Bee Informed – How I pitched my idea for side project

This is Jim!

Let me tell you a story about Jim. And about Bee Informed. Jim is a friend of mine. Maybe you’ll recognise him through the reading. We do have some common friends here after all. He is a busy guy, living in a modern world. Heavy mobile user. Has an app for everything. And I mean everything. He also likes to go out. A friendly guy, one could say. Often looking for some entertainment in his town, to deal with his everyday routines and heavy work. Getting updates online what’s going on around him, mostly via social networks.

And with more and more content on his news feed, he may miss some cool events around him. It happened to Jim two or three times that he saw an announcement for a cool event on a social network and then realised an event happened – yesterday. Not a big deal, but Jim would go there, if only he knew about it. But that’s not so important for the story.

Do you care about privacy?

Let me introduce some other sides of Jim’s personality. He doesn’t like to be tracked. Using incognito mode when searching for things he wants to buy, staying away from algorithms that will suggest to him what to buy next. Using ad blockers as well. Jim also has three, or maybe four email addresses.

Throwaway email accounts to Bee informed anonymously

The first email account is kind of “professional”, his first name, last name included. He’ll give you this address if he really wants to stay in touch. The second one is made up of his personal nickname. He has some active online subscriptions there, still using it in parallel. The third one is kind of “weird”, it’s something like “funky457278@shady.com”, one of those usernames you create for online games where you want to stay anonymous (because there is probably a 7yr old kid playing that same game and kicking your ass, and it’s better to not reveal yourself). Using that one for one-time subscriptions, some non-relevant things, or just services where he needs to provide some email.

As we go deeper, the number of unread messages in those inboxes is getting bigger and bigger. You see the pattern. But I understand him, in a way, having several email addresses myself. What about you? See. 

Fake profiles on social media

You know you can create fake profiles on social networks? Well, Jim knows it also, since he has one or two. It only takes an email address to create one. Oh, wait. The reason for Jim’s fake accounts is that he would like to follow or like something on social networks but sometimes it would be too much revealing, too much information he doesn’t want to share with his relatives, friends, or his boss. Why Jim has his boss on the social network at all, I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right for Jim to have a one-pager aggregation of his interests, likes, activities, available to others, no matter how non-public they claim it to be. 

Now that you know Jim a bit more, imagine how it is for him to stay up to date with all the local events he’s really interested in. And I mean all, including those which could lead other people to judge Jim. But that was Jim’s way of doing things.

He was sitting there, in a pub, listening to some band that really played well. Resurrecting some good old songs Jim totally forgot about. And he saw a promotional poster with a QR code, advertising a mobile app Jim hadn’t heard of yet. It was Bee Informed. There was a simple question on that poster: 

“Do you want to know when this band is here again?”. 

And the advertising text claimed that you don’t need to provide anything personal, no emails, no phone numbers, no social network profiles. Scan the code and you’re good to go. So he gave it a try. 

He liked it. Having in mind his preferences regarding privacy and the fact there’s a simple way you can get the event information. There was no registration at all.

How many times you wanted to try something and then registration pops out?

I know I gave up a few times on trying some things just because I couldn’t bother with the registration at that moment. And really, no personal information is asked from him. In return, he would get updates from this pub about the next events happening here.

Bee Informed everywhere you go

During the next period, Jim started to notice Bee styled QR codes in his town. You could get updates about local supermarket weekend offers. He also saw different QR codes in a Retail shop, organised by type of goods they are selling. Jim needed a pair of new winter boots so he scanned that QR code. It was really convenient for him, he would never leave an email address for advertisement newsletters. And he’s not really interested in all the things they want to advertise. He just needs a pair of boots, that’s it.

He also scanned Thrillers QR code in the local cinema. That’s his favorite genre. He had stopped following that cinema’s social profiles since they were posting too much cheesy fun facts from the movie industry. The only valuable information for him is when the next movie is on. 

There was also an option to get regular updates about the meetups organised by a company that is rival to one’s that Jim is working for. Jim’s boss would sometimes analyse what his employees are doing on social networks. There were even some implicit instructions not to interact with other companies online. Funny guy, this boss.

You may know a Jim or two. That’s why I wrote he’s maybe a common friend. That’s why we created Bee Informed.

Bee Informed is a way to stay in touch with local events while keeping your interests private. It’s a new way of advertising events, reaching the target audience who is already interested in your product, in your brand. Suitable for retention businesses. Suitable for users who would like to know what’s happening around them, and for users who value simplicity (and privacy). Bee’s focus is not to enlarge an existing customer base, but to make existing customers come more often. Delivering proper information, on time, no algorithms that will try to predict what you would also like.

Seems nice?

You can start using Bee Informed today. We’ve open registration for publisher accounts. It’s free, BTW. There are even Bee Informed for Android and Bee Informed for iPhone mobile apps for your subscribers.