Prateek Dayal

Since I started working on Muziboo, I have been a big fan of release early, release often philosophy. We launched Muziboo one month after getting the idea with very basic functionality and a very simple design. Since then, we have been listening to our users and continuously improving it. However I have to accept that many times in retrospect, I have been embarrassed by what I released. At times, I have also renounced release early release often for a few weeks (in search of design/functionality zen) only to realize later that its a bad idea and that I don’t have much progress to show for those weeks. I recently listened to a Mixergy interview with Eric Ries and started thinking about why we still don’t see that many examples of release early release often and see so many stealth mode startups around us. Here are a few points I think influence people:

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.

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I must accept that working out of home is an art and I have been trying to master it ever since I quit my job last year. When you work out of home, you end up saving a lot of travel time and traffic stress but there are a lot more opportunities to waste time or even worse, feel bored and demotivated.

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 :)

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This may seem like a funny topic for a blog post. The idea is not to come up with a  title that draws attention (I hope it does) but to write about an inherent dilemma that lot of bootstrappers go through. I go through it and I know a few other people go through it. I am not sure if its true only in the Indian context or globally. I have a feeling that it has to do a lot with India though and you will soon know why I feel that way.

Why is someone not doing it? People Need it!

When I was in IIT Guwahati we were a small campus with about 500 students. Compare this with other IITs that have that kind of intake for undergrad program alone per year. I think the first few batches are really entrepreneurial in the sense that they try to define the culture of an institute. In our case the culture meant a lot of technical and cultural festivals that other IITs hold too. Stuff like Alcheringa, Techniche and having chapters of societies like IEEE, ACM, SPICMACAY etc. Fewer students meant fewer people to attend and even fewer people to organize these festivals (they are almost 99% student initiatives). The first few batches could have easily ignored these things as we were small and not there yet but they did not. They fought hard to get these festivals, chapters going. They wanted IITG to feel what other IITs feel every year. They wanted juniors to come in and feel part of a legacy. They wanted to get there … and they tried to do on their own. I am sure they could have focussed their efforts elsewhere and may be achieved something more for themselves and not cared about this, but they did not.

When I joined there were lots of things in place and lots of things not in place. Like some other classmates, I played a role in SPICMACAY, Technical festivals and the IEEE chapter. It took a lot of time and sometimes I wondered why I am doing that (so did many of my friends). The answer was that I just felt responsible and felt bad for not helping in shaping the culture when I would crib about a lot of missing things. I think thats what it is. Some people just feel responsible for shaping up the culture in a place and feel ashamed in running away from it when they can clearly see something missing.

Aren’t we talking about the web here?

Yes we most certainly are talking about the web here. I feel that web (in India atleast) is no different from what we described above. We know how its in the west and a lot of us crave for those kind of webservices in India too. It could be web-ifying your daily needs (like food, medicine, reading, shopping etc) or building online communities around hobbies (say photography, music, writing etc). Lot of times we feel the need for a service and start building it. No one else would attempt it probably because there is no VCish value creation there (millions –> billions) but there is a lot of value creation in terms of touching a lot of lives.

Once you start building a service that people actually like using, you find out that it takes a lot of time, energy, thought and money. Time is not free as most people think because you can always use that time to pick up another consulting gig and make more money or just plain spend it with family. So in the end you end up asking yourself why you are doing something that may or may not scale up to millions of dollars (or say to the salaries that your peers would draw for the next few years). I think again the answer lies in the fact that most times when you crib, you also feel responsible for fixing things up. You go out and create those missing services creating a lot of value but not value enough. I am quite certain many entrepreneurs around me felt a need (and a business too) and started up. However only later you realize that not all needs are needs enough for VCs and people around you. Ofcourse the lack of any kind of angels (people like you, the dreamers but with more money) makes things very tough along the way.

So what am I trying to say?

May be this is a very personal post but I do know some other people going through this dilemma. I know that in India there is a need for lots of everyday products but once someone builds them they are gonna get into this classic problem of not creating “enough value”. If you talk to the “experienced” people (people who create real value or nothing at all), you will get to know how well they know the broadband penetration numbers, the mobile penetration numbers and how semantic web is the future of the web and nothing else is worth solving. I am quite certain that it happens all the time.

Sorry if you were looking for a solution to all this … as I write .. I am looking for one too.

Thanks for reading so far!

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