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WE HAVE A COOL NAME · Medical Students Making an App - Episode 2

2017-07-28 · Vlog or day in the life · Ali, Ben · recording, 4:13 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Business and entrepreneurship · mode: Explanation and tutorial · tags: His own products discussed, Aimed at students

Ali and Ben tell how they started their app: market research found five similar apps, mostly stale or paid, so they went ahead with a free, simple surgical logbook for medical students, named it Cut and Paste, bought cutandpaste.ac for £25 a year and put up a website with a mailing list.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Market research: five similar apps, and why they went ahead

  • ★★ Ali and Ben started their surgical logbook app project with three steps: market research, coming up with a name and setting up a quick website. — 00:00:00 · Cut and Paste
  • ★★ Market research turned up five similar surgical logbook apps, which at first made Ali and Ben fear a saturated market, but several had last been updated in 2012 and none was exactly what they wanted. — 00:00:00
  • ★★★ After discussing whether to continue, Ali and Ben decided their app stands apart as a free, simple, easy-to-use surgical logbook only for medical students, without the extras doctors' logbooks need. — 00:00:00 · Cut and Paste
  • ★★ Many of the existing surgical logbook apps charge or need a subscription, which Ali says puts a lot of people off. — 00:00:45

00:01:14 — Choosing the name Cut and Paste

  • ★★ A standard name such as "My Surgical Logbook" sounds really boring, so Ali and Ben chose a name and website with a bit of banter: tongue in cheek but not offensive, not taking themselves too seriously. — 00:01:14
  • ★★ After "Cut and Run" and "Slice and Dice", they chose Cut and Paste: "cut" for the surgical side, "cut and paste" for its connotations of tech and entering data, and it rolls off the tongue. — 00:01:43 · Cut and Paste
  • ★★ Ali says the next step for any app, business idea or website, once it has a name, is to find a domain name. — 00:01:43

00:02:34 — The cutandpaste.ac domain, a quick website and the mailing list

  • ★★ cutandpaste.com, .co.uk and .net were taken; .io was available but tends to be used for tech things, and they decided against .xyz and .wtf. — 00:02:34
  • ★★ Ali credits Ben with the idea of a .ac domain, which Ben plays down; they wanted something familiar and easy to say, and .ac suits an app aimed at medical students. — 00:02:34 · Ben
  • ★★ On Namecheap, Ali and Ben bought the cutandpaste.ac domain for £25 a year, split between them as an investment in the business. — 00:03:02 · Namecheap, Cut and Paste
  • ★★★ Ali and Ben's surgical logbook app is now called Cut and Paste, and its website is cutandpaste.ac. — 00:03:02 · Cut and Paste
  • ★ Ben went out for a coffee and came back to find the Cut and Paste website done, which surprised him greatly. (playful) — 00:03:02
  • ★★ Visitors to cutandpaste.ac can join the mailing list to get occasional progress emails and be told when Cut and Paste is ready to launch, so they can test it. — 00:03:02 · Cut and Paste

00:03:48 — Sign-off

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Mentioned

Central: Cut and Paste

Also: Ben · Namecheap

Only in the description or credits: Medical Students Making an App

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← Previous: We're trying something new... · Medical Students Making an App - Episode 1 · Next → How to make a website in 5 minutes · Medical Students Making an App - Episode 3