Liftoff

Today marks the first public release of Cloudgenda, a software-as-a-service offering that I have been working on for the most part of the past 18 months.

A lot of things happened in the past year and a half. I got married. I bought a house. I changed jobs. A global pandemic hit the majority of our planet which put an unexpected halt to my wedding photography business.

During that time, I had an idea for a software that could help organizations to better manage and comprehend their business data to provide a better service to their customers. The following lines will explain a bit more about the beginning of the idea up until today.

The Genesis of Cloudgenda

The genesis for that idea came about one evening while I was practicing judo at my club. The administrator came to see us one by one to confirm whether we have paid our membership fees. This happened twice within the space of a few weeks. I thought that was odd, because their software system should be able to tell them that information. However, there was a catch that I did not assume correctly: they had no software system in place. While investigating the situation a bit further, I found out that many clubs still operate with pen and paper. That solution may work for a small club and for a short period of time, however that strategy is not feasible as more members join the club.

Being someone that dislikes reinventing the wheel, I took a few days to research available software solutions for my club. I couldn’t find any that would provide them with the right tools and features to manage their business. So, as any good software development professional would do…I created a special wheel for them.

The Etymology of Cloudgenda

Initially, the application was called FlexDojo because it would provide a dojo’s administrator the flexibility to manage their business. After a few months of working on the project, I realized that the platform that I was building could also apply to other types of organizations that rely on memberships, such as clubs, gyms, churches, etc.

The time came to properly name the project. FlexGym? FlexFaith? No. It’s too complicated to manage different brands of the same product when you’re a team of one. Specifically, I wanted the administrators to have the concept of an agenda of their business and for their business on the cloud. An agenda that would tell them everything they need to know about their business so that they could make better decisions for their customers today, and more importantly, tomorrow. I knew thatit was going to be hosted on the cloud because I didn’t have the time nor the experience to manage a suite of servers on my own. And I also knew that I didn’t want to “namify” the project. So, I thought what if we mix the concepts of “cloud” and “agenda” together? Cloudagenda? No, that’s too long. I prefer product names that have at most three syllables and that will be accepted as a Twitter handle too. So I removed the vowel in the middle: Cloudgenda. The last item to verify was if the domain name was available. It was. So that’s how the name got chosen.

A New Chapter for Cloudgenda

Though the application has been baking for more than a year on my laptop, it has seen the light of my cloud provider (AWS) only a few hours ago. It’s too soon to know how big and how fast Cloudgenda will grow. Hopefully not too big, nor too fast, because I’m the sole developer on the project and I still have a fulltime job that I’m responsible for. But I hope very much that it’ll work out enough that I can work on it on a fulltime basis with a few other people perhaps.

I’m bootstrapping the project and so far it’s going all right. Building software is cheap, but it’s the deployment and hosting operations that cost a bit. I’m thankful for the economies of scale that the cloud provides. I already have one customer, so now it’s the time to spread the word and showcase the product to a few more potential customers.

This is my first post on this medium, but not my last. There will be many more to come where I will share my thoughts and experience on building Cloudgenda as a solopreneur.

Meanwhile, if you’re curious to know more about Cloudgenda, why not give it a spin and feel the experience for yourself? You can exactly that on the free demo site.

Until then, keep living your good life. Keep learning. Keep failing. Keep getting up. Keep sharing. Keep smiling. And keep being you.