A question I get asked daily is short and to the point: “What’s coming next, Bryce?” It’s a question I’m humbled to receive, as it reminds me how loyal and engaged Metorik’s customers are.

Normally I have an answer. Back when Metorik first launched, the answer was “Subscriptions support”. Soon after, the answer was “an improved segmenting system”. Then it was “global search”, “variation reports”, and “suggested segments”.

These are just the features I have blog posts for.

This year, it’s gone from “profit reports” to “custom dashboards”, and in recent months, “Engage (email automation)” and “cart tracking and abandoned cart emails”.

Every time I started one of these new features, I knew straight away that it was the right choice. There’s a feeling you get when everything’s in its right place, and I had that for each of those big features.

But if you’ve asked me that question recently, I haven’t really had an answer. And well, that’s probably because I haven’t had that ‘new-feature feeling’ when considering my options.

When you’re running a 100m sprint, you aren’t thinking about the next sprint. All of your attention and focus is on that finish line. The one right in front of you that you know you’ll end up at one way or another in the immediate future.

When you’re running a 100m sprint, you aren’t thinking about the next sprint. All of your attention and focus is on that finish line. The one right in front of you that you know you’ll end up at one way or another in the immediate future.

In the early days of Metorik, when it went from an idea to its first customers, I knew what I was getting myself into. It was going to be a marathon - the longest I’d ever run - and it promised to test my perseverance and focus like nothing else. Months without a working app, without revenue, without a guarantee of success. But eventually it launched, it got its first customers, became sustainable, and then I started to sprint.

For what feels like forever now, I’ve been running 100m sprint after 100m sprint. Each big feature is another 100m sprint. It’s predictable, lucrative, but sadly, not sustainable. Metorik today is more a marathon than its ever been, and sprinting the whole way won’t result in success - just burnout.

One thing I constantly need to remind myself: Everyone paying for Metorik today is paying for it based on what it can do today. No one subscribes because they want a feature I’ll build in 6 months (if that’s all they’re interested in, they could just subscribe in 6 months time).

So my focus for the immediate future is on what everyone is already paying for. I want to take what exists currently and make it much, much better. I want to focus on stability.

I still have new features I want to build, like integrations with other apps, new reports, more ways to segment, Engage message templates, etc. - but the key difference between these features and other big ones I’ve built in the past is simple. The foundation for these features already exists. I’m just taking what’s already been built (and perhaps involved a sprint or two) and making it better.

Since coming to this realisation a few days ago, I’ve had that ‘new-feature feeling’. So I think I’ll consider this next chapter - a focus on stability - as Metorik’s newest feature. But this time it won’t involve a sprint.