What if today was your last?
If I am right, you would do all that you have wanted to do in life.
You would meet all the people whom you have wanted to meet, would go to all the places where you have wanted to go, eat all the things you like, play, dance or do whatever makes you happy.
But most importantly if you analyze what the difference is between your regular day and your last day, it is nothing but Time.
You are counting your seconds and want to make sure that you make every second of it count. Suddenly, Time becomes very invaluable to you that you would be willing to give anything to get it back.
But why is Time not given the same respect as it deserves otherwise?
Time is the only precious resource in life which you can never buy back if lost. Sadly, there is no time machine yet and it might take a very long time before it is invented assuming it is possible.
You are given 24 hours every day and even if you take 12 hours out for things like sleeping, eating, and doing your daily chores, you still have 12 hours left — 12 precious hours and to all honesty, we know how we waste the time we have (myself included).
If not, we would have already attained all our goals, reached to the peak of our potential and would have already done all that we have wanted to do, not having anything pending till our last day!
Now, why am I saying all this in a Product Launch Post?
The reason is, this is exactly the problem our product is trying to address!
No, we are not building a time machine
No, we can’t give back the time you already lost
No, we can’t give you extra time in life either
What we do is that, we count each and every second of your life, observe what you do, analyze it, provide intelligent recommendations and suggestions on how you could better utilize your time based on your behavior and not just that, we even Optimize the time you spend by reducing the time wasted away from things like Queuing, Time Mismanagement, Transit, Distractions like Social Media, Gaming and surfing (unless thats really your Goal) and do this not just in the virtual world, but the real world as well!
Okay, now thats a lot of words and huge statements to make. To summarize, what we do is Observe, Analyze and Optimize the Time people spend daily.
Now, you may ask — that’s too vague and ambitious at the same time, can you tell me what your product actually does?
If you notice, this is the timeline for a day
And all that we do in this timeline are events (time-series events as many call it). And these events can be discrete, continuous and even recurring.
So, this is what our product does:
- Collect event data from various sources — be it real or virtual world (there are lot of techniques we use to do that which is out of the scope of this post)
- Analyze all the data — We get to get a summarized insight on how you are using your time for the day, how your behavior has changed, how well are the activities aligned with the goals you set, predict how your behavior would be in the future and present all this information in an actionable fashion to you.
- Optimize — Now there are 2 ways in which we can help you optimize the time you spend. The first is using recommendations to give you an idea on what you can do to cut down the time you have been wasting based on your behavioral patterns and the second is by actually helping you cut down time wastage using the various pointed modules we offer for modules like Goal Management, Queue Management, Transit Management, etc. which will not just recommend but also help you cut down time by doing many things behind the scenes on your behalf. For eg. the queue management module can help you virtually queue up leaving the need to be physically present, the goal management module can help by pairing you with like minded people or people who can help and also by providing useful information about others who had the same goal and what they did to achieve it thus giving an inspiration, the transit module for users can be used to understand when exactly the public transport will arrive and help you by planning the travel for you, transit for businesses can help logistics to be shipped in the fastest and best way possible to the destination. So, these are some of the areas out of the many areas we cover.
So, do we have all this for the launch?
We are starting off with Goal Management (and if time permits, Queue Management as well) and we will be gradually iterating from there based on the user feedback.
So, how far are we?
We are building out our product.
We have completed the legal proceedings, incorporated out of INDIA (Timecampus Technologies Pvt. Ltd) on August 8th 2019, had our first board meeting and laid out an elaborate strategy on capturing the market and are still gradually iterating as we speak everyday.
What channel(s) are you targeting?
We are targeting multiple channels and it will be available for users to use via the channel of their comfort which includes web app, mobile app (Android/IOS), Chat bots (Whatsapp, FB, Skype, Slack, etc.), Voice Assistants (Google Assistant, Alexa, etc.) IVRS, Chrome/Firefox Extensions, etc. but ofcourse not all to start with. We will be incrementally getting there with Mobile App and Chat Bot to start with. If there is any other specific channel you would be interested in, please let us know.
Is this only for users? Or Businesses as well?
