Week Six
Here's week six in my series of documenting the early stages of my new startup. The purpose is to document our progress, our maturity, and what we learn and experience every week.
This past week has really shown me a few key things.
Lots of startups are trying to launch right around Christmas, either to tag onto the shopping spree of the economy, or to get things finished so they can go relax for the holidays. There's quite a buzz in the startup community about now, and you learn a lot from them. There's also a high level of stress, especially the balance between work and holiday festivities, which include shopping, family and friend events, traveling, and more. Best thing to do? Stay out of it. Depending on Christmas for your app to launch successfully shouldn't be your strategy, though I won't deny the boost it could give. Either way, the ultimate success of your product won't hinge on it being ready for Christmas, if it does, you have other problems to worry about. Other stresses include the Apple App Store closing down to any changes or submissions you might have during and around the Christmas day, long lines to get approved, and other elements of your product that are totally out of your control.
Another cool characteristic about this time of the year is that you're more likely to be around friends and family. Holidays are a great time to practice the elevator pitch. I've learned a lot about my product by talking to a lot of people, strangers and friends alike, that I probably couldn't have in the same amount of time with my co-founders or buried in code. I left my echo chambers last weekend to go on a photoshoot with a seriously eclectic group of people. There were new faces, familiar faces, and old faces at the shoot. The photo posted above is from the event at the Maritime Museum in San Francisco. I met a few developers in enterprises, a few from Google, a few from startups, and then also a bunch of other people in various trades and fields. All of which had at least some interest in sports. If not before we talked, definitely after =)
At the event, I was able to take a breather and walk at least 7 - 8 miles, enjoying the outdoors and the holiday decorations. I also talked to a lot of different people, about the new company, about my new product, and about what they thought about it. Sure I wasn't the only one talking the whole time, but I did get a lot of reactions and feedback. By the end of the night, my pitch had matured dramatically from when the day started.
I am a developer most of the day, coding, but that doesn't mean that's all I need to concentrate on. Founder status requires the responsibility of keeping your head above the clouds, out of the echo chamber, and putting on many hats. Gathering data from feedback and analytics through the product is one thing, but also just trying to describe and basically convince people that your product is awesome gives you an idea of what people want before even seeing the product. In essence, I was trying to sell vapor. I get a little credibility for the vapor since I'm actually building it. This weird "Matrix" type stuff I do on the backend seems to add just enough mystery for people to give me a little more cred than I would have otherwise =)
What I've done in this exercise is further gain another set of feedback from a totally different group. I've also further improved the pitch. I've substantiated more of the product's focus, and have more ideas on how to market the main features. Sure it's not the final or only set of data go off of, but getting out and doing something completely different with a totally different group of people has definitely helped me as an individual become better in experience and knowledge to continue development of the product. It also helped me step back a bit in my thoughts of my product, to reorganize what I have been doing for a few weeks, and describing it in it's most primitive of forms. It really helps to be able to get out of the huge hole you've dug in your product, so you can remind yourself what fresh minds really think about a potential product of yours.
This further substantiates my belief that being a successful entrepreneur and developer is strongly aided by your ability to take part in other activities outside of your daily work. I'm not saying go out to random venues to try to push your products, nor take time away from development or from the product in order to try to gain more feedback. But go out and enjoy the world from a different perspective completely, keep your own self achievements a little more diverse, and you'll be amazed at how people think outside of the world's startup bubble.
Practicing your pitch also gets you organized, fresh, and thinking. It keeps you from putting yourself into dead ends, or too far down the wrong road.
Also partaking in some holiday fun will help you rejuvinate some of that spirit and excitement that is constantly being sucked away by memory leak issues, internet explorer compatibility issues, and dealing with battling third party services (apple, facebook, etc) that you depend on.
Happy holidays everyone!
