Edventures End of 2023 Review

Photo by Roven Images on Unsplash

This blog post was originally sent out via our newsletter last week. If you want earlier updates about our progress straight to your inbox and be among the first to test our prototype, make sure you sign up for our newsletter and join the our Earlybird Community!

Dear Edventures community,

Wrapping up 2023, I believe many of us sense that this year has been a lateral move—a lot in the works, but not much materialising. Things have been happening, yet not really taking off. Personally, that’s been my experience, and for Edventures, it’s been an important step nonetheless—a sideways shift that has allowed us to recalibrate, learn a lot, and position ourselves for what I think will be a very exciting 2024 and what’s to come in our journey of empowering entrepreneurs worldwide.

October: A European Adventure and Team Updates

The first half of October saw me travelling to some familiar and some new cities in Europe, including Budapest, Bratislava, Sofia, Istanbul, and Madrid. Following our team meetup in Stockholm at the end of September, our fullstack maestro, Taha, teamed up with me in Budapest, ventured solo to Switzerland, and then we reunited in Sofia visiting an old friend of mine as well as an informal technical advisor to us, before his return to Canada in early October. Despite the travel-induced downtime, we made significant progress, especially with Anza holding down the fort back in Helsinki.

Our product designer Ying-Chen embarked on a month-long holiday in her native Taiwan during October. At the same time, she decided to pursue other opportunities, concluding her journey with Edventures. If you’re on the lookout for an exceptional UX Designer proficient in Figma, with frontend developer skills (HTML, CSS, Javascript, Flutter) and an exceptional work ethic, I highly recommend considering Ying-Chen. Reach out to me if you’re hiring!

November: Expanding the Team and Product Development

In November, Taha explored Japan and South Korea for two weeks, overlapping with the end of October and the beginning of November. While we continued the development of our prototype, I started looking for a new product designer and frontend developer. This search led us to the talented Catie Camer from Toronto, Canada, and the skilled Flutter developer, Gauransh Sharma, based in Jaipur, India. We officially welcomed Gauransh through a short-term internship, with Catie joining for the long haul, aiming to become a vital part of our core team. The challenges of retaining talent due to our bootstrapped and pre-revenue nature remain, but we’re optimistic about the team’s prospects.

December: Unleashing the Alpha and Exciting Achievements

You know when you’re repeatedly tapping a ketchup bottle until it finally splashes onto your lap? That’s an accurate description of December for us. The highlight was the long-awaited soft launch of our prototype, internally named the “Alpha." While it’s undeniably an alpha version, we wrapped up the work just before Christmas and reduced the pace between the holidays.

I’m also thrilled to announce that we’ve been accepted into DigitalOcean Hatch, the global startup programme of DigitalOcean, providing cloud infrastructure support for startups like ours. Despite the challenges, I remain the sturdiest optimist, and I know there are positive changes brewing for us in 2024. The vision I had six years ago to provide comprehensive support for entrepreneurs is so close to becoming a reality!

The period between Christmas and New Year’s has been dedicated to reflection and analysis internally, evaluating our processes and identifying areas for improvement in the coming year.

What to Expect in January 2024: Exciting Developments Ahead

As we step into 2024, I’m excited to share some belated Christmas gifts with you:

• We’ll begin internal testing and bug fixing, with plans to invite people from our waitlist to test the prototype from mid-January. Access will be granted through our Discord Earlybird Community, with invites going out in early January.
• Discussions are underway for a pilot project in South Africa.
• Anticipate numerous end-user interactions.
• We’ll continue development based on feedback from our test users. Don’t wait around – sign up now and bring a friend (or ten). Your feedback is invaluable as we shape the future of Edventures.

Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to sharing more updates with you soon. Here’s to a promising and entrepreneurial 2024!

Stay foolish, stay ambitious,

Alexander and the Edventures team

If you are just getting to know us

At Edventures, we champion progress. Our mantra is ‘keep moving forward’ and we want to embody this mantra in our app, to simplify your entrepreneurial journey. It’s as simple as texting. Let’s keep moving forward, together.

This blog post was originally sent out via our newsletter last week. If you want earlier updates about our progress straight to your inbox and be among the first to test our prototype, make sure you sign up for our newsletter and join the Edventures Earlybird Community!