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Tuesday, 29 December 2009 16:35 |
So, the 2009 is almost over and the time has come to draw conclusions from what I learned in the past year. This was not a good year and I would be tempted to say lot of grief and problems came from hardships in my own life, hardships that took me away from my business. I have to admit it was a factor, but surely I am not the kind of person who looks for excuses. You need to be able to face these sort of things everytime if you are here for the long run, wether they come from your work or from other directions. So I must not ignore what I did wrong here. As they say, you learn more in hard times than in good ones and in the end I even wish I learned more than I did during this year (but I'm not saying I wish it was harder!).
So, here there are the few lessons I learned, hoping that they will be helpful for others as well.
- It's useless and counterproductive to act like someone you are not. I've been always an advocate for honesty and in the meantime I perpetuated a hidden lie through this website. Actually this is a business run by only one person, with its pros and cons. I believed that to do business you have to look "professional". So, even if the company page said that I am the only one here, all the rest of my website spelled a lot of "we", like there had been someone else in the company. I though it looked "professional" and that doing so the website was ready for when I will hire employees, but that was simply a lie. So I apologise with all the ones that were deceived by that. No one has ever complained about this, but I felt it needed a fix, so I rewrote the company page and the sidebars.
- Quality is great, but without marketing you do not go anywere. There are so many stories around the internet of people who went to stars overnight that you are lead to think that all you need is a good product. Well, it's not. It is already common knowledge (at least in the startup world) that what matters is not the idea itself, but the execution. But what they don't tell you (at least if you do not begin to dig really hard in this world) is that if nobody sees your products (or at least nobody that cares something about your niche) you do not go anywere. I know, it seems obvious, but I had to learn it the hard way. I was misled by all the ones claiming that they built a wonderful product and they banged thanks to free publicity, reviews and word of mouth. I'm not saying they lied, I'm preatty sure they managed to do this, but as I learned they are all outliers and not the norm. So I really have to do something to increase the visits to this website. I'm a very good hacker, but when it comes to marketing and PR, I'm totally lost.
- Feedback is what I really need to improve. The real problem is getting it. Even with my poor marketing, Heicos had more than a thousand downloads from when I started to track it right (before I relied on analytics, which did lose all downloads coming from outside). So, with some thousands downloads the conversion rate is really bad, which prompts me to know why. Unfortunately I had not a single feedback on what people think about it. So I need to build some measure to prompt people to give me some feedback (but I'm not putting a barrier to downloads like a signup form).
These are the main lessons I learned this year. As I said, I wish I learned more, but this three points (expecially the second one) are surely something to work on to go to the next level in 2010.
I whish you all a happy new year.
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Comments
http://www.startupforless.org
Unfortunately I don't know someone interested in what I do, nor even in founding a startup. In my country the idea "graduate and become an employee" is a very rooted one.
I had a friend with which I founded a different kind of startup a couple years ago, but he revealed to be totally untrustworthy and even went away owing me money. Well, bad luck happens.
I hope to find someone to share dreams with. In the meanwhile, I will endure alone.
Thank you very much.
I'm not stating that the use of "we" is wrong, and maybe I exaggerated calling it a "lie", but it felt always awkward to me each time I wrote a "we" somewhere.
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