Steve (Founder) and his girlfriend Jess were traveling around Thailand booking and managing a range of transport, accommodation, food and drinks and recreational activities. Sometimes they were not travelling together (which required remote coordination) also having to deal with the challenges of intermittent internet access. This was an extremely time consuming, disconnected and often infuriating experience. Forced to use rafts of different digital aggregators and online services for research to get reasonable pricing and availability, then trying to record and share the information remotely, communicate about it, followed by booking ... it should have been a lot easier in todays digital age. Well now it will be ...
Lyfshort is an online community created to inspire and coordinate participation in recreational activities. This is delivered through a mobile app and website which facilitate quick research, itinerary creation, participant invitation and management followed by multimedia experience sharing and socialisation. This vision took a step towards reality when Lyfshort Pty. Ltd. was registered as an Australian company, the founder invested seed capital and domains were secured. The journey begins now.
Concept and Idea has taken shape, functional and monetisation strategies mapped out and draft forecast completed and socialised.
Steven Fitzjohn, Lyfshort's founder and previous Regional VP APAC for US software company Liveperson (NASDAQ:LPSN specialising in chat, messaging and AI) moves to full time CEO role to focus on building a comprehensive online activity and itinerary planning and management service, an engaged user community and forming a team of highly skilled staff and management. Followed by capital raising, service monetisation and scaling.
A technology consultant and two core developers are contracted, advisory board setup and technology stacks selected. The project begins.
Much of the database backend, technology stack and core user interface in place. 50% of the development required for the Alpha release milestone is finished. The Alpha version of the product will be released to a small number of test users and central to user focus groups.
Maxim Shklyar accepts CTO role holding a Bachelor in Computer Science with a Masters in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Maxim is an experienced full stack web and mobile application developer with over 20 years of experience. This ranges from founding and working in a number of startup technology businesses, leading teams of application and web developers from concept to project completion along with directly creating a number of mobile apps and websites.
Lucas Alvarez accepts the Head of Marketing role, holds a Master of Marketing and a Bachelor of Business Administration with over 5 years experience within a number tech and ecommerce companies. His roles have primarily focused on digital marketing, sales and growth in the tech and ecommerce companies. As a marketing entrepreneur, Lucas has been responsible for building brands and teams from scratch into sustainable and profitable startup companies. Lucas believes strongly in practical marketing with an engrained ethos of a “build – test – measure” approach underlying most of his strategies.
A basic Beta version of the Lyfshort App is available to use live on IOS and Android devices. It is not in the App stores and only released to a small closed group of test users. Event monitoring and statistical analysis tools have been implemented to gather data to prioritise development towards a refined Live release version.
Using the Beta version release of the Lyfshort app a series of 4 group testing cohorts are completed using live IOS Testflight and Google Beta versions of the application. Main objectives of validating market demand, monetisation direction and data gathering for strategy refinement. Data gathered will also be used to modify 3 year forecasting model. A similar Build, Test, Learn approach will also occur during the testing period on the technical side, evaluating how effective existing features are, measuring customer demand for alternative ones and fixing bugs.
