What a few weeks. Things have been busy here at Socket, and we’ve got a lot to share this Spring.
I’ve always loved Dan Sullivan’s phrase "The gap and the gain". This concept teaches that happiness and success come from measuring your progress against where you started (the gain) rather than focusing on the distance to your ideal (the gap).
It’s easy to stay in the mindset of chasing what’s next, especially when you’re building something. But taking a moment to look back, reflect, and recognise the ground you’ve covered can be surprisingly powerful. All too often we focus on what we need to do, rather than focusing on what we’ve achieved.
So.. Here is my “gain” for the last few weeks.
To kick Q2 off with a crunch, I broke my collar bone (or clavicle. If you know, you know). I was lucky to have a speedy recovery and am now back on my bike. The lesson learnt…skiers and snowboarders don’t mix.
Soon after, Emma, our fantastic Product Manager, and I went to the Digital Accountancy Show (DAS) – as attendees, not as exhibitors.
For me personally, exhibitions like DAS are about connecting with people. Having conversations with familiar faces, making friends with new faces, and sharing ideas. DAS delivered brilliant weather, many interesting conversations, and just a few beers and icecreams may have been involved.
Looking back over the past few months, we’re really proud of how we’re growing. We’re not about a growth at all costs perspective, we’re focused on growing steadily, in a way that strengthens relationships with our users. We want to hear your onboarding experiences. What’s working well, and what’s happening around the edges of how you use Socket. Your feedback is how we build a better platform.
This is why we launched our new pricing – because we wanted to offer a simpler, clearer, low-friction way to get started. We know many of you are using other tools already, and that there might be a period where you're paying for two.
The good news? You don’t need to move all your clients to Socket to start using it. We’ve found it makes sense for a lot of our users to start with their proposals for new prospects. For their existing clients with repeating invoices, they’re waiting until renewals before bringing them into Socket and switching off the old repeating invoices. The overlap makes the transition smoother, and overall is much more efficient on admin time.
We also introduced an annual pricing plan…and we wanted it to feel like a meaningful thank you, so we opted for a 50% discount over the monthly. Why such a big drop? Because we’ve been genuinely blown away by the support and feedback from our users. You’ve been just as excited as we are about the direction we’re heading.
This kind of trust means a lot. It’s helped us move faster, invest with confidence, and, already, we’ve been able to grow the team.
Amy joined at the beginning of April as a “Product Marketing Manager”. What’s a “Product Marketing Manager” I hear you say?
It's a little different from a typical marketing role, Amy’s focus is on improving the experience inside Socket. That means gathering feedback to shape features that matter most to you, and creating resources and stories to help you get the most out of the platform. Amy will also be helping us to create tailored resources and success stories to help you get the most value from Socket now, and as we continue to build out new features.
Amy’s especially passionate about turning user insights into meaningful action, and is keen to hear how Socket can solve day-to-day problems. If you’re a current user, expect to see her name pop up more.
We’ve held some great planning sessions recently too. We loosely use the "Shape Up" methodology, developed by Basecamp (formerly 37signals). It’s a great way for the team to come together, evaluate pitches, solve problems, and place bets on what we’ll build next.
We usually approach this from three perspectives:
- pain points that would make day-to-day life smoother,
- gaps in our current offering that others might be addressing,
- and blue-sky ideas that could transform how you experience Socket entirely.
We’ve placed some brilliant bets that we’ll be working on during this next 6 week cycle.
I’d love to know what you’d like to see on the betting table: Get in touch.
Speak soon,
Jon and the Socket Team
