Just wanted to share a note with my loyal readers that I sent out to all of the PlansForUs users last night and this morning. We started this company knowing that our only chance of success was to build a great application that teachers loved. The question is how do you do that in a vacuum. So we put it all out there, warts and all so that we can learn, communicate and improve. So what if you know that we have problems, we aren’t a very big team and the only way we are going to solve them is if we tap into other brains and experiences.

We are thankful for the outpouring of support from our users and look forward to continuing to build PlansForUs into the ultimate platform for idea sharing, building and teaching. The note is after the jump:

Hello,

At this point most, if not all, of you have started school and are getting into your teaching rhythm. Here in the Fonda house/studio apartment, we have been adjusting to a new teaching rhythm, brought on by the inaugural year of head teaching. What follows is a recap of how PlansForUs is doing as a business, an overview of what is to come shortly and a request.

Recap
On July 9th we began to share PlansForUs beyond our circle of friends and family. At that time we had 25 teachers using PlansForUs. Today we are closing in on 500 teachers. You come from 49 of the 50 states, Puerto Rico, Canada, United Kingdom and Israel. This is great and we thank you for being a part of this growing community and embracing the idea of “Creation through Collaboration”.

Less great is the fact that we have not seen equivalent growth in the numbers of lesson plans and teaching ideas shared on PlansForUs. There are many reasons why this might be, but we think a principal problem is that you are not getting enough value from simply writing, saving and accessing your plans online. So we are going to make PlansForUs work for you in a way that will provide you with immediate value and also lead to an increase in the number of plans and ideas available to all.

What is Coming
Since school started I have watched how my wife collaborates with her colleagues. I have watched as a series of Word documents are emailed back and forth. I have watched as those documents are edited via phone and IM. What I have realized is that this is a terrific, but inefficient act of collaboration. I love spending time with my wife and this process was cutting into that time.

Therefore we are building a solution at PlansForUs to support this type of collaborative behavior in a more efficient way. In mid-October PlansForUs will make collaboration between personal networks simple and efficient, so that you can reclaim some of your time. The beauty is that once you have completed the document, you can simply click the share button so that other students and teachers can learn from you and your partners.

A Request of You
PlansForUs is all about participation. As noted earlier we do not have as many lesson plans as our user base would suggest we should. So we are asking for your help this week. If each of you share 1 plan we could have nearly 500 new plans on PlansForUs by the end of this week. Inviting a colleague or two to sign up for PlansForUs will take us well past 1,000 users which will only enhance the value of PlansForUs to you.

PlansForUs is supported by a team that is focused solely upon delivering great tools for teacher collaboration. We promise to continue to be open about what’s right and what’s wrong with PlansForUs, so that you can help us identify the things that matter most to you. Thanks for your membership and your belief in what we are doing at PlansForUs.

Best Regards,

by Tyler, CEO