A different kind of vacuum

I think everyone agrees that there is nothing worse than building in a vacuum. However I think the second worst thing that you can do is to build with feedback from people that are not your potential users. Most stealth mode startups take feedback from their close friends, family and other people in their network. The problem with this approach is that if someone is not your potential user, he/she is always gonna compare your product with the successful products of the world and not based on ‘that one thing’ that you do really well. You are only gonna get very generic feedback like “design is not that cool” or “you should try to use more ajax and overlay windows”.  In fact its very easy to get wrapped up in refining your product’s interface and delay your launch.

Ideally you should just get the basic functionality right and launch the product. You should not care if a lot of people think  that your product sucks (it does, but thats ok). Get your first few real users and listen to what they say. Solve a small problem first and then grow from there. Sure, you are going to lose some people who are never gonna come back to the site but thats ok. Internet is a large place so won’t run out of users anytime soon and once you have critical mass, most likely they will come back anyway. Find the first set of users who care for the solution that you are offering to them (because it solves one of their pain points) and grow with their feedback. Don’t obsess with UI before launch just because your ex-boss is still not impressed or because that big blogger won’t write about you unless you have a nicer interface (he won’t write about you anway and it does not matter again).

Stealth mode as a marketing technique

Another reason I see a lot of people doing stealth mode startup is to create buzz with the bloggers and potential users. Get over it. Most likely stealth mode strategy won’t create the buzz for you unless you are already very popular. Its just gonna give you too much time to work on stuff that does not matter. Some startups do end up creating some buzz (or curiosity) but in the wrong circle. Your twitter followers and your blog readers will probably get to know that you are working on this next cool thing but thats as far as it goes.  Most likely your target audience will never hear about your stealth mode product and wait for its launch. If people are coming to your site, show them the real thing and not a text box to add their email address to the wait list. Hunch can pull it off but you probably can’t.

Working in stealth mode?

Trying to avoiding rejection (and embarrassment)

More often that not, people are just not comfortable releasing something thats not upto their standard of perfection. They don’t wanna release something they are not extremely proud of on the day of launch. Right from childhood, we are taught to work on our weaknesses and we simply can’t release something that other people can easily point holes at. My advice is that its ok. In my two years of entrepreneurship I have realized that you can’t avoid hearing from some people how your product sucks or you that you have no competitive advantage. You cannot avoid those uncomfortable moments where some people tell you that they would never use your product in the current shape and that it has a long way to go before it gets any where. You cannot avoid that situation by postponing the launch by three more months and working some more on it. As an entrepreneur you have to learn to accept some rejection (atleast early on). You cannot and should not try to please everyone.

In the end most of what I have said is from my personal experience and observation. There are always cases where working in stealth is better and if you have the vision and domain knowledge to pull it off, you should do it. However if you are like most bootstrapped startups, you can benefit a lot from releasing early, talking to your real users and then releasing often with their feedback. As Eric Ries says in the Mixergy interview, understand the difference between your product launch and PR launch.

Its not the features, Its the idea

People should come to your service for the idea or the philosophy of your product and not for fancy features like ajax search. An example that I really like is @ replies were not part of twitter. They were introduced later when people started using twitter that way. Same goes for video response feature in youtube which was introduced when people started responding to a video with another video. Assuming that your service will not take off until there are enough features to wow everyone is a mistake. Delaying launch to add more features is an even bigger mistake.

For wide adoption, build what people want

If people start using your service in ways you did not imagine and you build a feature that facilitates such usage, its gonna have adoption. Both @replies of twitter and video responses of youtube were such features. Its a good idea to not let the geek in you decide what features to implement because the coolest new feature may not be what people want. When your users ask for a feature, they adopt and evangelize it. In case of Muziboo, some features that we built did not have huge adoption but surprisingly features offered as part of pro account had good adoption even though they are paid. These were the features that we rolled out after users asked for it.

Don’t underestimate the cost of a feature

A feature is not just a hundred lines of code that you can hack together in a few hours. When you have a live site, a feature is much more. It is

• Real estate on the page
• Cross browser compatibility work
• Documentation work
• Bug tracking and fixing

Make sure you factor in all of above before you decide to implement something new.

Don’t listen to everyone

Finally don’t listen to everybody. Don’t listen to the geeks and coders who love coding new features or use cool new technologies. Whenever in doubt, ask your users.

If you have not already read, I highly recommend reading the Getting Real book.  By the time you finish the book you will realize that constraints are not such bad things after all :)

These days, Bangalore has atleast one entrepreneurship related event every week. More often, there are more. Some of these are conferences and some unconferences. Most events see a large number of aspiring entrepreneurs and a few people who have already taken the plunge. People who have been there and done that are always in minority. Specially in the unconferences, most people are aspiring entrepreneurs or people who are currently fighting it out to make it big.

If you attend these events and pay some attention, you can almost always catch words like amazon, google, youtube in the discussions. You can often hear about how Google came in when search was already a very competitive market and they revolutionized everything. How they did not make any money for years but focussed on building a great service and eventually reached great heights. People often talk of how the founders of these startups had a vision and they stuck to it untill they made it big. However for some reason the same people find it very hard to relate to the entrepreneurs around them. Entrepreneurs who are more or less like them, who worked with them before and are now on their own, trying to figure things out.

