mYwindow

Its been 6weeks since pivoted in Late Jan.

In just almost 50days, i feel so proud to say that we now from this day are having $1k/day in gross sales on our platform. 

As you all know, mYwindow simply is a POV sales platform (Sell anything you want, the way you want.) & as it appears our sellers are loving its openness and simplicity. You can also try it here and give you feedback.

With these awesome numbers standing solid with us, now i can say that we are also working real fast on raising an angel round as lot of angels are now showing interest. If you would like to get into this deal, we would love to talk to you, please email at [email protected] & lets rock.

How Did we get here? As most of you know that we started up with this in January this year and its a pretty awesome number for a startup (at such an early stage) to get this revenue. It obviously was not a easy journey and like every other startup it has been achieved with a lot of hardship and commitment from our awesome team. There were a few constant protocols that we followed:

1. Constant Hustle: No matter what your startup is all about, to get Consumers/Customers, you have to hustle a lot. Please remember, nothing goes viral, if something even does, it will never last. As a startup, we hustle a lot, it took us 5 days of constant work to get our first sale happening on the platform & I guess that is the reason (the hustle) why we are scaling at this pace. 

2. Evangelize the Innovation and Growth: As a startup this is a must for you, we did it and worked a big time for us. If you will ever visit and see our team, we are pretty young chaps, starting from the age of even 16 years old. Now the 16 to 19 yrs old buds are surely not working for us for money, but because they believe in us. And since they do, they want to spread their belief about our products and how it can help and eventually being our Evangelists, and we are proud to have them as a part of our team.  Also, be it any startup ($0 in value or a $Billion one), they cant ignore the fact that, only loosing can be done alone! So build a team that believes in your product and find the perfect evangelist (If you have a happy customer, then trust me he is a perfect one for you)!

3. Solve a problem that exists:  I know this is one the most repeated terms you must be listening to, but it simply makes no sense in solving a problem that don't exist. I mean we are at the core of our hearts very sure what problems our target customers are facing and we simply built a product around it to solve it. And as it has turned out, people are loving it. This is the reason i guess why VC's or investors keep asking "Are you a Pain killer or a Vitamin". Now being anyone of it can be a great business but it must address some dedicated market and must solve or prevent something. 

P.S. VC's or investors avoid Lifestyle businesses (On why so, i can cover it in the next post, but if you need to know, just shoot us an email at [email protected] ) 

4. Inspire people for action: Most of the time I keep telling this to people on why this is so important. And I can never find an end to its explanation. We believe that the first experience of all users on the platform should be priceless and they should come back. To make it amazing, we work a lot on UX and make sure that it's so clean and simple that even a 10 year old kid can understand and use it. When he leaves the platform and if he was happy using it, trust me he will be more than happy to share about it.

Also, The Future of sales (as we all will know it in the sometime) is when our customers will be our salesman. i.e. a time when our customers starts marketing our product. That's the future of sales. (P.S this video with Alok Kejriwal on Future of Sales in a web series IIM ). 

We are pretty happy that we've been able to find such consumers who have earned in thousands of dollars through us and are spreading the word in their communities so that even their community becomes a part of this phenomenon.

5. The most important, have Patience and Faith in yourself. As it is rightly said, give time some time. Things will work out. Its not that we have grown overnight, No, if you must know, we failed once before we pivoted to this product. So have patience and faith in yourself. Your idea may fail, but i can ensure you that you will never fail. 

Its a very awesome saying, "There are no failures in startups, only delayed successes."

There is a lot more that we did to achieve or reach this figure, but I guess that is what they call it "Product-Market Fit". (Build -->Test --> Iterate --> Build and again test.)

I would really appreciate if you can download our iOS app to sell stuff that you create or sell anything else that you want and leave your feedback :) 

Also in meantime if you want to connect with us, the best way is tweet to us at @ mywindow_me or email us at [email protected] and we will love to interact.

No matter if you are trying to reach your audience through an Email or Facebook/Twitter/Instagram; mYwindow is here always to help you to reach more and earn more through your content.

1. Connect your social Networks: Connecting all your social networks in your mYwindow profile allows your buyers to know more about you on the checkout page i.e at your profile page itself. It is very important as user gets to know more about you and at the same time they can mention you on twitter directly if they like.

If you are a musician or a film maker, you just have to include the link to your song or movie you want to sell in the cover, and we automatically bring in an SoundCloud/Youtube player for your buyer to listen to what your selling.

Advantage: People who connect and share their product on twitter have seen an average growth of 20% and peeps who have done facebook have seen a growth of 40%. You should do both for better conversions. 

2. Build an amazing Profile: When you claim a username while signing up for mYwindow, your profile becomes accessible by public at https://mywindow.me/Username. And building an amazing profile includes you connecting all the social networks i.e. Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Foursquare. (as explained above) Also, since the profile shows all the products that are on sale, you must include this profile link on your bio's on other networks, so as when people visit your profile, they see all the products that are on sale.

