"My employers, Mint Digital, were willing to take a gamble and allowed me to start it from within the agency. I am tremendously grateful to have been given the resources, mentoring and autonomy to follow my instincts."
Always good to hear about employers encouraging employees' start-ups. Congratulations to you and your team.
Thank you. I think the key was getting the autonomy coupled with the support network. All too often with agency projects too many chefs early on can easily spoil things. This is especially true when you have more rigid hierarchies to deal with.
"No "hockey stick" growth, just small victories we fought for and earned each day. Somedays, we messed up. We couldn't always give 100%. I probably beat myself up too much for it."
This is important. Sometimes founders question themselves when they do not see hockey stick growth. Your product may not be in the kind of business that sees such growth or you may be growing slowly and steadily. The OP's persistence paid in the end.
Yes, I think we pulled out hair out a lot waiting for that moment. "If we just get that blog to cover us or if only had that big partnership". We'd get spikes every now but no silver bullets. Steady compounding growth won it for us in the end.
Hey! I am also in this position, where I am eagerly doing so much marketing everyday hoping for a hockey stick growth.
I've always thought startups has to have this hockey stick growth, because if we're going to fail, it's better to fail fast than spend another year not growing rapidly.
But where would you draw the line? Would having a growth that generates enough revenue to cover operation cost enough?
I think it depends on the type of business. Our model was retail so didn't require a critical mass of users or a repeat behaviour. We knew customers loved our product so the challenge was to finding ways of reaching more IG users. If you have a risky and expensive to test hypothesis, I imagine big growth will be something you'll look for to validate whether it's a worthwhile pursuit.
That said, most startups experience plateaus and dips. These are the moments that truly test the fortitude and resolve of the team.
Can you give some points on how you reached these customers? I have a product right now that my target audience (new mothers) love and could use some tips on accessing this audience that I'm probably not thinking of.
> I remember 3am on our first Christmas eve, staring down an inbox full of customers who hadn't received their orders, knowing each one was a gift that would go unfulfilled.
How did this error come about? I'd love to see the management debugging trail on this frequently repeated problem with smaller companies.
It was mostly down to the various postal services around the world messing up. Every year lots of mail gets misplaced during the xmas rush. There were a few tweaks we learnt to combat this in the future but largely it was out of our hands.
That said we still took full responsibility for the situation. It felt crummy that they wouldn't get their presents and we made sure to compensate everyone that contacted us.
Congrats. I'm happy that your persistence paid off. I'm very interested in knowing how you did it under your employer. Did they fund you? Did you work it during office hours (like Google's 20% project)? etc.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 55.7 ms ] threadAlways good to hear about employers encouraging employees' start-ups. Congratulations to you and your team.
This is important. Sometimes founders question themselves when they do not see hockey stick growth. Your product may not be in the kind of business that sees such growth or you may be growing slowly and steadily. The OP's persistence paid in the end.
Congratulations.
I've always thought startups has to have this hockey stick growth, because if we're going to fail, it's better to fail fast than spend another year not growing rapidly.
But where would you draw the line? Would having a growth that generates enough revenue to cover operation cost enough?
That said, most startups experience plateaus and dips. These are the moments that truly test the fortitude and resolve of the team.
How did this error come about? I'd love to see the management debugging trail on this frequently repeated problem with smaller companies.