Roast my Startup - A productivity todo list

Hi guys, I'd like you to roast my startup, Blisterlist.

It's a task manager that incorporates the Eisenhower Matrix to help you prioritize tasks. It's intended for developers, designers, and small teams where project management software is overkill, but regular todo lists aren't quite enough. It's especially useful for people who have more to do than they have time for, and need to prioritize tasks a lot. I developed the system during my own dev work, and it helped me a lot, and I use it every day for practically everything I need to track.

The market for todos is very saturated, and I'm not trying to attract people who want simple todo lists (although it does that just fine). There is also great software for project management (eg Asana), but it's complicated and lacks a good prioritization aid. I believe there is a group of people that would benefit from the middle ground, where they can see at a glance all the projects that they have at various stages, and have somewhere to mind dump ideas related to particular project for later perusal, so they can remain focused on the most important task right now. Some of the simpler todo sites already have simple priority systems, but Blisterlist makes that the core of its process. I searched for a system like this before I decided to make it myself, and I could find nothing like this on the market.

I have built a prototype, which has the core functionality working, at http://blisterlist.com. You can create projects, add tasks and subtasks, give them importance, urgency and estimate time scores out of 10, and the system will give you a task-ranked priority list if you click the star on that card. You can complete them and use it as it is now, but there are a few features to add and tweaks to UI/UX before it is public ready. I also have a designer ready to make it look better, but I wanted to post it here to maybe see if I'm wasting my money on it. I have just enough income to continue developing it part time (myself + designer), but an investor would certainly speed that up, and allow me to hire a marketing manager. I haven't had an investor before so I don't really know how to go about finding one.

Marketing is not my strongest suit, so I'm still figuring out the best way to get paying customers. I was planning on joining and posting in entrepreneur and developer related forums I could find, spending some amount regularly on adwords/facebook to bring more eyes, and trying to write guest articles for productivity related blogs (or asking them to write about it). I was also going to approach all of the "top-10" blogs/sites if they had a todo or productivity section, and ask them to be included in their reviews. I don't know if this is enough to get traction, but it's what I have come up with so far.

I am torn between making the whole site subscription based, or making "personal projects" free, and "shared projects" require a subscription. I assume having it free will bring more users, but I don't know how well they would convert to paying until I did some actual spending. I can imagine a case of single developers using it for free, then wanting to share a list with a partner (or spouse), and thus having an incentive to pay membership to do that. The alternative is to write a compelling enough landing page about why it is so beneficial, then asking for payment before allowing people to use it. I am leaning towards a compelling landing page and subscription for all projects, for around $4.95/month, or $49.95/year. Overheads are very low, so it would be profitable as-is with only 100 paying customers. This does not include any ongoing salaries, of course. I would need around 6,000 subscribers to be viable with four staff, including myself (developer, marketer, designer, support).

As for my background, I have enough experience as a developer to build the site, and recently finished a data-heavy, automated SaaS website, called TLD Logic (https://tldlogic.com), which gained little traction because our marketing wasn't very good, and in hindsight realized we made almost every mistake possible. I don't intend on making those same mistakes again (partly why I'm here). As for my other business experience, I bootstrapped an Indian Simmer Sauce business in 2007 which is now being managed by my family. It produced a small income, but has a strong following in Melbourne (Australia). I didn't really enjoy the food industry, which is why I moved to programming/web development.

The system behind Blisterlist is my own invention, and I believe is an innovation on the Eisenhower Matrix. I haven't patented the system, as I'm not sure that is necessary, but I do keep the task-rank algorithm on the server. The browser sends the values to the server, and the server returns a ranked list of tasks. I have fine-tuned my algorithm for task-ranking over the last two years, and I'm very happy with how much more productive I am now that I use it. I have already built the prototype and am already using the Blisterlist system to improve Blisterlist itself. I've only invested my time so far in producing it, but before I put any significant money into it, I'd like you to tell me why I'm wasting my time, if I am.

Thanks for reading and for your time!