#49. Forming the Flows in November 2022

TLDR: Communication in Fibery reflections 🤯. We are (still) hiring! 🙏. +1 Product Designer Aliaksei 🇵🇱. Video production 📸. Merch project 🎁. PR agency partnership 📣. 4 releases with tons of new features 🏋️‍♀️. Form View 😍.

Flashback: #48. Releasing like crazy in October 2022

Communication in Fibery reflections

In November we spent a significant amount of time on deep thinking about collaboration and communication in Fibery. We tried to answer questions like “How to structure text to express thoughts and discuss thoughts?”, “How to merge sync and async communication?”, “How to notify the right people at the right time?“. Our discussions were around two new themes.

Semantic Blocks

We are still pursuing this idea. Blocks in all editors are technical (low-level). For example, every paragraph of text in Notion is a block. However, a thought usually consists of several blocks, like some text, an image, and some text. There are tools we know that allow you to structure content around thoughts/ideas. We invented a way to do it and going to publish our approach soon.

Comments & Chats

We use only two major tools to run our company: Fibery and Slack. While Fibery can replace many other tools, it can’t replace Slack. Every day we feel a barrier between Fibery and Slack. In Slack, we discuss Features that live in Fibery, in Slack we post bugs that should be posted into Fibery later, etc. We concluded that Chat is not a separate product, it is just a feature in a tool like Fibery. With this demand, we explored all existing chat products and collaboration patterns. I hope we found a way how to merge sync and async communication in Fibery. Again, we will reveal our ideas soon.

+1 Product Designer 🇵🇱

Aliaksei Arkhipau joined Fibery as a Product Designer in November. Finally, our only designer Alex is relieved and can share some tasks with Aliaksei.

We are hiring!

While many companies are shrinking, Fibery is growing. We’re strengthening our marketing team and are looking for two persons: Head of Marketing and Content marketer. Challenging work. Some fun. Remote. All you like.

Video production

We started some internal video productions in November intending to release several educational videos every month. Ilya designed all the things.

Kasper produced the first video about Form View.

Merch project

2022 was a challenging year, so our creative team decided to finish it off with some fun project. Merch is always fun. Here are some drafts that we are working on.

And some real thing

PR agency partnership

We’ve started a collaboration with Headline Media. They were reluctant to take us as a customer at first since our niche is very challenging, but then they liked us and our story and decided to give it a shot. We’ve just started, so we’ll see how it goes since we never did PR activities before.

Metrics

Main numbers ( → sign shows the changes between August, September, October, and November):

Paid accounts:     210   → 222   → 232   → 240   → 250
Active accounts:   500   → 550   → 550   → 590   → 610
Active users:      3.7K  → 3.7K  → 4K    → 4.1K  → 4.2K
Team size:         25    → 26    → 27    → 27    → 28
Run rate:          $135K → $140K → $145K → $150K → $155K/month 
MRR:               $37K  → $39K  → $40K  → $42K  → $44K/month

We still have a steady linear active user growth. Good, but not great.

On a more positive side, November retention looks best so far.

🎁 Product Updates

DONE

In November we had 4 releases with tons of great stuff. Here are the highlights:

Form View

Finally, you can create Form Views in Fibery and capture data from random people all over the world! Check the blog post with more details. Forms were in experimental mode, in November we added:

• Default values for fields
• Hidden fields (so you can set default values and setup some automations on top)
• Relation fields
• Form Icon
• Embed Forms

Board, Timeline, and Calendar relation Views

Visualize to-many relations on a Kanban Board without the need to create Smart Folders, right on the Entity View. You can also setup Timeline and Calendar inside any entity.

Centralized import

Import data from tools like Jira, Notion, or ClickUp from a single page.

Database Description

Explain what a particular Database is for to guide teammates, especially new hires:

Collapse Fields on Entity View

Collapse Fields you rarely use to reduce visual clutter and speed up loading. Or temporarily collapse Description so your long specs don’t get in the way while you are grooming the backlog.

This affects only you and applies to all Entities of the same Database — for example, for all Features or Sprints.

IN PROGRESS

Check Fibery Roadmap to get more details.

• Embed existing Views into rich text
• SOC 2 Certification
• Right-click Context menu for Cards
• Google Calendar Integration
• .this in formulas
• Add existing folders to favorites
• Filter and sort in relation field selector

🧈 One-liners

• New interview: Connect all your workflows with Michael Dubakov, CEO of Fibery
• New pricing update: Fibery special pricing
• New product update: Form View
• New webinar: Unite Software Development work and knowledge in a single tool
• New video: 3 Reasons Fibery is better than Notion

🎏 Random

Random image from our Slack

Random link from our Slack

It’s not your imagination: Shopping on Amazon has gotten worse

Random tweet from our Slack

NEW: Elon Musk has sent another email to Twitter engineers warning them about code reviews. “All managers are expected to write a meaningful amount of software themselves. Being unable to do so is like a cavalry captain who can’t ride a horse.”

— Zoë Schiffer (@ZoeSchiffer) November 28, 2022

Random post in #cortisol 🥲 channel

Anyway, this all looks interesting but still in alpha

Random post in #dopamine 😍 channel

Also, you nailed your marketing and presentation. My business partner and I were both impressed that you seemed like people serving people. Too many Saas companies don’t let that happen. Really appreciate transparency in the product. I got a kick out of the competition comparison graphics that look to honestly be from an internal meeting. They are honest and effective. Plus, seeing actual screenshots and snippets of the UI was huge. Excited to help in any way I can and I’ll be sure to send any feedback I have.