Eric takes personal responsibility for the bugs in the Orenda 3.0 app release, and explains why Orenda has discontinued the Startup Barrel Platform.
00:00 - Intro
01:53 - Our annual meeting made light of some costly mistakes
02:13 - The two mistakes to explain are the premature Orenda 3.0 release and the Startup Barrel Platform
03:24 - Without customer feedback, we could not have found the bugs as quickly as we have. Your feedback is incredibly valuable!
07:13 - We are discontinuing the Startup Barrel Platform
07:27 - Giving credit where credit is due: Lupe, Dave, Dave, Molinari Pools, and PurAqua
10:16 - The platform became cost prohibitive, and even if we wanted to make more, we cannot reliably get the parts
12:27 - Too much of the platform was out of our control, and it is officially discontinued
12:57 - Summary. Thanks for listening, and thanks for your patience with Orenda and our mistakes.
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74. App Feedback and RIP Startup Barrel Platform
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[00:00:00] Eric Knight: Shh. Listen, can you hear that? That's the sound of Jarred not being on this episode. He was on like five in a row and just pushing me into co-host role. And I don't know that I can take that. He'll be on the next few. Don't worry about it.
[00:00:15] Part of the reason Jarred's not here is I'm recording this on the weekend. You might be thinking why? Well this is the best time that I have available to do this. So here I am. And we don't really need Jarred on this episode, because in this episode, I'm talking about two things between me and you, the Orenda customers and Rule Your Pool listeners.
[00:00:35] I want to explain two things that we're doing and they are, uh, well, if they're not a hundred percent my fault, they're definitely over 90% my fault. They seemed like really good ideas at the time.
[00:00:46] This is episode 74 and today we're going to talk about the Orenda 3.0 app release and your feedback. And rest in peace, startup barrel platform. Let's go.
[00:00:59] We just had our annual meeting in Texas this past week. And for those of you who called the hotline and didn't get anybody, sorry. The reason that happened is because all of us were sitting at the same table and our phones were on silent. Basically for three whole days.
[00:01:34] So we missed a lot of calls. Sorry about that. Um, try back this week or better yet, visit, ask.orendatech.com because most of the questions we ever get on the hotline are answered in our help center. Again, that's ask.orendatech.com.
[00:01:53] In that meeting, we were talking about all sorts of stuff and some of the mistakes that we've made. And I am personally responsible for some of the biggest ones. And I'm here to talk about it. I'm not proud of 'em, but it's the truth. And I figure, let's at least explain the logic behind it because the mistakes I've made really did seem like a good idea at the time.
[00:02:13] And, uh, those two main ones that I want to talk about is the release of Orenda 3.0 last week and the startup barrel platform. So let's start with the app.
Orenda 3.0 Release and bugs
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[00:02:24] Eric Knight: I made a calculated decision, which turned out to be the wrong decision, to release the Orenda app prematurely. I didn't think it was premature when I released it because we had debugged it so much. And we worked on this thing for months. And I was getting stressed out about it personally, because every time the developer would change something, it would break another thing.
[00:02:47] I thought, oh my God, this is just getting insane. I don't understand it. Let's just fix these core things. And once it worked fine on my phone, on a test build, I said, finally, we're ready to go. Yes, let's go. And we released it.
[00:03:05] And we heard from you very quickly. And so part of my decision was, well, if there are bugs and there's always going to be bugs, by allowing the population of users to experience it, let's get their feedback because they're going to find bugs that we couldn't find ourselves. Or they're going to find bugs that we didn't even know would exist.
[00:03:24] And thank you so much for giving us your feedback. In one week, we found bugs that we didn't even think were a thing. And the main one was the dials. When you spin the dials, especially on iOS, there was a lot more friction.
[00:03:40] And I want to explain what that's about. In the original app it was in a different coding language. It had to be rebuilt in a new coding language, and that was not as smooth as it should have been. But we got it to a point where it seemed to be pretty smooth, at least on the last test build. But some way, and I don't know how, when it was released to the app store, those dials broke again. And they went back to what they were before that final test build that I had.
