Goblin: finding a path, new hire & updates

Hi friend of Goblin!

I hope you had a good week. I know you're doing your best and I'm proud of you. Modern life is hard, but you're showing up every day and putting in the work.

To everyone affected by the tech layoffs--I'm so sorry. Let me know if I can help at all. I love connecting people and I'm happy to pitch in however I can or just give you emotional support.

In light of the twitter upheaval, here's a link to my LinkedIn just in case: Twitter / LinkedIn 💛

🌤️ Finding a path

If you follow this blog, you know that I'm very open with my founder journey. I'm doing the Build in Public thing and I want to make sure I'm not only sharing the good times.

I've owned a brewery before, but this is my first time as a tech founder. With the brewery, I was able to create a concrete roadmap of what needed to happen. 1. Lease a space, 2. Install equipment etc. With Goblin, I need to keep my mind more open and accept that finding "Product Market Fit" is going to be more of a zig-zag, lost in a corn maze journey.

I used to be a paralegal and I was pretty good at it. I am a bit of a perfectionist. I like to show people things when I've perfected them. It's been an adjustment to ship features that aren't exactly what I envision them. It's good though! I'm not building out features for 3 months and then finding out no one likes them.  It's just a big change.

I'm changing as a person. I'm learning to be more okay with chaos and not having a perfectly prepared plan. I'm remembering how I actually love coding and creating things.

October was a bit of a jumble for me. I was feeling overwhelmed with next steps and planned to pivot. The pivot didn't get as much traction and didn't spark joy in me. I realized that whimsy and emotional support are part of what makes Goblin great and unique (thanks to some help from my friend Christin). I pushed through the difficult time and I'm back on track.

The path is winding but it is incredible and I'm embracing it.

🎉 New hire! Meet Juan

I'm super excited to announce that my good friend Juan Garavito has joined the team! Juan is a brilliant startup attorney that is transitioning his career to frontend coding and user experience designer. His position with Goblin is a bit of a generalist one: he's doing a UX case study on the whole app, he's helping with frontend coding, and he's also going to be involved in product, gamification, and creative writing.

I'm extremely excited to have him on the team!

💻 Build in Public Updates

What we learned from customers this week

• It's important for users to be able to add tasks quickly and with no friction. If Goblin is going to help declutter the mind, it needs to be able to gracefully handle a rapid-fire brain dump.
• Users like the fun design, but it needs to have a calming effect instead of a chaos one.
• Users enjoy the positive reinforcement and vibes from Goblin. This may not be what works for everyone, but I think we need to be opinionated on this and declare there will be no negative/shame vibes.
• "Funny", "Not boring", "Different" – these are some things users reported liking about the app. I think we need to lean into this and not try to be everything to everyone.

Reflections

I've always said that I want Goblin to be a fun to do list app. I want people to record things that spark joy like calling a loved one, taking a bath and doing a face mask, or going on a nature walk. To do lists shouldn't be a list of 20 things you're dreading because then you'll avoid it at all costs.

What we shipped this week

• There are now more filters on the task table. Previously there was only "completed" but now there is also "active", "urgent", and "joyful".
• Onboarding has been completely redone to help you get set up in Goblin faster.
• Missions have been removed--these will be replaced by simpler mini mad libs and other dnd/game-inspired features.
• If you're logged in, you'll now see a "Support Goblin" link at the bottom where you can subscribe for $5/month.

• Top nav has been updated to be more consistent and less confusing.
• It's now super fast to add new tasks. Type in the task, hit enter, then you can type a new one. If you want to edit the task, mark it urgent/joyful,  add notes, or associate with a goal, click the edit icon on that task.
• When you level up, you get a new treasure that's pinned on the left side of the screen.
• Category no longer required when you create a sidequest.

Note: the changelog is continously updated if you want to follow along.

Financing

I'm planning to raise a preseed round. It's likely going to be first thing in January because of the holidays, but I would love to get intros and have relationship building calls with investors in the meantime. I would also love help on my pitch deck from experienced founders or investors.

Waitlist

I'm going to let people in from the waitlist over the next week. Thank you for your patience.

Current users--please send me your gamification ideas, suggestions, or shower thoughts. Your feedback is extremely valuable to me.

Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate each and everyone one of you.

-Molly, Vision and Decision Goblin