Before I started DesignYourShirt
in 2013 I spent 0.5 years working alone at home pouring my heart and
soul into building a platform that can ease the tailoring service in
India.
Unfortunately Crowd never saw the light of day because they already got the pain from the street tailor's which a one can't get recover from. Before official launch, I had a team of keen workers but not employees & consultant. In other words, crowd loves our collection of casual & formal shirt in physical market but Online market is not accepting.
Failing is hard, demoralizing, painful, and embarrassing, but in many occasions it can also be the most effective way of learning important lessons that will prevent you from making the same mistakes in the future.
Unfortunately Crowd never saw the light of day because they already got the pain from the street tailor's which a one can't get recover from. Before official launch, I had a team of keen workers but not employees & consultant. In other words, crowd loves our collection of casual & formal shirt in physical market but Online market is not accepting.
Failing is hard, demoralizing, painful, and embarrassing, but in many occasions it can also be the most effective way of learning important lessons that will prevent you from making the same mistakes in the future.
Failure to me, If you can't achieve the success in what you are developing no matters how much your effort into it whether you got the pockets filled with what you have invested.
Here are some of the lessons I learned from my first startup failure:
Lesson 1: Don't underestimate what it takes to build a complete product
Why did I decide to build a DesignYourShirt.in ? Before starting DesignYourShirt.in I had already developed and sold a same project for a company in USA & Pakistan. At that time I was a example of recession in 2012, so I was doing freelancing and considering to link my skills with my family business, so the idea of building a AAAS (webApplicatioin As A Service) startup seem very appealing.At that time I naively thought all I had to do was to put a price on my products so that everyone at-least to try will order and bingo! I started making some ₹ but I didn't find that audience what I want.
BIG MISTAKE I was not aware with, company tagline changed from "Be Original, Be Yourself" to "New definition of ordering ready-made shirts".
As One main thing you'll need a nice-looking website, come up with a nice logo, and a combination of color palette - Thank to my skills, I developed in only 3weeks.
Assuming you are like me when I started, you'll have absolute no money to hire other people to help you, so you'll have to design your own logo, build your own website, well.. do everything yourself.
If you have no marketing dollars you will need to have a marketing strategy that involves no ads or PR agencies.
Basically you'll opt for inbound marketing which means now you have to become a blogger and learn how to write good content often so you get links back to your site and rank higher on Google.
Then open accounts in all the social media sites you can. Post links to your blog together with good content so you can start building your network of loyal followers.
After that another important step to take, you need to choose a well known payment processing system. A CCAvenue iframe build a trust that we have a good payment system in place.
Another important step, you need a logistic partner that can deliver the designed shirts to the customer by defined date. A company Delhivery holds the words to the customers.
Slowly
but surely your days start getting longer and longer. Working 14 hours a
day seems normal, you don't know what day of the week it is anymore and
always go to sleep past 2 am.
You thought you could start charging money in 3 months but 4 months into your startup adventure you are still trying to squash some ugly bugs in your freak code, have not figured out how to set up your own dedicated server, and are still struggling to figure out all this inbound marketing crap that has nothing to do with coding your awesome industry disrupting easy-to-use productivity app.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Building a real product takes way more than meets the eye.
Is there a faster way to build a product? Not really. Eventually you'll need to checkmark off all of the above and much more to build and release a fully working real product. However, you can save a lot of time and headaches if you read Lesson 2.
You see, my first mistake was to think my product had to be perfect before I could launch it into the world.
I thought it had to be better than everything out there right from the get go or it would not stand a chance.
There are two big problems with that philosophy. One, there is no way to build a perfect product on the first try so aiming for perfection on your first release literally means you'll never release the product.
Second, the longer it takes to release your product the more likely it is to suck!
But Why? Because the only product validation that matters comes from real users, ideally paying users.
All the time you spend coding and scheming about world domination alone over your keyboard is worthless without involving the most important part of your startup equation, your potential customers.
When you have no customers you are working in a vacuum. If you like to daydream like me living in a vacuum feels very nice and cozy. No one can reject your baby, you are the only one you need to satisfy. But all you are doing is floating inside a bubble of self-fulfilling BS. You can only do that for so long before, like me, you run out of money and the bubble explodes when you realize that no one is willing to pay for your world changing creation.