I find this very ironical. I believe there are somethings almost all entrepreneurs have in common. Some phases in life almost every entrepreneur/startup has to go through. Talking of the same phase in the context of successful startup inspires people whereas a startup in the same phase (but not big yet) cannot find many supporters (in the startup circle).

Confusion Rules a Startup

More often than not, people assume that by definition, startups would have it all figured out and only then founders would take a plunge. However if you zoom into the early life of most successful startups, they too took some time to figure out things. Paypal and Blogger are two great examples of startups who took sometime before they finally knew what it is thats gonna make it big for them. Things are never crystal clear right from the start. Zeroing in on something that can become big and can be monetized takes some time. Even in the context of an idea, there are several details that take time of figure out. Most startups do their market research on the way. Founders at Work is a great book to read to understand startups and entrepreneurs.

You don’t start a million dollar company. You grow yours into one

You can at best start a company. You cannot start a million dollar company. Atleast not most times. You identify a need, solve some problems and then scale it up. There are a lot of startups who have grown this way (Craigslist, PlentyofFish, Blogger). In fact there have been several companies in India too. The most popular of the lot would certainly be Naukri.com. All these companies took time to grow. Simply because you have not made a million dollar in the first year or two does not mean you will not make it in the next five.

You will make mistakes

Making mistakes is inevitable. When you are trying to do something new (again relative) and when there are no references/guides available for every step you take, you will go wrong often. Even the big companies have had failed products. Google had to buy youtube despite having Google Videos. Apple has had failed products. Several companies join the Techcrunch Deadpool every month. Mistakes are part of the whole startup experience. So if your next door startup just threw away their last 3 months of work because it did not take off the way they thought, don’t write them off.

Marketing IS a problem

“But how will you market your idea?” is a question I hear too often from the crowd in such events. Trust me when I say that we are all trying to figure it out. I believe all startups are finally an exercise in sales and marketing more than anything. So the companies that figure it out are gonna make it big and you know how long it takes to make it big. So don’t expect to hear in a few lines the answer to this question. Marketing is an ongoing process. Everyone is new in internet marketing. We all know how romantic social media is but very few of us have had a chance to go out with it yet.

Photo Credit: richardmasoner

Monetization takes time

Most companies put monetization last. I think its fair enough considering that no real monetization can happen unless you grow to a critical mass. Since every startup (atleast the bootstrapping ones) have very limited bandwidth, founders prefer to put that into marketing and gaining that critical mass rather than monetizing early on. Give these guys sometime. Google could monetize only after a few years. Facebook and Orkut are still trying to figure it out. Would you write them off?

Its not all romantic

Startups take time and this is doubly true in India, where internet has still not reached every corner of the country. There are not gonna be many quick exits. Most people would have to stick to their ideas for reasonably long and not everything they do during that phase is gonna look romantic. The Dip is gonna take over sooner than later and only perseverance would get startups out of it. During the dip, romantic is the last thing a startup is. However once out of the dip, that phase and the story of how founders could pull the startup out of it looks very romantic. So next time you meet a guy who has been trying to get to the next level for the last one year, don’t write off his startup. If you are concerned, try to analyze his bottlenecks and see if you or your contacts can help.

This post is not about not questioning a startup. Its about taking the right lessons from the successful (or failed) startups and then looking at startups around you in the light of that knowledge. If we want to develop a true ecosystem, we must begin to understand the startups well first. We must understand that they are different from big companies, they have different needs and different priorities. Thats what makes entrepreneurship so differnet and hence fun :)

There are some things that have helped me avoid the traps and stay productive. Most of these techniques start having some effect only after a couple of weeks so like everything else, patience helps here too :)

Be Accountable and track your progress

Even though you are your own boss, you need to stay accountable to yourself and your startup. That means setting up milestones and then reviewing the progress weekly (or bi-weekly if you prefer).
Since I responsible for the development work in Muziboo, I use Trac + SVN (at assembla) to keep a track of my tasks and then review the progress every now and then. Your work may be never ending but having measurable tasks helps you get a sense of accomplishment amongst other things.

Don’t let the boring work bring you down

This one took me a little while to get used to. Every entrepreneur has to do a lot of not so exciting stuff too and we generally keep avoiding it for as long as we can. This results in a lot of baggage that can cause you to worry about it every now and then. Keep a track of this work too and finish one off for every one or two exciting things that you do. Boring work could be anything from sending a courier to replying to a few emails or getting your car insured :)

Have an office in home

This one is often talked about in the bootstrapping circle. Don’t work out of your bedroom. Have a separate room that is just for work. Try to get out of it even while you have a tea break. Be there just to code.

Don’t try to be over productive

You can be the most productive if you don’t work 24×7. Its good to compulsorily take a day off every week. Initially this make seem like a crime but over a few weeks this would actually help you stay more productive. A break on a sunday helps you look forward to Monday mornings and also gives your head a well deserved break. Also remember that ideas rarely hit you while you are slogging so a break can actually be more useful than you think.

In the end I feel working out of home is like working out of office. Nothing more nothing less. You need to give yourself breaks just like you did when you had a corporate job and you need to review your progress just like you did back then. Setting up some processes help a lot. Working out of home, you have the luxury of setting up processes that are best for you. Use it :)