Well, it's been just over six months since GreatAlbum Joined the Pioneer Incubator Community. In that time...

• Weekly Updates - we've submitted updates 27 out of 28 weeks (we forgot to submit an update the weekend after New Year's Day, when we were still on holiday).
• Our Pioneer score - has gone from 30,900 to 41,094
• Our global rank - has gone from so high it was unreported to breaking the top 100 on 30-March to 54th this week (we were actually 50th after Monday's scoring, then dropped to 54th after feedback star scoring)
• Our US East rank - has gone from too high to be recognized to top 50 as of 26-January and top 20 as of 30-March.

We've reviewed a number Pioneer player's sites/apps multiple times and enjoyed following their progress over time. And see our first feedback from the Pioneer team and my response.

In that same period, i've attended 25-26 weekly Pioneer Players Thursday zoom calls. Where possible, the Pioneer facilitator for each call tries to group the same players together week after week. While I've met with 15-20 players across these calls, I've found a really nice rhythm with three other players in particular:

• Maryna Burushkina, Founder & CEO at GrowthChannel
• Lorenzo Carver, Co-Founder (with his 4-year old daughter) at Brainsprays
• James Augeri, Founder at Jingle

Early on, our calls would go in a round robin, with each of us getting ten minutes to highlight a problem we're facing and get feedback from others. More recently, our calls have evolved into deep-dives into one or two specific issues each time, which has enabled us to have more much meaningful conversations about how to address those issues. We've also developed a wonderful sense of collaboration between ourselves and partnered up on other activities together.

As we look forward to completing our Beta6 sprint and relaunching our Private Beta (which we paused at the start of Beta5 to rebuild on the OpenSocial distribution of Drupal), we're excited to dramatically ramp up our user base, determine just how strong our product-market fit (PMF) is, and see how we fare in Pioneer incubator competition. It should be a wild ride!

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To further explain how Pioneer scoring works, here are explanations for several of the factors:

• Ratings from players and experts:  Your score will change as other participants and experts vote on you during the Pioneer Tournament. Scores change based on the quality of other players. For example, if you’re upvoted over a top player, you’ll get more points than if you’re upvoted over a low-ranked player. You still get points if you’re upvoted over a low-ranked player—just not as many. The best way to reach and maintain a high score is to demonstrate impressive progress every week.
• Progress update streak: You get 50 points for each consecutive progress update you submit. You can't get more than 200 points, but you'll drop back down to 0 when you break your streak!
• Votes you've submitted: These are points you've received from voting on other players' progress updates over the last 4 weeks (200 points max).
• Feedback to other players: These are points you've received from players liking your feedback for them over the last 4 weeks. You get 25 points for each piece of feedback other players like, up to 100 points per week.