Hey there! My name is Vio and I building MyFocusSpace together with my co-founder Ionut Mistreanu, a virtual coworking space where people become more productive by being matched with strangers for a 1-on-1, 50-minute working session, followed by 9 minutes of networking.
This setup helps with procrastination because is harder to neglect the session knowing that there is someone else waiting for you to start working.
This setup works with distractions because you share with your partner what are you going to work on during the 50-minute session(and this makes the goal specific) and because it taps into our natural inclination to try to perform better when we are observed by someone else.
This setup works with loneliness and tiredness by bringing variety in the work experience and healthy breaks.
We use Machine Learning to match people on-demand based on their profile information to foster better conversations at the end of the session.
We’ve been working on it since December 2020, and now we have a fully functional MVP and planning to launch on Product Hunt by the end of April.
Using the model from YC Startup School – Launch again and again – on the 1st of February we launched MyFocusSpace with our friends, by the end of the second week of February we launched it again with strangers. Inspired by Paul Graham essay – Do things that don’t scale – we did our on-boarding 1-on-1 sessions and reached 150 people who have been introduced to MyFocusSpace in less than a month.
This helped us to learn more about every person on the platform: what they do, how they procrastinate, what are their passions, interests, etc. which made us realize the power of building true relationships with them. Now I can go and recommend to each of them something I have tried/learned/ think that can help them. This is amazing if you stop to think a bit.
I’ve said elsewhere, but it’s worth saying again: these people are not just users to us, they are like-minded people supporting each other and getting things done.
The experience of 1-to-1 on-boarding also brought up the thought of matching our community members using AI. This means that they can have more fulfilling conversations at the end of the working focus session.