Category: Startup Life

2011: Shifting into 2nd Gear

Posted by oshoma – December 31, 2010

2010: Wow, what a year. 2011: We’re looking forward to meeting you!

Today is the last day of a fun, chaotic, and whirlwind year on 5 Blocks Out. We launched our beta release this year. We made many new friends, and leaned hard on our old ones. We learned a great deal. We consumed a lot of delicious coffee. And we worked hard almost every single day on improving and growing the service.

Throughout the year we received a ton of support from our member community, family, and friends. Thank you, everyone, for that. Starting something new is not easy, and it’s often lonely. We value every bit of encouragement, advice, and support.

5 Blocks Out is up and running, new members are joining steadily, and people are adding helpful tips. That said, we’ve really only just gotten started. When people ask us how it’s going we explain, “We’re shifting from 1st gear to 2nd gear”. It’s a good analogy: we know we have the horsepower to reach 2nd gear, but we aren’t quite there yet in terms of momentum. We need to grow the user community further so that people feel there’s a critical mass of friends and neighbours on board. We also need to make the service more valuable for people who already know their neighbourhoods well, e.g. by adding more info on what’s going on nearby. We’re working on both of these initiatives right now, and they’ll be our main focus for the next several months.

If you’d like to help us reach that second gear, here are some concrete things we’d love you to do:

And as always, we welcome your thoughts and proposals. Please send us feedback.

We’re looking forward to 2011. Onwards!

Katrin and Osh

First Six Days: Awesome

Posted by oshoma – July 13, 2010

First six days: awesome. We’re thrilled about how it’s going so far — the number of new visitors, the number of sign-ups and invitations, the new tips and missions people are contributing, and the fact that our web server hasn’t tipped over yet under the weight of all this traffic. (I know, I know… tempting fate. Be nice to the website, please!)

Here are some examples of what people are up to:

Juliette S added a tip about the Belljar Cafe in Roncesvalles:

Ok finally made it here while it was open. Great place to work – especially on dark, broody, rainy days when you feel like you can spy on the world. Good cheap grilled sandwiches. Awesome music selection.

Melanie R says, of Sanagan’s Meat Locker near Baldwin Village:

This is a fantastic butcher shop, with a focus on locally-sourced meats.

Renée M likes the High Park & Roncesvalles Mom’s Group:

I’m a member of this group and have met my best mom friends and my son’s playmates through the meetup: High Park – Roncesvalles mom’s group.

People are starting missions, too. Mike T started “Where can you get a good beer?” with answers such as Caffe Volo, C’est What, Duggan’s Brewery, and Sin and Redemption topping the list. Pamela S is seeking the “Queen of Poutine“.  Mike B is looking for leads on a great plumber so he can complete his home reno. And Paula M is looking for prenatal and postnatal yoga. Help them out!

Lots of people seem fascinated by our neighbourhoods map, which shows the 181 neighbourhoods we know about in Toronto. You can navigate by entering a street address or intersection, or by just dragging the map. And you can click the zoom buttons to zoom in/out, or double-click on the map. (One of our members tells us the zoom buttons don’t show up on IE8. Anyone else seeing that?)

Of course, moreso than the map, people really love their specific neighbourhoods. So far Brockton Village, The Junction, and Roncesvalles are getting the lion’s share of views. Once you’re signed up you can follow neighbourhoods, Twitter-style, to find out what’s happening there. We’ll dig up some stats on that a little further down the road.

The Bird Nest, our community-powered hub for parents, is also getting lots of visits. Here you can see folks exchanging tips that help parents with little kids, e.g. finding kid-friendly places to go, places with activities for kids, and good places to buy family-related stuff. As a parent of a toddler I’m particularly delighted to see the Bird Nest coming to fruition.

And last but not least, so many people have emailed us and tweeted about 5 Blocks Out. Thank you, all of you, for your kind words, and for helping spread the news. We really appreciate it, and your encouragement means a great deal to us.

We’re happy.  Hooray!