[00:04:08] So the first day those dials went out, they weren't spinning right. They were sticking on every number. They were really annoying and very hard to use. And we heard from you. And I appreciate all of your feedback and I'm sorry for that delay.
[00:04:21] And one side note, there is it almost made the app unusable for people, because it's very hard to move the dials. And we didn't realize just how dependent people are on getting this app to show their numbers. So, first of all, thank you for that. That actually that means a lot. We have devoted years and years and a ton of effort and resources into creating this app.
[00:04:43] And as stressful as this release was, it really does warm my heart that you use this app. That it's valuable to you. And we don't want to take that for granted. We want to make it better. We want to make it smoother.
[00:04:56] So we released the app, the dials reverted back to a previous version. I don't know why. I still don't know why. And within 24 hours they were improved, but they weren't fixed completely. So we got a better developer and said, Hey, we need to clean this up now. So this next series of updates that have come out and are still coming out is going to continue to make the app much more polished, much more smooth.
[00:05:23] These bugs that you helped us find, we could not have found on our own. Other than dials, the dials were obvious. But we're talking about little things like soda ash not being included to raise pH. Well, most people wouldn't use soda ash anyway, but we didn't even think about it. I didn't, you know, it's just one of the thousands of lines of code.
[00:05:42] We didn't know. I didn't know. Anyway, so we hear from you. And that's how we know what to do to our app. And I'm grateful for you. So that's my personal, thank you to you. My apology to you is I released this app too early.
[00:05:58] We should have gone through longer testing. I just didn't know how. Didn't have the devices to do it. Didn't think we had the time to do it. You know, we have other jobs to do. We've got a lot of work ourselves outside of this app. We're not a software company. We're a chemical and education company.
[00:06:14] There's other things like, uh, there was a, a salt dosing issue where one of the types of phones was giving a different salt result. And it was way off.
[00:06:21] We don't know why, because it's the same code base. But it's things like that that we couldn't have replicated because it worked fine on my phone, but then it didn't work on an iPhone 8. Well, I have an iPhone 11. Why wouldn't it work on an iPhone 8? I don't know. And then things like accessibility, if you have bigger fonts for easier reading, like a native iPhone setting.
[00:06:43] It made all the dials cramped and it made the calculator look terrible. But we didn't know that because I don't use that on my phone. I couldn't have replicated it myself because I just never thought that would be an issue. So thank you for that. That's the long story short. It is continuing to get smoother and smoother.
[00:06:59] The new developer is awesome and just stay tuned, keep updating it. Thank you for your patience on that. I mean that sincerely. It is made for you. So that's the Orenda 3.0. Thank you again for your feedback.
RIP Startup Barrel Platform
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[00:07:13] Eric Knight: Now let's shift gears and get to arguably my biggest mistake since working for Orenda. Certainly one of the more costly ones. The Orenda startup barrel platform. We are discontinuing it. Rest in pieces.
[00:07:27] And I want to give credit where credit is due. We did not come up with the startup barrel. Uh, originally, in fact, the entire concept of the startup was introduced to us by Lupe at Blue Moon Pools in San Diego. And he was adding calcium as the pool was filling. And it was reducing plaster dust in some cases preventing it.
[00:07:45] And then I saw this grainy video where Lupe and his guys are adding like 10 pounds of calcium to a Rubbermaid trash can full of water, and siphoning that water into the pool. Well, I guess that video was passed around, and then some very clever guys in Southern California, Dave Penton, and Dave Rockwell made their own barrel.
[00:08:08] And that was the first startup barrel. And I guess it was a bait tank and they just modified this thing. because pool guys are very creative. But these guys are really smart. So they make this startup barrel, and that's when we say, okay, we want to do that. That's going to help a lot of people. And so that's when we really got involved in speaking with them of finding where do you get the barrel and all this stuff.
[00:08:29] So the barrel comes out. Uh, I don't remember what year that was. Probably 2018. And people kept asking like, well, how do we shut the water off? Can we have it so that it automatically shuts the water off? That was literally the only reason for the platform existing was the risk of overflowing a pool. I know it's kind of nuts.