How do you avoid this? Very simple. Follow the lean startup mantra. Release early, release often.
Or release early and iterate often based on real world feedback. I know it is scary to deliver a half baked baby into the word, but unless you have absolute confidence in your skills.
Use common sense, don't release when you have only produced a couple lines of buggy code. Make sure you release an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that although it may do very little it does it well.
Ideally before you start working away on your startup you have already found a couple of potential clients willing to pay for your solution once it is built.
Sometimes you don't even need to build a product to validate it. Many successful startups have started just by asking potential clients what would they be willing to pay for. Then go an built it!
No need to interact with other scary human beings and having to deal with their opinions and odours.
The earlier you get out of your shell the better. It's ok to spend sometime working alone in a dark room surrounded by your loyal and harmless childhood memories, but eventually you need to man up and confront the world of real live flesh homo sapiens.
Sapiens means wise. Human wisdom is the most valuable resource when building anything. Even if you decide not to have a co-founder or are unable to find one during your early development stages, real people and their wisdom will be what you'll need the most in order to build something people want. In the end all products are built by people for people.
This means that for any startup to be successful, people need to be accounted for from the very beginning.
Don't use the excuse of having no money to avoid getting help. There are many wonderful, smart people willing to help you succeed by giving you advice, checking out your mentor and your friends( your greatest and biggest enemy), mentoring you and sharing their knowledge.
Join a startup meet-up, attend startup events. Pitch your idea to everyone you meet. Instead of avoiding negative feedback, seek negative feedback .
You'll be surprised how easy it is to reach some of the top entrepreneurs. Share, comment, re-tweet their articles. Get under their skin. Offer and volunteer your skills to gain their trust. Who knows, they may even invest in you down the road.
I started DesignYourShirt.in because at the time it made sense to pursue that idea. I did not have any better ideas and heck, I already had made some money building the basic app.
I thought if I worked hard enough success was just around the corner.
You thought you could start charging money in 3 months but 4 months into your startup adventure you are still trying to squash some ugly bugs in your freak code, have not figured out how to set up your own dedicated server, and are still struggling to figure out all this inbound marketing crap that has nothing to do with coding your awesome industry disrupting easy-to-use productivity app.
I hope you see what I'm getting at here. Building a real product takes way more than meets the eye.
Is there a faster way to build a product? Not really. Eventually you'll need to checkmark off all of the above and much more to build and release a fully working real product. However, you can save a lot of time and headaches if you read Lesson 2.
Lesson 2: Validate your idea as early as possible
Before you spend a million hours trying to build a perfect product nobody wants, you need to figure out as soon as possible precisely that, does anyone even care about my product?You see, my first mistake was to think my product had to be perfect before I could launch it into the world.
I thought it had to be better than everything out there right from the get go or it would not stand a chance.
There are two big problems with that philosophy. One, there is no way to build a perfect product on the first try so aiming for perfection on your first release literally means you'll never release the product.
Second, the longer it takes to release your product the more likely it is to suck!
But Why? Because the only product validation that matters comes from real users, ideally paying users.
All the time you spend coding and scheming about world domination alone over your keyboard is worthless without involving the most important part of your startup equation, your potential customers.
When you have no customers you are working in a vacuum. If you like to daydream like me living in a vacuum feels very nice and cozy. No one can reject your baby, you are the only one you need to satisfy. But all you are doing is floating inside a bubble of self-fulfilling BS. You can only do that for so long before, like me, you run out of money and the bubble explodes when you realize that no one is willing to pay for your world changing creation.
How do you avoid this? Very simple. Follow the lean startup mantra. Release early, release often.
Or release early and iterate often based on real world feedback. I know it is scary to deliver a half baked baby into the word, but unless you have absolute confidence in your skills.
Use common sense, don't release when you have only produced a couple lines of buggy code. Make sure you release an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) that although it may do very little it does it well.
Ideally before you start working away on your startup you have already found a couple of potential clients willing to pay for your solution once it is built.