Advantage: It is noticed that, building an amazing profile has had increased sales by more than 30% of all your products, as all of them are accessible at the same page so your audience will try to buy more. :)

3. Sharing and tweeting around the internet: When you list your product on mYwindow for selling it to your audience, we give you a short unique link, which you can share all over the internet where your audience can listen to you. If you share on Facebook, tweet about it, or make an awesome photo on Instagram with the unique link as a caption, it actually converts and does more to you than anything else. 

Advantage: it is seen that, there is an average increase of 60% in sales when you share about it on social networks or blogs or rather on internet. The more you write & share around, the more is better (but be cautious, and do not spam)

4. Do email promotions: It is seen and known world wide that personal email converts much better than other social networks. Build an email list of your audience on your blog. Use mailchimp or other email clients to build amazing campaigns for your products and send out. Do once a week and see how it converts.

5. Sell on your website, use overlay:  With mYwindow overlay, it actually is very easy now to sell your content (Listed on mYwindow) on your own website. Just 2 lines of code which you can integrate in 20sec in your website :).  You can see the demo here: http://nikunjagrawal.com/

It's extremely simple and even you can understand its importance, when a reader of your blog/site can buy stuff on your own site without any re-directions and hassle. It gives a great user experience.

And above all, if you are a creator, just reach out to us to explore more!. If you are a startup who needs a solution like this, lets get in touch and we can explore the possible collaborations.

Reach out to us at [email protected] or tweet us at @ mywindow_me  

It has just been a week since we launched Pre-orders for Physical goods, today we are happy to announce an amazing feature than many people requested, which is "Pay what you want".

Q. How does one enable pay what you want on his goods? Ans. It is extremely simple, Whenever you add a Digital Goods/Pre-order/Ticket on mYwindow, in the Price Box, just write the price with '+' sign and people can then pay you anything above that price.

  Like for example: If in the price box you write $5+, then the buyer can pay you any amount above or equal to $5 for that good on his will. Which is really amazing. 

Q. How is it helpful to me? Ans. It is in a many ways. Your art or good may deserve a price that we cannot value. But at the same time, an artist may know what the TRUE value for your creation can be. So he can Pay you a much more that what you have quoted. It is extremely helpful for artists.

As you can see when a Buyer will try to pay for your good (in the above case the Price was $0+ ) he will be asked to give a fair price to that product and one will :)

You can see it in action here:

https://www.mywindow.me/mYwindow/tickets

So it’s time now that you start selling your goods be it Digital/Physical in multiple currencies to your audience with Pay as you go feature:)

With your support and love, we've been constantly working on awesome updates for our sellers to sell stuff more effectively. It was just 3 days back that we introduced Multiple Currencies for sellers to sell in their local currency, and now we are here to let you accept pre-orders for Physical Goods as well.

Q. How can one accept pre-orders for a physical good through mYwindow?

Its extremely simple. Just click on 'Accept Pre-Order' from your Products page and click the check box that says, 'Ask for shipping info from buyer', and you are done! See below:

Now the checkout page (see below) will ask for the shipping information from the buyer. You can see the address of all buyers on 'Analytics' page under each successful sale to ship them.

As you can see, its so beautiful and simple. You can see it in action here:

https://www.mywindow.me/mywindow/preorder

So it's time now that you start selling your goods be it Digital/Physical in multiple currencies to your audience :)

Since the beginning of new year, we've been working hard to bring more amazing things to our recent pivot. Today we are pleased to say that now you can sell in 12 different currencies on mYwindow. 

The currencies we support now:

1. US Dollar

2. Indian Rupee

3. £ British Pound Sterling

4. € Euro

5. ¥ Japanese Yen

6. A$ Australian Dollar

7. R$ Brazilian Real

8. CAD$ Canadian Dollar

9. HK$ Hong Kong Dollar  

10. NZ$ New Zealand Dollar  

11. Singapore Dollar  

12. Taiwanese Dollar 

Is it important to have multiple currencies?  We believe we are always more comfortable in buying stuff in our own currency than any other.  Even as a seller, it would be great if your audience can buy from currency they're comfortable buying in.

Though the charges would still be in US dollars as per real-time exchange rate.

We are also planning on rolling in more currencies soon.

The amazing journey of Building the entire product, mYwindow, and then Shifting to making it something that is real great.

It all started in 2011 when Nikunj Agrawal Got the idea for a Social network that will be based and built around passions.

It was and insane ambition to build a community that will revolve around your passions and interests. It started in a very rebellious way, by creating a search engine to let people discover people on the basis of their interests, and other basic filters like age, sex, location or even languages they speak, and many more (Around 32 Filters), and it went quite well, receiving around 5000 signups in 2 weeks. This was around aug 2012, and later on we went on building it and taking to the next level.

