Three lessons I learned from failing my startup
10 Nov 2014Triage
I started Bandpass with a co-founder in January. Nine months later we decided to end it. Looking back over my experience as a first time founder, these are some of the lessons that I’ve learned.
- Believe in your product
- Be fearless, let the world tell you “no”
- Set Goals, Get Data, Execute
Believe in your product
This might be the most important thing about starting a company. It was tempting to jump at the first great idea that we had. I had just quit my job at Microsoft and I wanted to return to the stability of work as soon as possible. As a result, I ignored some foundational doubts I had about Bandpass. It took me months to give the doubts that I had the credence they deserved. My lack of confidence crippled my ability to dive into my work.
Be fearless, let the world tell you “no”
“You don’t ask… You don’t get”
Starting a company requires you to put yourself out there in many significant and often uncomfortable ways. I don’t particularly like selling, interviewing strangers in coffee shops, or pitching. Ideally, I would make an amazing product, people would recognize the genius of the idea, and sales would skyrocket. We all know that’s not how it works though.
You need to sell your idea (which starts to feel like yourself) to your customers, your investors, your peers, your employees, and everyone else along the way. In the face of this constant scrutiny, I found myself making excuses not to sell, not to put myself out there. I started saying “no” for people as a defense mechanism. I would theorize why this person wasn’t going to like my idea, or why that investor wouldn’t fund my company. Instead of going for whatever it was and letting the world tell me “no”, I didn’t ask. This behavior is comfortable, easy, and unacceptable if you want to change your life or company.
Get out there and let the world tell you “no”.
Set Goals, Get Data, Execute
These three steps are critical to company building. I believed in these steps intellectually when starting Bandpass, but there were many times when I wasn’t able (or was afraid) to apply them.
Set clear goals, find ways to measure progress towards them, and execute to achieve them.
###Set goals
Goals allow you to track and anticipate progress. Not having clear goals meant that I didn’t know exactly what data to track or how to execute and make those goals a reality. What I’ve started to do is have much more granular and limited weekly goals, that build up to a larger monthly or quarterly goals. Those larger goals are generally less specific and much more flexible than the weekly goals, but they provide a framework that can be informed by weekly activity. By holding myself accountable to these goals, I’m able to understand what kind of data I need and how to execute.
###Get Data
Build analytics into your product from day one. The data you gather should allow you to determine if you are meeting your goals. Analyzing that data should show how you’re succeeding or failing, and what you can change.
Bandpass lacked a detailed view of who our customer was and how they were using our site. What buttons were they pressing? Were they even looking at the great new feature? Were users saving progress and returning to our site? Ultimately the opacity of our Bandpass data was demoralizing and hampered our ability to progress quickly with measured steps. We couldn’t move forward with confidence that our last release, or latest bug fix, was actually helping the users of our site.
###Execute
Setting goals and being able to meausure them is essential for one thing: execution. Don’t overthink your problems. Think about your goals, the data you can collect, and how that informs your execution. Don’t spend to much time going over the pro’s and con’s of any one choice. Make a choice, make it work, and then reevaluate at some point in the future. Even if you make the wrong choice you’ll be much better informed for the next round of work. As Voltaire famously said, “Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.”
None of these lessons are groundbreaking revelations. I had heard about every single one of these pitfalls before starting Bandpass. Despite being aware of this advice, I still stumbled in the practice of it. Sometimes reading words doesn’t really translate to actionable behaviors until you experience it for yourself. I reiterate these lessons with a little bit of coloring from my own experiences, both to solidify them for myself, and to potentially help someone else.
My real advice is the same that I tell anyone learning a new skill; be ok sucking. You’ll learn more from cleaning up your mess than you ever would by following someone’s guide to perfection.