Business Management Tool for Entrepreneurs & SMB

Hello, and thanks for taking a moment to read my story!

My name is Chad Hammond, and I am fundraising for my new SaaS product, JPETTO.

Before I tell you about JPETTO, let me first tell you about the journey that led me to its creation and why it’s important.

My life has been a crazy ride so far. I don’t want to bore you with a life story here, but I want to give you some context into who I am and why this app is essential to me. I promise to keep it brief and informative!

I grew up in New England in a small town with a relatively “traditional” family until my parents divorced in the early 1990s. As many children have experienced, divorce can hit hard and leave a lasting impact, and in my case, that was an understatement. I should also mention that my mother enrolled me in the Home School program shortly before the divorce. My mother had all of the best intentions at the time but lacked the educational background to ‘teach’ beyond the 6th grade in most topics. For all intents and purposes, my education stopped at grade 5, and what I did learn mainly was self-motivated and learned from old textbooks found at the thrift stores. After the divorce, we went from living in a comfortable house in town to a 2-room hunting cabin with no running water, an outhouse, and a wood stove for heat. We did have electricity and a phone, but cable/internet wasn’t available. At that age, I wanted to be involved with computers and technology, but it wasn’t in the cards for several more years.

For many personal reasons, I left home and began working full time at age 15, living with my sister across the street from the factory we both worked in. From there, I had a few random jobs until I eventually landed as a dishwasher in a small restaurant, thanks to a roommate who was the cook. Over the next four years, I would eventually become the Sous chef, running the entire kitchen. I left to relocate further south with roommates and landed a job as a French fry cook at The Cheesecake Factory. Within the five years I worked there, I was promoted to other stations, then a kitchen manager, then an executive kitchen manager, and given my location to run.

Eventually, I found myself unhappy with my career, having never really chosen it but fallen into it. Luckily, my wife saw my unhappiness and gave me the strength, support, and stability needed to leave the industry and get a degree in Computer Science. That may sound like a small feat, but it meant a lot for a 28-year-old home-school student without formal education. It was a challenge and led to an adult diagnosis of ADHD, which I had suspected for years but never confirmed. Challenges aside, I completed my B.S. and got two honors A.S. degrees, which I never imagined I would be able to do.

I moved on from college and found a job working in software development on the Salesforce.com platform, and over the next six years worked on multiple projects, mentored interns, and worked on product development at times. Eventually, the consultancy I worked for hit a low point where there were no active projects, and I was offered a switch to work in another team on older technology and decided it was not in my interest to move backward into old tech, so I began freelancing as a software engineer.

It was a scary leap to work for myself, but I seized the opportunity. During the 3+ years since that day, I have maintained a team of between 7-25, completed more than 50 projects successfully, and developed a series of related applications that I now hope to bring to market. I did this with no advisors, no executive team, or long-term company debt. I mention this simply to share my dedication and commitment to the company, the app, and my track record for leadership growth.

Throughout my brief entrepreneurship journey, albeit brief, I have faced countless personal and professional challenges that led me to create JPETTO. At first, it was the lack of customization and overall cost of apps for tracking time and managing projects. There were free options that did the job, but something was always missing or required too much hands-on time from my end to keep it maintained and organized. I knew Salesforce could do what I wanted (and needed) with some custom development, so I became a consulting partner with Salesforce and began building what I couldn’t find elsewhere for a reasonable price.

As time passed, I added more functionality and identified other use cases and features to help me and hopefully help others one day. I continued to enhance JPETTO with my team when client projects were slow, or workloads were light. There have been plenty of challenges, failed experiments, and redesigns. I could have rushed the product to market several times, but I felt getting it right the first time was essential. I made several revisions and design updates until I thought it was cleanly coded, built with scalability in mind, and simple enough to learn and customize. I am roughly one month away from submission for security review, which is approved, will mean the base MVP will be available soon after. It’s exciting but brings a whole new set of challenges and costs.

I never considered being a business owner a viable opportunity throughout my life. I can say without hesitation that it has been a challenging journey, but I got here! I hope to continue the momentum and use what I have learned and built to help others reach theirs with JPETTO.

I’m leaving out a LOT, but as I said in the beginning, I promise not to go off the deep end here. I just wanted to give a snapshot of the story that led me here and how that has shaped the vision of JPETTO.

So, what is JPETTO? It’s a project management tool built entirely on the Salesforce CRM platform to empower Entrepreneurs and small business owners with enterprise-level tools at an affordable price. Throughout my journey with this company, I have faced countless challenges for my clients where the necessary tools exist, but their price point is entirely unobtainable. $15 per user per month for a device that logs time, another $15 for project management, $50 to build forms, etc. As a freelancer, it’s tough, but as a startup, those prices quickly pile up into tens of thousands yearly. Often, you also end up paying for a bunch of features you don’t need so that you can use the 1-3 that apply to your company.

Whether it has one employee or one thousand, every business can benefit from the tools a CRM like Salesforce offers. I want JPETTO to be an entry point into CRM usage. It provides a significant set of features that any company can use to help organize their day, boost productivity via automation, reduce cost, and centralize services into a single source of truth in one fell swoop.

