By Alex Kraft – LearningWithoutScars.com
I hate it when things slow down, but that’s the reality when Christmas and New Year’s both fall on Wednesdays. On the other side, I guess it’s a good time to reflect on 2024 and our company’s progress.
In 2023, Heave was an idea. Everything started with a “What if…?” I still remember our first service call and our first technician. I managed our jobs on a spreadsheet. The first twelve months focused on proving that the idea created value and solved customer pain points. This past year, 2024, was about building a real company. As more customers came on board, we discovered more problems. Not shut-the-doors type problems, but rather more ‘we need the ability to do XYZ’ type problems. Truthfully, 2024 was probably the most fun I’ve ever had professionally. We grew the team from five to twenty-one employees. Our service revenue grew every month, we onboarded hundreds of customers who all had similar first-time reactions to Heave: “How has this not existed before?” “This is so needed!”, “Are you kidding? I can get a tech today!” “What’s the catch?”… Feeling this enthusiasm from our customer base was a first for me. We were making a difference.
Because things at a start-up move so quickly, one needs to focus on the present with one eye toward the future. As silly as this sounds, I’d gotten so used to how Heave operates today that I forgot some of the early days and the scrappy environment in 2023. Preparing for our year-end meeting and holiday party forced me to go back through the year and share our twelve months’ progress. Some of our key product advancements this year include:
Launched a desktop version of Heave! From our inception in January 2023 up until Q2 2024, the only way customers could order service/book technicians by using the mobile app. While smartphones dominate the world, most customer fleet managers are confined to the office. A desktop application was long overdue for our core users.
1. Added Technician profiles – The #1 question we’d get from customers was, “How do I know these technicians are any good?” This was a weak point for a while. We knew our app had great technicians, but that doesn’t matter if the customers can’t see for themselves. So, we built out profile pages where techs can add their resumes and provide details about their skills and experience.