Project Daytona: SwellChat

February 2021

Formerly known as “Project Daytona”

Project Update

We have been hard at work over the past six months and are happy to report that Project Daytona is in full development and progressing well. This SaaS product will enable benefits professionals, such as brokers, HR administrators, and benefit company personnel, to have private conversations with one or more people via a purpose-built platform with tools specific for the benefits industry.

One of the best parts about creating something from scratch is forming the team. We have an awesome group of folks. The team has been working on the user experience (UX) design, the technical architecture, database layout, cloud environments, and more. There are four of us full time and another four folks helping in bursts of time as contractors. While our team is small, we are progressing at an incredible rate.

We started with two design sessions, which gave us a solid handle on the scope of the initial product offering. We then selected our development tools, languages, frameworks, and cloud environment. We had a good bit of core functionality to develop, such as how to authenticate users, private label considerations, UI design and standards, and other foundational elements. As we made progress on those core components, we also began to build out the application features.

Along the way we have stumbled upon some fascinating insights into how the product will be used by our particular market, namely benefits brokers, HR professionals, and employees. Obviously, there are many video-based communication applications in the market. However, the deeper we get into the development of our product, we continue to be amazed at what an opportunity there is to purposely serve this unique market segment. Quite frankly, we are having a blast discovering new concepts and features that we believe will become indispensable to the benefits industry. We don’t want to over-hype this new product; rather, we want to share how enthusiastic we are about the direction we are headed.

Currently, we are interviewing for two additional software engineers. While we expand the team, we are focused on a small set of items to complete and then we will open the product up to what we call “technical friends and family.” These are folks we know in the software industry who can use the application and provide feedback, find issues, etc. We will then open it up to a wider cohort of friends and family for more use and testing.

We do not have a firm launch date. Rather, we have budgeted a set amount of time, and as we spend that time, we simply update our progress and routinely discuss possible launch scenarios. Strangely enough, we seem to be accomplishing more and doing it faster than the typical approach of forced and fixed deadlines.

Thank you for stopping by our site for the update. Now that the team is gaining momentum, we will try and keep you updated a little bit more frequently. We will likely also create some sort of beta version sign-up opportunity for folks who would like an early look at the application. When we create that, we will post it here.

The benefits industry has made great strides in automating electronic transactions and enabling employee self-service over the past twenty years. It is now time to bring in a new era of personal communication to this big and complex industry. Our drive is to help people understand these complex benefits and ultimately make better decisions so they are well covered and can rest easy at night. We are super excited to have begun this new journey!

PROJECT UPDATES:

If you know any talented software engineers, please share this link with them for information about our current openings.

We will likely be looking to add a part-time or full-time person to help us begin marketing the new product over the next few months. If you know anyone who may be a fit for that type of work, please also share this link with them. Thanks!