From this week’s PostSecret installment…

I have to admit, I do this too.

Dear Jotters,

We reached an exciting milestone today: Jott has exited “beta”.

It’s a big deal for the Jott community because it means that together we’ve built a service that has great value. Despite being in the age of perpetual betas, we actually had a pretty clear plan for getting the service to this point: 1) Take the time to figure out what people really want; 2) Listen to how they would ideally want to pay for it; and 3) try to make 1 & 2 work!

We realized pretty early on that we had a product with broad uses, and it made answering the question “Who is your customer, and how do they use it?” very challenging. Initially Jotters were mostly cutting edge types who follow the tech blogs and the start up world. But pretty soon we saw lawyers, sales people, real estate agents, teachers – you name it.

From our earliest days we had “Jott Anywhere” as a mantra, and two new downloads finally get us there: Jott for Outlook, which lets you use Jott to create Tasks, Events and Email Drafts; and Jott Express, a sweet desktop manager for the Jotts you create anywhere.

Believe it or not, it’s not easy asking people for money, because people have different ways of valuing Jott, and we hate to disappoint anyone. A lawyer wrote me back in 2007 that while Jott had real economic value for him, it was the stress reduction he valued most. How do you put a price on that?

In the end, we’ve come up with a good mix – all based on actual usage data and your feedback. The $3.95 “Jott” plan (known internally as the Grande Mocha plan) is really designed for the average user: Notes, Reminders, all the Jott Links, and hands-free Email and Texting – and no advertising. There is a lot more detail at the Get Started page, so have a look.

Anyway, thanks to all of you for helping us get here. We have an amazingly talented and dedicated team here in Seattle and we couldn’t be more excited about Jott’s roadmap.

John

John Pollard, Founder and CEO

Monday: The dev team burned the midnight oil (and kicked some butt!) to get Jott Feeds ready to go.

Tuesday: We released Jott Feeds!

Wednesday: Started seeing some sites adding Jott Feeds badges and added  Seth Godin as a featured feed!

Thursday: David Pogue reviewed Jott in the New York Times! Check out the video too.

Friday: We’re still enjoying all this week’s excitement and looking forward to seeing Alicia’s band The Delusions play tonight at The Comet.

Monday: Our Facebook fan page has reached almost 500 fans!

Tuesday: Day 1 of filming the new user education videos. Thanks to Jenny for lending us her acting chops for the night.

Wednesday: Day 2 of filming new user education videos. Mark stepped up (again) to lend a hand and reminded us all why he was the star of the Terse Reply Syndrome videos.

Thursday: The Jott Google Gadget got a nice shout-out on Web Worker Daily.

Friday: Golf gets added to the Unofficial Jott Gym.

Monday: We woke up to find ourselves on MSN.com! Jott for BlackBerry was also written about on Web Worker Daily

Tuesday: Nothing too exciting happened… just lots of hard work all day.

Wednesday: The monthly newsletter went out and Lifehacker mentioned Jott as one of the Top 10 Tools to Get Blogging Done

Thursday: Customer feedback started coming in from the newsletter. We heard from people on the blog, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Friday: Chloe came to visit!

1439: Johann Gutenberg invents the printing press.

1775:The United States Post office is born.

1860: The Pony Express starts delivering mail.

1876: Alexander Graham Bell submits his telephone patent.

1952: Bell Lab. introduces Automated Speech Recognition.

1965: Email is born.

1983: Motorola releases 1st FCC approved mobile phone.

1989: The first text message is sent.

2006: John and Shree start Jott.

Monday: One of the many perks of working at Jott is the “Unofficial Jott Gym”. This week we added a bike to the mix, for even more exercise opportunities at the office.

The first ever Jott spinning class

Tuesday: We got some important information sorted through and planned out for a new feature. Mums the word, but I think you’ll all love it when it gets released.

Wednesday: Jott was in ComputerWorld…

and on Lifehacker!

Thursday: We went bowling to celebrate birthdays, 1 year-at-Jott anniversaries, and an engagement! It was great fun, we got to spend some of our swear jar money and John pulled in the winning score with 175 points! In case you were wondering, that makes him 138 points better at bowling than Obama.

(from left to right: Seth, Alicia, Dominic, Shree, Rod, Michael)

(Michael sipping a swear-jar-funded beer from the swear jar)

Friday: The percentage of Jott employees with iPhones reached almost 50% thanks to Doug and John’s recent purchases.

and still had enough left over for cake!

But not enough for utensils…

(photos by Michael Walton)

Monday: Seth got a new hairdo.

Tuesday: We’ve been so busy working, we almost forgot it was tax day. Thank goodness for reminders!

Wednesday: Jott was in The Washington Post! Read the full article here.

Thursday: Shree and John remind us all what it’s like to work at a start up.

Friday: Today marks the 2nd birthday of Jott. Two years down… so many more to go!

Monday: The swear jar hit new highs (with a $20!) and lows (Michael’s I.O.U)…

Tuesday: we almost made it into the background of CBS News covering Victrola Coffee, but stayed out of the way so Doug wouldn’t get in trouble with his wife who works at Starbucks.

Wednesday: U.S. News & World Report wrote about Jott

Thursday: Cajun tots were consumed merrily…

Friday: Alicia’s band The Delusions is playing tonight, 10:30 at the Cafe Venus and Mars Bar