two of them use Excel (as I mentioned earlier) and are satisfied, the rest aren't.
Takeways
- I now fully understand what Linear's Tuomas said about waitlists. It gives you an insight into the kind of people you want to bring onboard.
- Of these schools, the two schools that responded "yes" to the satisfaction question, these are who I'm really interested in. I think the success of EduHisab is in making them know that, they're deeply unstatisfied with using just Excel. Another thing is they're the ones with the lowest barrier to entry, because they have all their students details in an Excel sheet. EduHisab has a feature allowing the upload of students in an excel sheet to automatically create all students.
- Letting schools know that EduHisab focuses only one thing, which is arguably, the most important, was kind of refreshing. In the sense that, we'll do only that one thing and we'll do it well. No distractions.
The Next Steps
- Since I wasn't able to do any actual demo, we'd have to record a video of the EduHisab showcasing it, it'll also serve as tutorial.
- I'll be selecting about 10 schools this week, to onboard them, then next week, I'll add more, totalling 20. I've gotten requests to increase the number of schools for this batch, but, I'm hesitant. We'll see how it goes by the end of July.
- Selected schools will be added to a WhatsApp group where updates will be shared, feedback will be received.
- The goal is to get them to use it for their third term/next session bills.
- I'll try to host a weekly meeting with them or maybe one on one meetings with the schools after a week of onboarding.
- Move hard and fast to get v1 out. Implementing local-first architecture, a full redesign, smoothening the edges. The plan is to get it done by September which is when schools will resume.
Conclusion
AlhamduliLlaah, these past two days have taught me a lot especially getting the data and improvising. I've always underrated public speakers statement about having a hook to make people attentive, O boy, did I find that hook. I'll continue to update on how the school onboardings are going and I'll release a product and technical roadmap soon.
Thank you!!