2012–2013 · Web app (SaaS)
HelpMeShine
What if feedback came more than once a year, and came with a plan to get better?
The dashboard, plus word clouds built from the words reviewers picked for strengths and improvement areas.
- Role
- Founder - built the first version, then led a contractor team on the rebuild
- Audience
- Professionals who want feedback more than once a year
- Result
- Several hundred sign-ups for a bare-bones free version, from Google, Toyota, HP, and more
What it is
A feedback tool that I founded. You’d send a 10-question survey to co-workers, clients, or friends, and they’d answer from a link, no account needed. They rated you with stars on two questions in each of five areas: execution, job knowledge, communication, motivation, and trust. Then they picked words for your strengths and the areas you could improve.
Responses stayed anonymous. Results showed up in batches, so you couldn’t match a score to the person you just asked. A bad-word filter and a check for repeated low scores from the same reviewer kept it from turning into a place to settle scores.
Basic was free. Plus ($7.95/month) added trends, comparisons, comments, custom questions, and How To Shine: tips for your two lowest-scoring behaviors, plus videos, articles, and books from a 251-item library you could add to a to-do list. Every page and section was gated by account type, and I could change who saw what from an admin screen.
Why I built it
Most people get real feedback once a year, from one person, under a lot of pressure. By then it’s too late to act on, and it rarely comes with any help. I kept running into this at Qualcomm in 2008. I built a bare-bones version to test the idea, then it sat for a few years while life got busy.
In early 2012 I rebuilt it from the ground up with a small group of contractors. I also put together the launch content: a behavior guide for each question, the resource library, two Powtoon explainer videos, a press kit, and a free eBook, Give Your Career a Boost. I launched it in 2013.
What I learned
You can find out if people want something long before it’s finished. The first version was free and had almost no features, and several hundred people signed up anyway, from Google, Toyota, HP, Allstate, Oracle, Verizon, Stanford, and Yahoo, among others.
It was also my first try at building a tool around kaizen: get a little better every day and it compounds. Ask for feedback, see the pattern, get the specific resource that helps. The tools are different now. The job is the same.