This was the first launch of mYwindow!

This is the blue print of the search engine we built around interests.

Then later in late Sept 2012, we realized that, if someone like facebook or twitter, (These were the platforms from which we indexed the data) came up with a way to filter their search results they way we did, we will be no where then. And so we shifted our entire focus on building what we thought is the best possible version for mYwindow, i.e. a platform for every one to interact around their passion.

This was our first Re-launch!

We wanted people to build an amazing profile like this demo, where one can showcase his passions and creations. also we wanted people to connect to each other on the basis of their passion, so we built a section named as mYpassion!

This thing went well too, this re-launch was appreciated by many people. We got, what every one say is the recipe of success, amazing media attention, investors were taking interest in talking to us, users were joining every day, in just 2 months after the public launch, we received around 18,000 signups. Now this was great right?

Now why a Pivot in product?

Sometimes even good ideas need to be killed!

We knew that it is a great idea to let people build a profile and showcase their creations, along with connecting to each other wrt their passions. It takes a great deal of perspective and courage to kill something for the betterment of a product. Even before we came on, this product took on different forms multiple times. It can be frustrating at times, but in the end, if you don’t make difficult cuts the product becomes complex and lacks direction.

But their were 2 major reasons for this pivot: 1. We ourselves were not happy with what we have built. 2. Users were getting confused with the product and we were just getting a stale pile of new users who were doing nothing.

& so because, as we ourselves were not happy with the product and we heard the same thing with our users in feedback, we decided to pivot, and make something that people are really interested in.

So what as a user you can do now on mYwindow? You can “Sell anything”!

Screenshot of your new home to sell anything digitally.

Despite of the fact that there are a few platforms that are trying to allow people to sell stuff digitally, they actually have a horrible experience in doing so. They are very complex to use, badly designed, irritates the users and never handles payments or shipping of goods. (Its in context to OLX)

With mYwindow, the process is fairly simple and cleanly designed. As you see, the moment you log in, you see a dashboard, with three options on selling, either you can sell a digital good (Like a design, music, video, link, or even code), or Get Pre-orders for stuff you are still creating (Can be a book or music or anything else.), or else sell event tickets or Memberships with just one click.

Thats how your listing of anything looks.

Its so real amazing and simple.

You click buy to pay, and thats it, you are done!

Just one click checkout and every digital good is delivered to your email inbox directly ☺ and it works just like magic. No hassle any more to sell stuff. No need to deal with badly designed platforms to list stuff to find buyer. You just create and leave the rest to us.

With having an amazing profile, comes a need to see who ever visited your profile and how is it helping you to showcase your best self. So we have updated the profile analytics page for you, Now its very easy to know and keep the track of who visited your profile and from where (like mYwindow website, iPhone app or Android app)

Take a look on how many visits you have got Daily, Weekly or Monthly. Keep a track on who is visiting your profile with following list.

See, how many times they have visited your profile, and build conversations with them, over real time with our freshly updated real time chat. 

Its a place like never before. Build an amazing profile and connect with people/content in your passion. Keep a track on who is visiting your profile, with our new and amazing Profile analytics. 

For any queries or support, please reach out to us at 

Its so amazing, when you can connect to people in your passion, imagine, you get to follow only film making of James Cameron and not James Cameron. Its Phenomenal on how one gets to connect to people on mYwindow.

Our next step towards this awesomeness is Interaction with people over a realtime chat. Just imagine on how amazing it is, You can search which people are online in your passion and build conversations with them. This was not possible before.

After you get who is online in your passion, you can even filter out the results further by adding tags (What are they interested about in that passion) like you can see below. Just type in the tags and see the results being filtered in real time and just build the conversations then and there and gain value.

 Also looking at conversation was never this beautiful. 

It looks so amazing, and it is live right now to every Beta users. Please take a look and give your feedback.  P.S. I am always at your disposals, shout at me anytime and i will be there to help you in every way possible. 

She is one of those modern dynamic Indian girls who believes in execution and changing ideas. Highly motivated with ideals and actions of Anthony Robins, Steve Jobs and Mahatma Gandhi she is somebody who is not afraid to follow her heart. She dropped out of IIT Kaharagpur in the penultimate stages to pursue her interests in the field of fashion designing.

Some of her creations which are on display at mYwindow.me

Its hard to imagine a world without Coding. 

Even a Basic Hack to prompt "Hello World" Gives a significance that you have created something, you have made a Computer do that..

When we started rolling out the invites, we knew there are few things to work on, but we wanted you all to see it first. So, we sent you the invites and asked you for your feedbacks.

We so loved that we received such amazing feedbacks, and great suggestions to improve upon. And it feels great to say to you that we are here to serve and we are listening to your words.

