Liffery, The Research Assistant for Individual and Collaborative Research

 

Away from all the noise and promotion online, Liffery provides a quiet space where users can capture and consider sparks of interest for later. The tool gives you a calm, push-ad-free space for individual or collaborative research as well as social wish lists between family and friends! 

 

BACKGROUND

Founded in 2021 by John Carmichael and Janine Nitz, Liffery targeted the need to make research simple, both in an individual and collaborative way. “We looked into the decision-making process that people go through for a purchase and realized that it exists in a very broken system,” says Nitz. “We wanted to forge a quiet space for people to keep the initial sparks of interest so they can consider purchasing in their own time, when they're ready to make a decision.” 

The idea was exciting and it was time to set it in motion. John & Janine presented their concept to acrontum's CEO, Michael Brode, with a series of sketches and a lot of enthusiasm. Lucky for all, Michael was on board! Now, it was time to start....

GOALS & CHALLENGES

The company needed infrastructure to support its creation, growth, and financial support and technical expertise to help it launch successfully. That’s where and when acrontum comes in! Alongside other programs that supported this innovation, acrontum played the role of an incubator, by investing and supporting with necessary resources to get this idea going. 

But back to Liffery. In addition to the user platform, Liffery also offers a feature-rich wish list service for businesses. They provide the Liffery Sidebar, which seamlessly integrates with any website, becoming the go-to wish list for users wherever the Sidebar is found. For online stores, the Sidebar acts as a natural extension that expands their reach to like-minded shoppers and enhances the customer experience. 

STRATEGIES

Liffery is built upon many microservices. There are separate front-end interfaces for the consumer and business users, and there is also an admin interface for Liffery’s own team.  

Costs make a huge difference to a startup, especially in the early stages when a new business model is being tested. Supported by Data Center Designer and IONOS Cloud, Liffery was able to “...spin up a microservice to test functionality, prove it or disprove it with our users, and then kill it very quickly,” says Carmichael. “If we were to do this in one of the hyperscale cloud providers, costs would be astronomically high. Then, you would be more concerned about killing it fast. If you kill something too fast, you haven't really given the concept a good run for its money, so you don't truly know if it's worth running with or not.” 

Financial support from IONOS helps Liffery to reduce its costs and risk, too. “The IONOS Startup Program really allowed us to explore and find the weak points in our solution,” says Carmichael. 

RESULTS

For startups like Liffery, how fast you can test and evolve is crucial. Using Data Center Designer, Liffery can rapidly build infrastructure and allocate resources. With IONOS Cloud, Liffery can quickly and cost-effectively spin up containers, too. As a result, the company can experiment freely and is not tempted to cancel pilot projects early to save money.  

As for acrontum, we like to consider ourselves as a bit of idea incubators. If the product makes sense and shows potential, we we are happy to provide the infrastructure and resources that it might need along the way.

 

Care to know more about the Liffery journey? Listen to their narration HERE! And if you like what you see, don't forget to give a thumbs up in Product Hunt so that more people can find make smart purchasing decisions.