So we’re launching today (June 20) which means we’ll be a new part of the world’s large mobile and web application community. Everyone here is very excited. We think we’re in great shape to gather feedback and start building a community to help us help couples around the world.
Traditionally, it’s better to launch *before* you’re ready since many startups delay unnecessarily so, don’t worry, we’ve introduced some bugs to allay anyone’s fears we waited too long. :) If you encounter anything working oddly, please let us know whenever you see it and we’ll fix those.
Some things to know…
1) Avocado is designed to be a delightful place for you and someone else to share and build your life.
If you’re reading this, you’re someone we’re hoping to delight! And you might be curious about how to use Avocado with someone special in your life. Just think of a password you could share with them, then try it out.
When you get started, here’s why we think you might want to keep using Avocado…
- Because you have someone in your life who will be the ONLY person who gets why something you thought or saw was funny or sad or meaningful.
- Or someone who wants to keep close to you but can’t because they’re away.
- Or someone who needs help with the grocery list
- Or needs to know what the doctor said without your informing EVERYONE.
We want Avocado to be the best way to use technology with the most important person in your life. We’ll be updating it often as we get feedback from folks like you!
2) People are already using it.
Yup. We’ve underplayed its existence a little to focus on the app and the new “couples” space that we’ll be playing a large part in developing. Thanks to some dedicated testers we’ve already discovered new ways couples are likely to use technology together. We’ll be writing about these findings here on our blog, so watch out for those.
3) We’re available on iPhone, Android and the Web with a tightly focused feature set.
Here are the 3 ways someone can use Avocado:
- The Web
https://avocado.io - try it now and keep using it for free - iPhone — $1.99
Download it from the iTunes App Store - Android — $1.99
Download it from Google Play, the Android app store
We kept our features simple and easy to use for our first release. They are…
- Amazing-looking chat with text and photos
- “Send a quick note” to send common phrases you use with ‘your boo’
- “Send a quick face” and with one touch send a photo + emoticon to make 'your boo’ smile
- Browse all your photos with a media gallery
- Lists! Make 'em, change 'em, coordinate with the most important person in your life
- Security. We are the most secure couples app to date. Everything over SSL, all shared data encrypted, private photos, salted and many-times encrypted passwords, nearly phish-proof, we think we’re an exception in this space.
- Share select photos to Twitter via a beautiful standalone web page. (iPhone only for now)
Our web app is free, but our mobile apps are something you pay for. We think that we’ll deliver a service and experience that’s secure and fun and that will be worth your hard-earned cash.
4) Wish us luck!
Everyone on our team has had many years’ experience building apps, but Avocado is a dream for us to work on — it combines real problems people face together with the kinds of software we like to build.
Everything seems well-suited for us: the business space is new, which can be great for startups, and early use of Avocado suggests we are making an app that aptly fits what people actually do in life. Since we know that a couple’s relationship is about as personal and unique as it gets, we know Avocado will always need its design quality to be high and we love being picky and selective about design and experience just like most of you. But despite all that we won’t be successful without some luck, so while we are not superstitious…
(knocks on wood)
…go ahead and wish us as much luck you can.
Special thanks to Lightspeed Ventures, Baseline Ventures, General Catalyst, Steve Olechowski, Greg Yaitanes, our dedicated testers, and our friends and family for believing in us. Follow us at @avocado on Twitter and chat us up to find out how things are going.