Hi,
This year was an interesting learning experience. I tried to commercialize a product, which in the end was much harder than expected. As a short summary, the first attempt failed, because I couldn’t figure out how to sell the product. The pivot failed, because multiple big corporates released a similar product. Also the goal was to get 1-2 customers to build a MVP before looking for funding and so on. So I never incorporated the idea into a company. Basically, I failed already on the first meter, but this saved a lot of time. So I only invested 7 months. 🥲
Besides being obviously naive, I enjoyed the learning process and didn’t mind the daily grind. Overall, I enjoyed the process and here are my three key learnings:
- no entrepreneurial mindset
- misaligned incentives
- build trap
With entrepreneurial mindset, I mean understanding the market and the customer. How does a product work and what is the strategy behind it? I overvalued the software and undervalued the distribution. Thinking about the product includes ideal customer profiles, pricing, sales channels, marketing and competition. I don’t mean that you need to have a business plan, but you need to have some intuition about the market you are in. This is still something you learn by doing, and it starts by talking to customers and understanding their problems. I think this is a skill you need to train, and first, you need to become aware of it.
With misaligned incentives, I mean the problem of having different goals as your co-founder. I tried to find a partner to handle sales simply because I didn’t want to do it myself. I expected him to hustle for equity, but for him it was a side project (which is completely understandable). I learned that you cannot outsource your responsibilities just because they are uncomfortable. You still need to own the process and learn the basics yourself before you delegate it.
The build trap is the problem of focusing too much on building the product, without thinking about the market or the customer. Even though I was aware, that I needed to sell the product, I still focused on coding. I think, this is a common problem (even in machine learning, you should start with a simple heuristic, before adding ML as in Rule #1). This is a common pattern, even being aware of it doesn’t make it easy to avoid.
As a summary, I enjoyed the last 7 months and don’t regret it. But for now, I’m not eager to repeat it. Although I still love building things and taking ownership. Let’s see what is next.
Thank you for your attention.