This update in the Yoke is a result of your suggestions. So now you can view the content in this amazing expanded view by just clicking on it.

And Trust me when i say, it seems and feels magical.

Enthusiast

Since the Early days of Video Discovery, it has been a trend to search the videos on Youtube And then share it on the platforms you want to. It was a Good And Decent enough trend, but as things evolve, Status quo must be Disrupted and so we decided to let you do things on mYwindow that no other platform has done before.

Search Youtube:

It is so amazing that now you can directly search all the YouTube videos on mYwindow and share it in any of your passions.

Just Type the video name. Hit ENTER. And BOOM. See all results. Just like that.

And looks so Beautiful, isn't it? You can Click on the ADD THIS button to share the video and you are good to go. Now even if you want to see the video then and there, no big deal; click on the video you want to see and it plays there. That's it, it is that easy.

And at the top of this, this now makes it so easy to share any video on on mYwindow and immediately you can share it on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest too.

The experience you will have is so amazing and beautiful that you will now never have to open an new tab to go to YouTube to search YouTube or to share a YouTube video.

Enthusiast 

Its a Noisy world out there, & if you don't understand your part and what you are meant to do, you will be just a part of the crowd. Knowing what your passions are is the 1st step towards being a leader, and Following your passions can teach you a lot of things you never knew existed. SO it is time we Stop Following People and Start Following the content and especially the passion. #YouAreYourPassions

If you think you have it in you to be a great management and marketing Asset for us, come on Board. mail us to [email protected]

  Enthusiast 

When we launched our people search engine in June 2012, we loved it. 

Imagine you could search people who studied at any Ivy league schools, who are living in New York now, spoke German, work at Palo alto, and wore spectacles.

It felt magical !!

But later after 2 months, we realized, it wasn't something that we deeply cared about. I still don't know why we went on to that path of creating a People search engine before launching the actual idea which was mYwindow, Yoke, and mYfamily. Facebook could do a much better job (being very honest) in creating a great People search platform because of they having the personal data of over 1 Billion people.

And more than that, it felt as if we shifted our core focus and it wasn't a problem that WE wanted to solve. A great people search platform is just a small feature which if thought and executed wisely, can be done later too.

So in mid July, we changed our mind and decided to shelf this thing and started working afresh on the idea that blew mY mind in September 2011

We went underground and just focused on developing this beautiful product which was mYwindow, Yoke and mYfamily.

I always believed that a great design always make people THINK and FEEL. I wanted to have an incredible User Interface & the User experience of mYwindow. People should fall in love with it.

But, I couldn't trust anyone to make such design in mY city and moreover, I wasn't willing to outsource it. After 3-4 days of thinking, I decided I'll teach mYself and I'll make this happen.

I trusted mY intuition as I'd made a lot short films, teasers, documentaries, visual effects work when I was 19. Hence I decided to take it forward.

After 18 hours of work daily, for a month, I started to gain momemtum and things were coming out great.

Then again problems with server infrastructure came where we realized we needed to have cloud servers to handle the huge traffic spikes. We realized this coz our People search engine was hosted on a Godaddy shared hosting and our server crashed when Times of India published about us within 1 week of our launch.

So we thought of using AWS as our cloud infrastructure but no one I knew, knew anything about AWS. I tried learning mYself but frankly speaking, AWS guides and documentation are very stupid, cluttered, and hard to understand.

I wasted a month, but  nothing came out. But later, I got pissed off and thought of going underground like I did in Designing, and started to understand from ground up, putting in hours and hours like crazy.

In November, I finally fucking figured it out. Everything right from EC2, RDS, S3, Cloudfront, SES, Route53 and what not.

The development was also going great in parallel and finally in January 2013, we launched invite only version and it exploded. 

The design came out to be Insanely Magical. People said, it's one of the best designs ever, of a Consumer crowded website.

We also made this video where we just talked about what we believe in

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igaxKzq-sec

People loved it like CRAZY.

Within 75 days we had close to 15,000 invites. 

What mYwindow became is, ' A Self Network ' , to live the most important part of our lives at one place.

Your Identity . Your Passion . Your Family .

People can create their most beautiful profile ever on this planet. They follow their passion by following content, not people. They connect to their entire family network around the world in a magical way.

We just launched private BETA and have started accepting few invites. A very handful of people among them said, they are loving using mYwindow because of its great design and it's new way of consuming content which they love and are passionate about.

On Facebook, Twitter and all other platforms, your friends & followers decide what you see in news feed and tweets.

At mYwindow, you decide what you see. Period.

So yeah, it has been a hell of a journey launching this beautiful product we believed in and we're proud of it.

It's time now that the people witness it to change their lives. We are at your service, folks !!!!

Over & Out

-

Nikunj Agrawal

Founder, CEO & Spiritual designer at mYwindow