At this point, you are surely wondering what exactly JPETTO can do. Here is a high-level list of just SOME of what we have built so far and some teasers for what’s coming next:

Features at launch will include:

* Create projects related to accounts/clients

* Create project teams with roles showing who is who and how to contact them

* Create sprints per project

* Create work items for projects (bugs, user stories, dev/admin tasks, etc., with progress tracking similar to tools like JIRA or Azure Devops)

* Generate timesheets automatically per user and pay period

* Log hours to work items per user

* Timesheet submission and approval processes

* Show project financial estimates based on project team hourly rates, estimated hours vs. budget, rate billed to the client, and billable vs. non-billable hours

* Custom-built messenger that links conversations to a single record, user, etc.

* Optional messenger integration with Slack so that each work item/client/etc. It can have its Slack channel, and communication can occur seamlessly between Salesforce and Slack at the record level

* Customer portal access (with salesforce digital experience licenses) to allow clients real-time access to project progress, work items, reports, dashboards, etc.

* Fully integrated and built on the Salesforce platform

Other features that are in development mostly done but just need final testing and refinement:

* Clockify integration to boost timesheet features and add things like productivity monitoring with screenshots throughout the day

* Quickbooks integration to autogenerate invoices based on hours logged, project rates, etc.

* Custom-built, drag-and-drop form builder fully native to Salesforce (similar to apps like form assembly, conga, etc.)

* Advanced admin and budget notification systems for things like what to do when a project budget has been reached (change hours to non-billable without client approval, send change requests for support, send requests for approved overages which then get automatically added to the overall budget, and more)

* Manager Dashboard that shows all accounts, projects, work items, logged hours, timesheet submissions, timesheet approvals, and more in a single dynamic view

Long-term goals/features

* B2B connector, so that a client org can install a lightweight connector that will allow them to see the same limited view of data related to the project in their salesforce instance. This would reduce the cost of licenses on the consultant since clients already have licenses, and allow them to see all of the data they could see on the portal as an alternative to help keep costs low for startups & SMB

* Integration with Teramind to provide integrated productivity tracking at a much deeper level than clockify can provide

* Potential features include tracking hours automatically per client based on the URLs used within a timeframe, apps used, conversations with users or emails based on domain names, etc.

* AI Integration(s)

* chatGPT or similar to assist with creating code templates and optimizing code that developers, project summaries and forecasts, etc, have written.

* Sales Cadences, similar to High-Velocity Sales or SalesLoft. Many clients have requested a feature but cannot afford the few options available right now.

* Additional integrations for the messenger such as ms teams, WhatsApp, etc

* Integration with google workspace

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg!

Now, this is all important to me because I want to help others take control of their business and do so in an affordable, reliable way. I don’t want to charge tens of thousands of dollars each month so that you can run your business. I want to provide a quality product that can deliver scalable core business features as your company grows. I want to provide users with innovative features, suggested and selected by end users, that cater to a range of needs affordably vs. singleton use cases for a premium price.

One of the significant advantages of Salesforce is that whatever feature you may need, it can be added by anyone with determination and time. That means the core features JPETTO provides can be near-infinitely expanded upon to fit your precise needs. For JPETTO clients needing assistance with such configurations, whether related to JPETTO or a completely different project or process, I plan to offer deeply discounted rates that fall well below the industry average for hourly development and customization support. I would much rather work with a company to help us mutually succeed than nickel and dime someone simply doing what they need to provide for themselves and their families.

Life is not just about making money. It’s about helping others and improving the world around you along your journey. JPETTO is the starting point of a much larger picture that builds on community, helping others, and helping equalize the distribution of wealth in the world. I want to give back, to help people find and follow their dreams of financial independence and entrepreneurial stewardship. One of the long-term goals for JPETTO is to create a community where skilled individuals can invest in products, services, and people they believe in without a monetary commitment in exchange for potential monetary compensation by providing their skills and time instead of investing their hard-earned money. I have the vision and skillset to accomplish this and help you achieve your goals and dreams through its creation, but I need some help.

If you’re still reading, you’d probably like to know how I intend to use these funds. Below, I have listed a rough breakdown regarding how the funds will be used.

$25k: Finalize development of MVP

Target completion: 3 months or less

$20k: QA Testing

Target completion: 2 months or less

$15k: Security Review Submission Process & Fees

Target completion: 3 months or less

Dependencies: Completion of Development and QA

$10k: Jpetto Website creation

Target completion: 2 months or less

$20k: Marketing Team + Content

Target completion: 4 months or less

$10k: Lead Generation to locate prospective clients

Target completion: 1-2 months once the app is live on the marketplace

$175k: Sales Team

Hiring and training begin upon approval of the security review

$175k: Support Team

Hiring and training begin upon approval of the security review

$20k: Jpetto Phase 2 Development

Clockify Integration

Quickbooks Integration

Target completion: 2 months or less post-go-live

$50k: Jpetto Phase 3 Development

B2B Connector to reduce licensing costs on customers for their client’s access

Enhanced Notification System

Jpetto Form Builder

Target completion: 5 months or less post-go-live

$80k: Jpetto Phase 4 Development

Chatgpt / ai Integration

Teramind integration

Target completion: 10 months or less post-go-live

If we somehow manage to surpass our goal, overages would be used to further the development of a community portal for collaboration, investment, user-driven feature development, and further enhancements to the core features.

Whether you ultimately decide to contribute via sharing this post on social media, making a funding contribution, reaching out to discuss your thoughts, or even if you move on and never think of it again, I sincerely thank you for reading through this proposal.

You have the power to help me help countless others by spreading awareness of this page and the goals I outlined.

On their behalf as well as the entire team at Legendary Solutions,

THANK YOU!

Chad Hammond

Founder/CEO

www.legendarysolutions.io

Coming soon: www.jpetto.io