Horses, Hay and a new Startup
In Lancaster, PA there’s a tiny team of Amish, ninja coders hard at work on their next big project. Working by candlelight in the wee hours of the morning, without interruption (except for having to milking the cows at 4:30a, drop the kids at the bus stop at 8:19a, head to work by 8:30a, plow the fields at 2:30p, work until dinner, playtime and bedtime with the kids until 8:30p, some catch up with the beautiful wives and sometimes even sleep), to rid the technology world of email event logging. We are Loggr, and we are a startup…and to be honest, we’re not Amish. But, like the Amish who are known for their hard work, we’re working hard to get Loggr ready to go. Time is scarce, resources are few. Imagine the joy in breaking the news to the family that instead of taking that well-needed break this winter, we’re going to buy some servers and pay for some hosting. “It’ll all be worth it, trust me…”.
Starting Loggr has been a lot of fun, but for devs, a lot of the fun is in writing the software. Now we have to launch it, support it and grow our customer base. Now is when things get tough (and expensive), and that’s where the Lean Startup Bundle from AppSumo will really help us out. Loggr tracks high-level events from apps (like user activity, conversions, errors, etc) but it doesn’t monitor low-level activity of our servers (disk, memory, db, network activity). ServerDensity does that well, and we get a free account with the Lean Startup Bundle. We’ll also be taking advantage of the deals from UserVoice, Geckoboard, AYTM and SnapEngage immediately.
WHAT’S NEXT
Right now we’re in a closed beta, working with potential customers on how to best use our service and learning how we can make our software work for them. One goal of the beta is to determine how much hardware and bandwidth is needed on our end to support a growing number of customers. We store a lot of data, and that requires a lot of resources. With funding, we’ll use a portion to improve and expand our data center.
Sales and marketing will be a major challenge after the beta. We look at our limited time and resources as an advantage for building the product, because it forces us to have laser-sharp focus. On the other hand, marketing and selling will be really tough without some capital. We need to do some advertising, hire some help and spend some time on the road. Any amount of funding will speed up those activities.
ABOUT OUR BUSINESS
Today’s websites and application solutions are built with thousands of lines of code, complex processes, and intricate logic. They are built with multiple layers which are hosted on many servers and deployed to a variety of clients and devices. Monitoring the health and performance of these solutions is as important as the solution itself.
Many have turned to homegrown systems to try and keep up with their logging and notification needs. Creating a simple storage container for event information and stringing together an email notification solution is not the answer. These homegrown systems simply create another solution to manage, maintain, and modify as needs change and result in spending time and energy away from the core product.
Loggr was created so that you can collect, control, and analyze all the key information about your application and to keep you focused on what matters most. Loggr is a hosted service that allows you to quickly and easily begin to collect information from your application, learn from that information using modern analytics tools, and then share that information with your team. Setup is easy and there is no maintenance. Just have your application push its events to Loggr from anywhere in the world and Loggr will organize and distribute meaningful information to your entire team, wherever they are.
Loggr makes sure that all your event information is handled in a way that is appropriate for your application. Incoming events and information can be directed and filtered to help keep all your information organized and easily retrievable for reporting and analysis. If you have critical messages or events, Loggr can even notify you directly. Loggr will keep all your events and notifications in a managed, centralized place. Let your IT team see all errors and maintenance events. Let you support team monitor your app for customer issues. Give your sales and marketing access to conversion events and sales opportunities.
With the Loggr API, web forms and web hooks you can easily integrate Loggr into the all the systems that you use to run your business. Loggr will soon be the most valuable tool in your toolbox.
