16 Comments

Public Early Access

Uh-oh 🙄

We kept building Emberly for 6 months without properly testing the main value proposition😅. But we finally decided to launch Emberly into Early Access!

We have been building this part-time, using most evenings, weekends, and vacations since November. In hindsight, we probably added more features than we should have before launching.

Now we will have to see if there is a lesson to be learned. Did we make something actually useful for people? Did we waste time? Should we have found ways to test earlier?

My co-founder and I have found Emberly very useful. But of the 10 friends we onboarded, only one used it daily. However, we think he was just the right type of person for Emberly. Very curious who likes to learn many different things but lacks the time and discipline to structure the resources and information he comes across.

Now we have to figure out how to get people to try out Emberly😅

Gina Husebø

, Co-founder of

Emberly

on May 31, 2020

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5

Looks very nice! I like the design and I like that you've twisted mindmap with the specific features for skills rating and queue of topics.

You might want to add a library of public Emberlies (is that what you call them?) that people can share their own, browse through, follow and get inspiration from.
It may give you a social boost. Kind of like pinterest effect.

Danbars

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5 years ago
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  Thank you very much!
  
  Your idea of a community library is excellent! We haven't thought of it!
  
  We have built a feature for people to share parts of their skill tree, with all of their resources and notes attached. That way, the recipients can browse the contents of the tree and duplicate it if they want. Our intention was direct sharing with friends, but a community library is an excellent idea we have to explore further. Thank you for the idea!
  
  Also, I love the name Emberlies 🙌😊. We ended up calling them Saplings.
  
  Example of a shared branch:
  Getting started branch
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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So far, I'm really liking the app! You guys could maybe consider throwing a post into https://www.reddit.com/r/skilltrees/ . That was one of the many places I looked when trying to find a skill tree app!

rleach

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5 years ago
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  Thank you for letting me know you like it! That made me smile and feel happy.😊🙌🏻
  
  Wow! That subreddit is spot-on. People are even mentioning how there are no tools that suit their needs. I will send a post there right away. Thank you so much for the tip! ❤️
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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This looks great! I think this is something that I would have used a few months ago. I remembered searching for something like this before, an application to organise my learnings.

However, I have migrated all my notes to Notion and I think it works just as well.

Anyways congratulations on launching!

csacasva

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5 years ago
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  Hey, thanks a lot! Haha, too bad we are a bit too late. At least I now have identified one drawback of building too long 🙈
  
  Yeah, Notion is fantastic. I use it all the time. You can set up almost any system in Notion. However, it takes some discipline to maintain it.
  
  I lack that discipline, so that's why Emberly had to exist.😅 Emberly is an opinionated tool, for those messy, disorganized people who like to learn a lot.
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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Congrats!

You remind me of myself: I was building my product in the evenings after work as well, since September :)

Akcium

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5 years ago
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  Thanks Victor!
  
  Pingr.io looks cool. I will ask my technical co-founder if it could be useful for us.
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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    Emberly looks great also. Without any doubt, you've worked on design, it's obvious
    
    Akcium
    
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    5 years ago
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      Wow, thanks, Victor! That made me happy 😊🙌
      
      Gina Husebø
      
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      5 years ago
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What tech stack are you using? When I visit the site it flips me over to the discrete GPU rather than the integrated one on my MacBook Pro.

If that's avoidable then it would be better as it's a huge battery drain to have it running on the full-strength graphics while out and about.

I'm guessing you are using opengl somewhere which is activating it?

rtpharry

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5 years ago
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  Hi Matthew!
  
  I'm not a developer, but I asked my technical co-founder. We are using Pixie.js to draw the canvas containing the skill tree, and Pixie.js uses WebGL. However, we only update the canvas on changes. So most of the time, your GPU should be dormant.
  
  I guess you did not log in to the app and experienced this on the landing page? Towards the bottom of the landing page, there is an embed example of a skill tree. This embed is the Emberly instance running. It's probably this loading that needed your discrete GPU.
  
  Did you get a significant power draw from the site?
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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Pretty cool tool. I can see how it could be useful to developers. I have a few things I'm currently working on and a whole world of features that I haven't touched and are just in a fuzzy todo list.

I can see the value of mapping out all the different features of stuff that I would like to learn so that I can work through it and not stagnate.

I would recommend reaching out to coding bloggers that might want to embed an example learning tree into their sites. An example of this would be the "Awesome" series of github repos, which lists the best of the best for a specific technology. Perhaps even offering to convert it for them. It seems like it would be a good fit for this kind of technically minded autodidact.

rtpharry

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5 years ago
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  Hi, yet again, Matthew!
  
  Thank you very much! You really understood how what we are building can create value! Your understanding makes me happy, as I'm having a hard time explaining the concept simply on the landing page.😅🎉
  
  I loved this quote of yours, as it outlined an important use case of Emberly:
  
  I can see the value of mapping out all the different features of stuff that I would like to learn so that I can work through it and not stagnate."
  
  Hope it's okay I'm ~~stealing~~ borrowing the essence of it. 😅
  
  I see how developers can be a core demographic of Emberly. I guess they often work with a wide array of different subjects, frameworks, and tools. And keeping all of the reference material readily available can be quite the job.
  
  Good idea to reach out to coding bloggers! We don't have any solid plans for where to market this first. Your idea sounds like a pretty good place to start. Thanks! 🙌🥳
  
  If you want to try out Emberly, you are welcome to use this coupon for 30% off forever: [Early Access Hero]. I'm happy to do a video onboarding if you want.
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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Looks like a nicely made mind mapping tool. Problem is there’s a lot of these and not really any specific value to any particular one. The use case you presented doesn’t resonate with me, but perhaps there is a community of self learners/improvers you can market into.

One case for mind maps is information architecture diagrams (I’m a ux designer). Could try some of that!

Brent415

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5 years ago
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This comment was deleted 2 years ago.

DeletedUser

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5 years ago
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  Thanks for the question! 😊
  
  Emberly is an online tool that helps you organize large amounts of bookmarks, notes, and files into a mind map of your skills. This helps your future self to re-find the information when you need it, even if your library becomes massive.
  
  Here an example skill tree from Emberly that belongs to my co-founder. Leif's Public Skill Tree
  
  Gina Husebø
  
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  5 years ago
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