Sometimes you don't even need to build a product to validate it. Many successful startups have started just by asking potential clients what would they be willing to pay for. Then go an built it!
Lesson 3: You cannot take over the world alone
Working alone sucks a lot, but for the socially inept like myself working alone feels safe.No need to interact with other scary human beings and having to deal with their opinions and odours.
The earlier you get out of your shell the better. It's ok to spend sometime working alone in a dark room surrounded by your loyal and harmless childhood memories, but eventually you need to man up and confront the world of real live flesh homo sapiens.
Sapiens means wise. Human wisdom is the most valuable resource when building anything. Even if you decide not to have a co-founder or are unable to find one during your early development stages, real people and their wisdom will be what you'll need the most in order to build something people want. In the end all products are built by people for people.
This means that for any startup to be successful, people need to be accounted for from the very beginning.
Don't use the excuse of having no money to avoid getting help. There are many wonderful, smart people willing to help you succeed by giving you advice, checking out your mentor and your friends( your greatest and biggest enemy), mentoring you and sharing their knowledge.
Join a startup meet-up, attend startup events. Pitch your idea to everyone you meet. Instead of avoiding negative feedback, seek negative feedback .
You'll be surprised how easy it is to reach some of the top entrepreneurs. Share, comment, re-tweet their articles. Get under their skin. Offer and volunteer your skills to gain their trust. Who knows, they may even invest in you down the road.
Lesson 4: Only work on something you are truly passionate about
Even if something seems like a good idea, it doesn't mean you should do it.I started DesignYourShirt.in because at the time it made sense to pursue that idea. I did not have any better ideas and heck, I already had made some money building the basic app.
I thought if I worked hard enough success was just around the corner.
Being a java developer, I put my head down
and wrote thousands of PHP, HTML, CSS, and Javascript lines of code.
That success corner wasn't as close as I thought. In fact I never got
around the corner but that doesn't mean that there was no potential
success awaiting my arrival (I just didn't make it there).
Paul Graham says that success comes most to those entrepreneurs that are relentlessly resourceful. You know what, I truly believed myself to be as relentlessly resourceful as any human could strive to be. There is a fundamental caveat with that belief though.
On the last hour, when you are down to your last wits, have no money, are physically and mentally exhausted there is only one thing that can keep you going. You know it, it is called passion.
Turns out I was more passionate about the idea of building a startup than about what the startup was about. Wrong!
This has been said a million times by a million successful entrepreneurs. Follow your passion, work only on something you truly care about, or sooner or later you'll hate your life.
If DesignYourShirt.in had succeeded that would have not marked the end of my efforts. Now I would be chained to improving the webApplication to fully powered computational team of robots, serving my customers day and night. Success would mean I would have to devote my life to something I am not passionate about.
In the end I'm very happy I stopped working on DesignYourShirt.in Only a few days later I indulge on my new platform b2b "BhartiyaBazaar" and was able to validate a fun and creative business in apparel industry without a single line of code in less than three months.
There you go! I hope you never make the same mistakes I did and that these lessons serve you well on your exciting entrepreneurial journey.
Paul Graham says that success comes most to those entrepreneurs that are relentlessly resourceful. You know what, I truly believed myself to be as relentlessly resourceful as any human could strive to be. There is a fundamental caveat with that belief though.
On the last hour, when you are down to your last wits, have no money, are physically and mentally exhausted there is only one thing that can keep you going. You know it, it is called passion.
Turns out I was more passionate about the idea of building a startup than about what the startup was about. Wrong!
This has been said a million times by a million successful entrepreneurs. Follow your passion, work only on something you truly care about, or sooner or later you'll hate your life.
If DesignYourShirt.in had succeeded that would have not marked the end of my efforts. Now I would be chained to improving the webApplication to fully powered computational team of robots, serving my customers day and night. Success would mean I would have to devote my life to something I am not passionate about.
In the end I'm very happy I stopped working on DesignYourShirt.in Only a few days later I indulge on my new platform b2b "BhartiyaBazaar" and was able to validate a fun and creative business in apparel industry without a single line of code in less than three months.
There you go! I hope you never make the same mistakes I did and that these lessons serve you well on your exciting entrepreneurial journey.
