WhatsTime, A Social Reminder

I worked in the tech ecosystem, primarily focusing on mobile app development from 2010 to 2015, during the peak of the mobile app craze. While working at Hike Messenger, the startup bug bit me, and Whatstime was born.

Confident in my technical and management capabilities, I quit my job to pursue it full time. I hired a team of freelancers, including a designer and an iOS developer, to bring the vision to life. Little did I know, a new chapter of my life had begun.

Whatstime - What was it?

A social to-do app designed to help you get things done with friends and family. The name was inspired by WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app of all time.

It was a modern take on traditional reminder apps like Apple Clock, offering ‘rich reminders’ that could include media, files, and attachments. Imagine a scheduled WhatsApp message combined with a Trello-like card.

My hypothesis was simple: people need a way to remind each other of everyday tasks, from reminding parents to take their medicine, asking a friend to print a document, or nudging a sibling to clean the bathroom. Human memory is fallible, and I believed this product could eliminate the excuse of ‘Sorry, I forgot’.

Highlights

• Bootstrapped and honed money management skills.
• Selected for FbStartups, Facebook’s Startup Initiative.
• Mastered the art of managing a remote team, an essential skill in today’s work environment.
• Successfully launched the app on the App Store—Mission Accomplished.
• People did use, most common todo was reminding medicines to loved ones.

Outcome

No Product-Market Fit. Stopped after 6 months, lessons learned.

Learnings

• Don’t underestimate marketing and distribution—tech is only 20% of the product unless the product itself is tech.
• Social graphs are tough to penetrate; the chicken-and-egg problem can only be solved when users invite their friends. What is their incentive?
• Understand your audience—reminding a family member to take medicine is a different use case than reminding a friend to print a document.
• Monetization is crucial unless you’re working with the law of large numbers.
• Timing is everything—2015 wasn’t ready for this product.
• Everything is just a hypothesis until it’s proven.
• Validate smarter—in 2024, the same hypothesis can be tested using established communication product APIs.

Success isn’t measured by the outcome but by the lessons learned along the way. A failed startup is just the foundation for the next breakthrough.