[00:08:51] In Florida, we got the idea for a float ball, shutoff from Molinari pools. Shout out to Joel and his company. They had this PVC device where you hook a hose up to it, and then this ball valve floats up and it shuts off all the water. And I thought that's genius! That answers the question we keep getting. How can you automatically shut off water?
[00:09:12] Well in order to connect that to the barrel, it was actually a pretty expensive thing because it had to A) fold up and disassemble and fit into the barrel for transit. But B) you had to run water through it and then through the barrel. So it wasn't exactly a simple contraption. So there's a lot of little things.
[00:09:30] There's a ball valve, there's a spigot, so you can get clean water into the pool. And then you have to have something to hold all this stuff together. You have to have a float ball and a shutoff valve. It's called a Kerick valve. And the cost of those components back then, pre-COVID, uh, I mean, they were reasonable, but then you have assembly, you gotta make the platform.
[00:09:51] So we had a company that made chlorinators called PurAqua, and PurAqua, shout out to them, they engineered this platform for us. And did a great job with it. But as material costs changed, it started getting more and more expensive. And pretty soon the price started becoming more than it was worth. And then the shipping, and then all, you know, add all this stuff in.
[00:10:16] I, I don't mean to bore you with the details, but basically as the materials became harder to get, especially when COVID hit, when those materials became harder to get and absurdly expensive, these little plastic fittings and Kerick valves and all that stuff, it basically priced itself out of use. It wasn't practical anymore.
[00:10:39] Compound that with the fact that like one out of every 10 Kerick valves dribbled water. They had this seal in there, I know this because I called Kerick. When you shut it off with a float ball comes up, it's entire job is to shut off completely without a drop of water.
[00:10:56] But that's the opposite thing that we need. I don't care if it's dribbling a little bit when the pool is full, because it's just going to dribble into the pool. I care deeply about it dribbling when it's wide open. Because what was happening is some drops of water were falling into the pool.
[00:11:13] So we redesigned it, redesigned it with the barrel manufacturer to make this platform. And I spent a lot of time on this. Having the float valve recessed back into this platform so that if it did dribble, it would be captured by the platform and just roll that fresh water back onto the deck.
[00:11:31] That was the idea anyway, and that did work for the most part. But the problem is, as soon as that happened, COVID hit. And then we couldn't get any of the parts. And when we did, they were 3, 4, 5 times the price. And assembling them became exponentially harder because as you know, in the pool business, demand was up for everything.
[00:11:55] So just getting it together just became so cost prohibitive. It wasn't worth it anymore. And it was, it was a bad look for us because we weren't making it. But essentially we've decided it's the best thing to discontinue this platform.
[00:12:10] And this is my fault. This is my fault for coming up with the idea and for trying to get it designed, and, you know, it had a good run for two and a half, three years or whatever it was. But, um, if you have one and it's working well, awesome. Keep using it. That's great.
[00:12:27] It's just so many factors were out of our control and it's difficult to hedge your success of a product on things that you cannot control. That's the truth of it. And so I want to personally apologize for that.
[00:12:40] It is gone now, the startup barrels are popular. They're great. And they don't have many moving parts on them. So now if you order an Orenda startup barrel, you can get the 30 gallon barrel with fittings or the 55 gallon barrel with fittings. So. That's what we hope you go with.
Summary
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[00:12:57] Eric Knight: Um, yeah, it feels good to air this out because, I've been catching a lot of Crow for it.
[00:13:03] And a lot of that is self-inflicted. I am definitely my own worst critic. They seemed like great ideas at the time, but they're not, not anymore. They've run their course. That said, Orenda 3.0, we are working on it every single day. Very excited for what it can be. So again, thank you so much for your feedback.
[00:13:24] We could not have done this without you all. And, um, enjoy the smooth app moving forward. This has been episode 74, my personal diatribe and venting session to you. And, uh, we'll release another one shortly after this because I don't want you to have to wait a week for actual content.
[00:13:45] I'm your host Eric Knight without Jarred this time. And by the way, if we had Jarred on this one, he would be ribbing me so hard for these things, because he never lets me live it down. This barrel platform is easily the most costly mistake we've ever made. So anyway, hope you enjoy this. Take care of everybody and we'll see you in the next episode.