This product is both B2B as well as B2C. We provide a lot of time management solutions for businesses on how efficiently they can save time of the entire workforce and thereby money by using many techniques like understanding what each employee does in his/her work hours and where things can be made better. Not just that, it also helps you manage the supply and demand (More on that in a different blog post)
So, are you trying to make me a workhorse?
The answer is NO!
Using time properly does not mean working all the time
It is all about being smart about managing your time. You still need to have time for your family, friends, entertainmet, fitness and all that you want to do to actually live your life. But, there is a balance to be maintained.
But isn’t it intrusive to my privacy? Why would I want you to monitor what I do regularly?
The fact is, if we have to be able to help you in saving time, we actually have to know where it is being spent. If you do not want us to monitor you at any specific point in time, you can always turn the monitor off and turn it back on when you are okay.
But, most importantly, the data is not sold to anyone but is only used for helping you optimize your time. Selling your life is not our business!
You have complete control of your data and you can erase your history if you want but ofcourse, you would loose out the valuable recommendations you would get based on your history. Moreover, we only start collecting data after taking your consent.
So, how do you make money?
90% of the functionalities are free for end users (B2C) and the offering is paid based on usage to B2B (no fixed cost — you pay only if you use).
There are a lot of ways in which we do this — More on that in a separate Blog Post.
So, where is the office? What is the working model of your Startup? What about the culture?
We are starting off as fully remote with our HQ located in Chennai, INDIA and we intend to stay remote considering the lot of benefits it brings to both the employees and the organization. We will be coordinating via online platforms.
We don’t believe in degree certificates, marks, your college, gender, ethnic background or anything else that will interfere with who you really are. If you really have the passion, thirst, skill and you are not the regular 9–5 type of person and if you align well with our requirement, we will be more than happy to take you in.
I have started writing a handbook which states how everything is (still work in progress). It is made available here: https://github.com/tvvignesh/amazing-team-handbook
We commit ourselves to being completely transparent, and this article is the first step towards that.
Who codes, who takes care of the product and who works towards the strategy? Are you working on this Full Time? For how long have you been working on this?
Currently, its all me wearing multiple hats to achieve the initial traction I am looking for. While there are definitely plans to hire a good team to help me out, I prefer not rushing into hiring since I really believe that they will be the game changers and I need to take atmost care when hiring.
I am working on this full time for 5 days a week with remaining 2 days being spent as an external consultant for Ramco Systems at this point in time. My younger brother helps me out as well whenever he has the time.
While I had this idea for last one year, I was not able to dedicate the time it needs since I was working on a Full-time job. I resigned on October 15th and I have been working on this full time since then.
Who are you? What is your background?
While this post is not dedicated towards that, you can find most of the things about me at https://www.tvvignesh.com/ and the blogs I write.
So, what does your Tech Stack look like?
This is what we aim to have as our Tech Stack and while we are initially not starting off with all of them (it will be insane to manage all of this when starting off), this is where we want to go towards and if you notice one thing, except for service providers like Twilio, everything else is completely open source. You may want to use something for your own problem as well.
Orchestration: Kubernetes
Containers: Docker
DB ORM: Prisma 2
Relational DB: Postgres SQL
Time Series DB: Elasticsearch
BPMN 2.0: Zeebee
Event Queue: Kafka
Dashboard: Grafana, Kibana
Log Aggregation: FluentD
Web Components: Lit Element, Lit HTML
Web Components Repository: Storybookjs
Service Mesh: Istio, Envoy
Distributed Tracing & Instrumentation: Jaeger, Open Tracing
Monitoring Open Metrics, Prometheus/Cortex
Design Specification: Material Design
Version Control: GITLAB (GIT)
CI/CD: Jenkins-X
Linting: ESLint
Formatting: Prettier
Hybrid App Framework: IONIC 4
Chatbot/Voice: Botframework
Whatsapp, SMS, IVRS: Twilio
Machine Learning Models: Python
Backend Node.js
Whatsapp, SMS, IVRS: Twilio
API Specification: Open API 3.0.x, GraphQL
Key Management: Vault
Container Registry: Harbor with GCR/ECR
IDE: VSCode
Inter Service Calls: GRPC
Reverse Proxy: Nginx
API Gateway: WSO2
Infra Authentication: SPIFFE, SPIRE
Analytics: Apache Superset
Status Page: Catchet
Code Documentation: Typedoc
Design Collaboration: Gallery.io
Office Suite: GSuite
CUSTOMER SUPPORT: TWILIO FLEX
Cloud Provider: Google Cloud, AWS & Azure (Mix and match services)
Storage Orchestration: ROOK
Infrastructure Automation: Ansible
IOT: WebThings
So, do you open source any of the work or is it all Propreitary?
