Happy Friday,

Last week I launched the official reko.day beta, and I'd like to talk briefly about how it's going.

We've had:

• 118 Sessions (People opening the app)
• 14 Installs
• 13 Crashes

All of that activity is from this past week, and even most of that was last weekend when I was camping and unable to do much!

Folks are using the app, setting up rekos nationwide, listing items for sale, subscribing to the app, and making purchases. They're coming up with new ideas and voting on which ones matter to them.

They're keeping me very busy!

Now, a bit about that last number—crashes. I will be honest and say how frustrating that number is to me. I didn't launch this beta thinking that number would be anywhere as high as it is. Thankfully, I fixed almost all of them in less than a day, and almost all had to do with one issue.

The reality is though, that crashes and bugs are part of this whole deal. The app will never be perfect for everyone. The point of this beta is to get it to a point where it works well for the majority of folks the majority of the time, and it's getting there very quickly.

I'd love to see you in our beta, too, and see if you can break it. You will have saved thousands of others from that experience every time you do.

Now, what am I working on?

• Account deletion
• Refunds
• Fraud/Scam reporting

The next two paragraphs are boring. If you want to know why these three features are complicated, read them.

These are complicated little things. Account deletion is interesting because I have to handle cases where you can delete your account after you place an order. Do I cancel the order and refund the money? If so, how do I inform the farmer also to drop your order and that they didn't lose money? That brings me to refunds, which are also tricky. A shopper can ask for a refund, but for how long? Can they ask for one a year after they get the order? What happens if the farmer refuses to give a refund? What happens if the farmer needs to cancel their half of the order and refund the money? How will the shopper know? And that brings me to the last bit about fraud and scams. 

Every online community suffers from this problem. There will be people who sign up as farmers whose only intent is to scam people. The good news is that my approach so far makes it very easy for me to discourage this and eliminate these bad actors due to the amount of personal information they must provide to sell on the app. It will still happen, though, so I need to provide the ability for folks to report fraudulent activity so I can personally intervene.

Whew.

I really hope you can join us in the beta, and I also want to figure out a way to reward everyone who participates. Some folks in the beta suggested reko.day canvas shopping bags. What do you think?

Join the Beta

Sincerely,

Ryan