Why we made Booost

Covid. The first national lockdown. Working from home. A time when everything was turned upside down and the future was uncertain. It is from such challenges that true greatness can emer… ok, maybe not, but the story of Booost is very much a story about Covid and lockdown, and, well, more sheer ignorance rather than true greatness, as you’ll see…

Lockdown and ADHD

During lockdown, our business at the time (delivering DSA needs assessments to students), shifted online, and it didn’t take long for it to become apparent that lockdown was impacting more on some people than others. Specifically, students with ADHD were clearly struggling more with online learning and staying at home than many other students.

This is perhaps unsurprising, and raises interesting questions about the nature of disability and how the structures of society cause many of the difficulties experienced by disabled people. But that’s for another post.

Lets make an app…

Back to Booost, and after discussing these students’ experiences with fellow assessor and business partner, Laura, it was clear that the options available within the existing DSA funding provision weren’t really providing what was needed.

The conclusion, was, for Laura at least, simple; ‘lets make an app’.

And then she starting talking about a circle, which, if you ever get the chance, is always a fun thing to ask her about.

Side note

Laura and I have worked together for a long time, and while saying ‘lets make an app’ might be a throwaway comment for some, when Laura says it, it means that I will then think of a load of reasons why that would be the worst possible thing to do, and we will then make an app.

Which is pretty much exactly what happened.

Baking bread

So we had an idea and believed we had validated it through the many struggling students we were talking to. We also had a bit more time (pre-Covid we spent a lot of time travelling for work) and perhaps fewer distractions.

And then there was the bread baking - the time during lockdown when for many of us, lockdown afforded an opportunity to try new things, learn new skills and come up with different and creative ways of passing the time without shops and pubs and meeting friends and all the other things that usually filled our diaries.

Because of this, perhaps, making an app seemed more plausible than it would have at another time. Or maybe it was the sense of change, or living in the moment at bit more. Or simply that in strange times, strange decisions are made.

Whatever it was, we put the sourdough starter to one side and instead jumped into this new project.

The benefit of ignorance

Which leads perfectly to the final reason why we made Booost. Simply put, it was because we had no idea what we were doing. We knew what students were struggling with, and had a pretty good idea about how an app could help with some of those difficulties.

But beyond that? Nothing.

We didn’t know how apps were made, had no real technical or design skills. We knew nothing of MVPs, UX, UI, codebases, Github, JIRA, Figma, Flutter, PHP or React. We had no sense of how long and expensive and frustrating the process can be, and in no way predicted that ultimately we would need a whole team onboard to help design, develop, market, support and sell.

Had we known a fraction of this, it undoubtedly would have made the road ahead smoother. But also, I suspect, we then may have never started that journey. Instead, ignorance may not have been bliss, but it was certainly a major factor in the Booost origin story.

The end result

Ultimately, Booost was made to help students who struggle with planning their time and organising their workload. We wanted to create something that would provide specialist help and advice to those students, but in a practical way, linking it to the specific things they had to do, whether that was attending a seminar, preparing for a presentation or working on an assignment.

This wish to help was the foundation on which Booost was built and remains the guiding principle for the business. Covid, lockdown and ignorance are all part of a process that, in October 2021, saw Booost being launched and grow to today having over 10,000 users in schools, colleges and universities, plus a fantastic team, a second product (see how that came about here) and a whole load of ideas for what’s next.