I would not be here if not for the open source tools, libraries, languages and documentation I have been using. We will definitely give back to the community at some point when we stabilize. When that happens, you can find the repos here in Github: https://github.com/timecampus or in my personal repo here: https://github.com/tvvignesh
Are you funded? Are you looking out for potential Investors?
We are currently not funded and we are trying to bootstrap as much as possible. While we are currently not in the look out for any investors, we would definitely love to meet people who might be our potential investors in the future when the time comes.
If you are interested, please fill out the form here: https://timecampus.com/investors.html or you can also reach out to me anytime at vignesh@timecampus.com and would love to get to know you — investor or not.
I would like to Partner with you. How do I reach you?
We would love to talk. Drop me a mail to vignesh@timecampus.com and we will get back to you asap to understand where we can help each other forward.
Infact, partnership is one of the important things we consider since we don’t believe in building everything ourselves from scratch but rather connect with and integrate across solutions and how we can provide consistent solutions to users.
Have you analyzed the competition? How do you differ from them? What is your USP? What if someone steals your idea now that you have made it public?
While what we are doing is completely new to the market, there are a few players if you take specific domains like Toggl for Time Tracking, Skiplino for Queue Management, Chalo for Transit, AppBlock for screen time management, etc. but ultimately using different providers for managing your time series data ultimately leads to your data being left in silos. Moreover, it’s not just about managing your time in the virtual world, but in real world as well.
We don’t fear any competitor because we really believe in the problem we are solving, have a clear direction and are confident that we will be able to face anyone head on in the market if needed. However, we believe in giving more importance to our users than the competitors.
And yeah, if someone steals my idea, so be it and we will meet you in the field!
Why did you pick this idea? Why are you building this? What inspired you?
Time management had been a very troublesome thing in my life thus far and I used to juggle between playing games, watching movies / TV series, programming, sports, spending time with friends/family, travelling and so much more. I used to have no clue on how I can streamline what I do, prioritise, automate and mainly make sure that I spend good enough time working towards my set goals and milestones and this is a big problem not just for me, but for almost everyone in life. I did a good amount of research and trials on optimizing the time I have and tuning my habits. I have learnt a lot over time and am now making this as a product which can help everyone.
I know people really need what I am making because Time is the most precious resource which no one can ever buy back if lost.
Do you have any customers? Did you approach anyone?
Not yet. While we have talked to some people to understand where their time is spent, what they are looking for in a product like this, we will be getting more deep into this area by Jan 2020 once we have completed our Alpha phase with a closed group.
I love the concept. I would like to be your customer. How do I reach you?
Awesome! We would be really happy to have you on board with us. Please fill in this form: https://timecampus.com/business.html with the relevant details and we will get back to you asap. You can also drop a mail to vignesh@timecampus.com if you would like to reach us.
So, I am very much interested and stoked to hear about all this. Where do I sign up?
We would love to have you onboard for our Alpha. Thanks! Please fill in your interest in the form here: https://timecampus.com
We will get back to you once we have everything ready from our end. Around end of December.
I have more questions, suggestions or feedback. Where can I reach you?
You can:
- Drop a comment
- Shoot me an email to vignesh@timecampus.com
- Reach me over Twitter (https://twitter.com/techahoy) , LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/tvvignesh) or anywhere else where you can find me.
If I am not able to respond immediately, kindly give me some time and I will make sure to get back to every message I may get.
UPDATE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7WcGDrvCZhk
T.v. Vignesh
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