Beware of the light bulb moment

Why we're building Alfred

5 years ago, I had a light bulb moment that would change the course of my life forever.

I was on leave from Rugby following the birth of our twins, and once Jen and I settled them into a good routine, I had some time to think about what I'd do in life after footy.

Fun times

I still had some Rugby left in me, but the writing was on the wall and I knew it was time to start thinking about what I’d do next. I hadn’t thought about it much, as retiring from professional sport to start a new career is a daunting prospect.

Fortunately, the Dock was going well thanks to Shooter and Jane, but I'd worked in hospitality long enough to know that I didn’t want to make a career out of it.

But I knew that I wanted to do something that would improve the lives of others, as my parents have dedicated their lives to doing just that. Dad, with his genetic research that’s led to new cures being found for sick children, and Mum with her work of caring for the elderly.

Me with Mum and Dad

Both have been inspiring, but I didn't know what I could do to help. What unique skillset or insight did I have to share that could help improve peoples lives?

And after struggling to think of something, a penny begun to drop.

At this point, I’d been tracking my food for a few years after it helped me get out of the Brumbies fat club, as I’d always battled with my weight prior to that, and started tracking after I watched a video by a fellow prop who had gotten into incredibly shape. And he put it down to tracking what he ate with an app.

I’d tracked using pen and paper before, but after watching the video I decided to give tracking another go, and I’ve never looked back.

Apart from being 20kgs lighter, I’m more energetic, more confident, and feel very proud of myself for achieving something that I’d been battling with for years.

And while I never reached the same shape as Brian, I was chuffed and whenever someone said they wanted to lose weight, I would say “Just track what you eat. It’s easy!”.

But it turned out that it wasn’t as easy as I thought, as everyone who downloaded a diet app quickly stopped using it, saying it was too complicated and took too much time, meaning they didn’t get to feel the same benefits that I had.

Frustrated that it hadn’t helped, I decided to do some research and found a study that showed how people who keep a food diary lose twice as much weight as those who don’t, and learned that tracking creates a greater awareness of one’s eating habits, creates accountability, and removes some of the mystery that surrounds diet and weight loss.

Looking back, I was totally confused about what it took to lose weight as I was blissfuly unaware how much I was eating, and the only people I knew who tracked were either athletes or bodybuilders.

So I stewed on that fact for months, until one morning I thought: "That’s it! I'll build an easier one! A food diary anyone can use!" and the journey to build Alfred begun.

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A rocky start

Despite the competition, Jen’s Uncle and I started building Alfred in early 2017 knowing that in order to succeed, Alfred would need to be the simplest and easiest tracker available.

So with that in mind, we designed a system where I (or a nutrition student) could do the data entry and calculate the energy in meals for the user, therefore removing most of “the work” that’s required to track, and started testing it with friends in late 2017.

While the first version was fugly to say the least, to our delight, some users got great results, which strengthened my belief that Alfred might in fact work.

But a bug proved too hard to fix, and just after I retired, we sadly had to start all over again.

To make things worse, it wasn’t our only failure as another 2 versions came crashing down following another 2 long and painful years of trying to build what we believed would work.

So after 3 years and 3 fails, it was time to start again. Only this time a new team was assembled and with the help of the Dungeon Bard and Nasty Nash, we got a basic version of Alfred built and into the Apple app store late last year!

YEEWWWW!!!!!

And while Alfred still has lots of improving to do, our first 8 months have been great and we now have over 900 users. Also, starting on the 1st of September, Alfred will start to bring in his first dollars as we launch the Alfred subscription service.

To those you who are using Alfred and chose to subscribe, I can’t thank you enough as your support will ensure that the team and I can continue to work on Alfred, and keep making him better for many years to come.

4th time lucky?

Also a big thank you to those of you who’ve given me feedback about how Alfred could be better, and I understand that it can be hard to be critical about something your friend has poured his heart and soul into. Kind of like telling someone “your baby is ugly” lol.

But if you’ve tried Alfred and found that he’s not up to scratch, we’d love to hear from you and would appreciate you answering the 2-minute anonymous survey below.

To the rest of you, thanks for reading and stay safe!