"and every day we’ve continued to win the most important battle for any company: existence"
That's just it. I had a client a few years back and I thought they were just, well, I mean it sounds harsh but I thought they were a joke.
They were in a highly competitive industry and everything about their product sucked.
I never really took them seriously. But then about 8 months after I'd been doing regular work for them they called me and said "There's a problem with the billing integration on signup". I was like "How did you know?" It was a problem that wasn't immediately apparent and there were no warnings in place on their system to detect this kind of problem. The guy said "well we usually get 5 or 6 signups a day and we didn't get any".
This was astounding to me. I couldn't believe they got 5 - 6 people signing up every day.
Now, 3 years on, they get about 40 signups a day. They have iteratively improved their service, and there's the really killer thing: the markets we're dealing with are HUGE here people. Huge.
I had this little epiphany the other day, about my service 8centsms.com. Here is a service that makes between $500 and $2000 per month - but the bulk of that is from 1 or 2 bulk marketing clients. I want it to be a "personal" messaging solution though.
The problem is, there are only 27 regular users. Pathetic. That's so small it makes me want to cry.
But then I thought about it like this: what if I told you that I had a service that only had 27 regular users (who really love the service). Then I told you that I knew (somehow, theoretically) that those were the only 27 people on the planet who would ever use it or love it, and we'd already signed them up - wouldn't you think that was utterly impossible?
In fact, the presence of 27 users just indicates that there must be more - many many many many more - who would signup and use our service if we marketed it properly. Isn't that amazing?
Don't commit suicide, just exist. Engage with your users and get more signups. If even one person falls in love with your product, that proves that there must be thousands, even millions more out there that will do the same. Because the alternative (that you managed to find the 1 person out of 7 billion that love your product) is so unlikely as to be considered impossible.
I agree, the fastest way to gain traction may be to market more to the bulk marketing client list (who clearly see value in it). As the word spreads among them, you may gain critical mass and see your service spread to more general clients.
That's a great writeup Justin, but it would lend you even more credibility if you mentioned the time you gave up - Kiko. The only reason I've seen cited in interviews is that Google jumped into the market and conquered it overnight. I don't believe that at all. I think if you stuck to your guns, you could kick Google calendar's ass and be successful despite the initial competitive setback, much like the great examples you give in your article.
Did you get bored of working on Kiko or were you looking for a bigger, crazier idea?
I think we could have made something happen with Kiko if we had stuck with it. However, I honestly don't think we were ready as a team to make it happen -- we didn't really understand the market (two kids right of college who never used calendars!). We spent a lot of time trying to come up with ideas for how to make Kiko work (one of those brainstorming sessions led to Justin.tv), but just couldn't think of anything we should was compelling.
And that's exactly the kind of thing Justin argues is just another excuse to give up. I have this heresy that one of the most common reasons for startup failure is founder boredom, but few founders ever admit it.
I can't find the meaning of heresay. Maybe my grammatical usage of heresy in the sentence is incorrect, but I do mean it in this way - http://www.thefreedictionary.com/heresy
(Sorry, my initial Google search automatically replaced "heresay" with "hearsay" in my search. I hate that Google has started doing this, instead of the old "did you mean x?")
Let's see... the "fail fast" meme was pushed out by the "pivot" meme, and we're likely to start seeing more of the "persevere at all costs - see, I did it, so you should never ever ever give up ever!" meme soon.
The only constant I see is "change the meme every so often".
All three are facets of the same thing. You fail fast so you know when to pivot, and where to pivot to, and you persevere to make it through the pivot. You can easily add a hundred other adages and cliches to this pile. These are just new buzzwords for old wisdom.
Ummm... I don't think the 'fail fast' notion is at all related to the "persevere at all costs" meme I've seen popping up the past couple weeks. The whole point is that the PAAC supporters got the point of failure (or perceived failure) multiple times, but did not fail. Often there's no mention of a major pivot, just that they "kept going".
"Fail fast" refers to projects.. i.e. you need to iterate quickly and figure out what doesn't work on your products. It doesn't refer to your company.
Justin.tv went through a pivot (reality show -> live platform), as well many attempts to add new product offerings, many of which failed (you probably haven't heard of them) and two of which are on the road to success (TwitchTV and Socialcam).
Figuring out what people want is often harder than it looks. Scratch that. It's easy to find some things that people want, or at least say they want. Determining if you can provide something people (claim to) want in a profitable manner is harder to do.
Everything written here is true, but you have to be careful. Following advice like this, any startup, even ones ultimately doomed to failure can be continued indefinitely.
Of course. That's what separates good entrepreneurs from "no so good" ones. I think his advice applies to businesses in general as much as startups, its just that established businesses creating new products have more resources to work with. That doesn't change the fact that one of the most important abilities of someone in business is dealing with uncertainty and making decisions without enough information.
Reading tons of articles about succeeding in entrepreneurship I have learned one thing: it is a rat race in a labyrinth. A few will win; the rest will be consigned to oblivion. And you never know in which group you are until it's too late (or obvious).
my view on the article aside, the reason this type of advice is well received by entrepreneurs is because the blood/sweat/tears formula consists of elements we are all in control of (contrary to the outside investment/luck elements that you read about and say, "well hopefully that shit works out"). not a bad thing at all... primary focus should be on elements you can control, with the others being secondary
That's just it. I had a client a few years back and I thought they were just, well, I mean it sounds harsh but I thought they were a joke.
They were in a highly competitive industry and everything about their product sucked.
I never really took them seriously. But then about 8 months after I'd been doing regular work for them they called me and said "There's a problem with the billing integration on signup". I was like "How did you know?" It was a problem that wasn't immediately apparent and there were no warnings in place on their system to detect this kind of problem. The guy said "well we usually get 5 or 6 signups a day and we didn't get any".
This was astounding to me. I couldn't believe they got 5 - 6 people signing up every day.
Now, 3 years on, they get about 40 signups a day. They have iteratively improved their service, and there's the really killer thing: the markets we're dealing with are HUGE here people. Huge.
I had this little epiphany the other day, about my service 8centsms.com. Here is a service that makes between $500 and $2000 per month - but the bulk of that is from 1 or 2 bulk marketing clients. I want it to be a "personal" messaging solution though.
The problem is, there are only 27 regular users. Pathetic. That's so small it makes me want to cry.
But then I thought about it like this: what if I told you that I had a service that only had 27 regular users (who really love the service). Then I told you that I knew (somehow, theoretically) that those were the only 27 people on the planet who would ever use it or love it, and we'd already signed them up - wouldn't you think that was utterly impossible?
In fact, the presence of 27 users just indicates that there must be more - many many many many more - who would signup and use our service if we marketed it properly. Isn't that amazing?
Don't commit suicide, just exist. Engage with your users and get more signups. If even one person falls in love with your product, that proves that there must be thousands, even millions more out there that will do the same. Because the alternative (that you managed to find the 1 person out of 7 billion that love your product) is so unlikely as to be considered impossible.