alkatera 2.0

The idea for alkatera started just over 1 year ago on July 8th when my brother introduced me to a fairly new, at the time, coding platform called Replit.

What he showed me that day sparked something in me and I saw a possible change in the future of software tools and how they're built. Instead of software being gated behind a team of coders, all of a sudden anyone with expertise in a particular field could build software utilising their expertise.

I previously published an app for Healthy Hospo, my non-profit aimed at supporting health and wellbeing in hospitality. I had an idea and a vision for the app but no technical ability so I had to find a company that had that skillset to build the idea that was in my head. It took 4 months of meetings, back and forth calls, endless emails, cost over £70,000, and was basic, clunky, difficult to edit, and basically unused by anyone.

The company I did a great job and I've forever appreciative to them, but there will also be a gap between what you imagine in your head and how the team building your software interpret your vision.

On that sunny day in July, seeing how Replit could take structured prompts and then, in a few minutes write the code to bring it to life, I realised that maybe, just maybe, I could build something, myself and have complete control over the entire process.

So I got to work, built an MVP (minimal viable product) with Replit to test the idea, see if it was even possible to build a dedicated platform for sustainability in the drinks industry; going beyond just carbon to cover other areas that are important to the drinks industry.

I showed it to a few people, got positive feedback, and even convinced a few brands to join my journey as I built out a fully working platform where brands can measure their climate, water, and nature impact, track their waste, log their community work, track DEI metrics, get support with B Corp Certification, and much, much more.

alkatera officially launched in February this year, but it was never the finished product. There was huge room for improvement.

So, after months of working closely with some visionary people from some brands I genuinely love who've used the platform, broken it, given me their feedback, suggested areas for improvement, and told me problems it would be really valuable if we could solve, on Monday I hit 'deploy' on the latest version of alkatera.

This is the version that was always in my head: a beautiful, engaging platform built directly with drinks brands for drinks brands. A piece of software that replaces endless spreadsheets, reduces the cost and time of data collection, processing, and reporting, brings everything into a single platform, and is beautiful and easy to use.

Gone is the digital looking black and neon green, replaced by a warm palette of complimentary colours inspired by Wada Sanzo's 'Colour Dictionary'. The old-fashioned SaaS platform interface of side bar menus, sub-menus, sub-sub-menus and tabs consigned to the bin, and in its place a series of rooms, each a self contained set of features, interconnected behind the scenes.

There's a living forest that grows as you add more data and changes with the seasons. A hidden game, if you can find it.

I genuinely believe that business software doesn't have to be boring, dry, and corporate. It can be beautiful, engaging, and joyous. That's what I hope the new version of alkatera is. I'd love to get your thoughts.