Here is a video of the software:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4mMXi1soWs
1. Seller Bio
Founder of TaskBlast. Project Manager and Entrepreneur. Raised over €50,000 which was invested to get the product to where it is today.
2. Executive Summary
TaskBlast is a saas based project management solution for software development teams. Its streamlined user experience and focus on only the features that matter enables rapid adoption & facilitates real-time visibility and on time delivery of projects.
We focus on saving project managers time by automating the tedious and unimportant tasks that take up a significant portion of a project managers day, this frees you up to spend time on the things that matter.
The business is based in Ireland but can be 100% remotely run. After going through various government and accelerator courses I launched TaskBlast early last year. It took a few months of customer discovery and feedback before I got the product right.
We brought on several paying teams and they love the software. Worked really closely with the teams to continue to improve the product.
3. Highlights
While this is a crowded space, we know from talking to software companies that Jira and other complex tools are often bloated and difficult to use. By focusing on just features software teams needed we managed to strip away all the complexity while still providing all the core features software teams need.
In particular, the fact we provide integrated time tracking is something that attracted a lot of positive feedback. It cut out the need for API integrations and also the additional cost as most time tracking tools are similar monthly prices to project management tools so this combined pricing is a big plus.
Companies love our simple and feature rich editor and our kanban. Our main issues are we have a product that is 75% finished and we have struggled with marketing due to lack of funds and converting people to a subscription because the product is not fully finished.
We are still also in the learning phase, we needed to get more companies using the product, more feedback so we can continue to improve the product but funding ran out and it was not possible to continue development and marketing without it.
We believe someone with the proper funding and marketing experience can make this a success and the beauty is there is currently paying customers and it's not that far away from moving it from a product that early adopters are niggling at to a product that early adapters can't wait to get at.
If I had more funding I would make the product free, get it out there, soak up the feedback, adapt and get it to a position where its fine-tuned, better polish on the UI, better onboarding, better FAQs, tutorials and videos.
We had good success reaching customers, we were signing up 100 trials a day through Facebook but the problem was the product has a bunch of rough edges since it's not fully finished so while it's making our current small customer base extremely happy it's not appealing to a wider audience.
Moving all the data over is one of the biggest hurdles people are mentioning, they want to try but its too much hassle to move the data, we were 70% through implementing a sync feature that would allow you to sync all the data from Jira continually and we feel that would have made a big difference to conversions in conjunction with finishing off features and improving the rough edges as I mentioned.
4. Operations
The current workload is minimal, In the last month, I have brought my costs down to about $200 a month. That includes a basic maintenance plan from the lead developer to fix any minor issues that pop up. He is willing to work full time on the project if the work becomes available.
The server is run on Amazon cloud where we have significant free credit so no costs there. Previously I was paying $150 per month with Microsoft. We have an SSL cert and we also have a deal in place to purchase the .com domain for less than $2,000 and that offer is still open.
We use other free services like Kayako to run the live chat.
5. Customers
We have in excess of 1,000 registered users although there might be a bunch of test accounts in there. We have a small number of loyal paying customers.
Mostly project managers of software companies
Most have used other project management tools like Jira etc
In the beginning our retention was poor, as we improved the project we have kept 100% retention but its such a small sample its hard to take anything from that.
6. Financials
There are some small debts owed, circa $4,000 in total to the developer, accountant etc. We are willing to clear those during the sale process. The company is limited with 2 co-founders and an accelerator. Breakdown is roughly 85% me, 5% co-founder, 8% accelerator and 2% developer. Were all willing to sell.
7. Seller Notes
I am happy to work through a transition period where I help manage anything you need. I am also happy to be involved in certain aspects of the business if the deal is right. I love this space and I am passionate this can succeed, I just ran out of investment before I could fulfil the potential. I admittedly made many mistakes along the way and if I had to do it again I believe I would have made a success of it with the same funding but this was a very enjoyable process and learning experience for me and it has made me more excited about entrepreneurship not less.
While I would be selling the business for less than I put in, at this point my finances are drained to the limit and I would rather take the cash, clear some bills and see someone else make a success out of it rather than sit on it and let it fade away. This product will sell, people will love it but it needs someone that can take it and give it that financial injection.