What I learned from failing in three startups
Jewelry business — I was doing things I knew were wrong
I was always quick to say “Yes” to any opportunity that was coming my way. “Do you want to earn some money working from home?” — “Sure!” We were going to open an online store for an established jewelry business.
The beginning was great: her family was designing and selling fine jewelry in New York for 30 years and they were the biggest pearl dealer in Manhattan. As online store, we didn’t carry any inventories, were offering great quality at good prices and could do custom orders. At some point, we were really caught up dreaming about a hundred thousand in revenue and selling our business in a year for millions…
It seems quite clear that you should use your unfair competitive advantage: tell everyone and their uncle that you have the best and biggest pearl selection that a person can find in the City. A clear message, strong offer, specific audience: just find the best marketing channel, client acquisition cost and start taking orders! But we didn’t.
My partner somehow talked me into selling everything for everyone and we flooded our store with all kinds of jewelry: trendy pieces that everyone had, fine jewelry, silver, etc.
Yes, we’ve made about $50K during our first year, but we were not able to build a business: no target audience, no unique selling proposition and no channels of client acquisition. It was a mystery for me where our clients came from and how to reach them. We also didn’t have a marketing budget, because we didn’t put marketing expenses into our prices.
I had to learn how to make jewelry photography in a hard way because we didn’t budget for any photography costs as well: the wrong camera, tripod needed, lightbox needed, etc. On a positive note — now I’m able to make good photos myself.
Lessons learned:
Don’t do what you think is wrong and hope that it will work out somehow.
If you are starting a small business — chances are slim that it will exceed your expectations.
Ask for anything you need or want — worst case people say “No”.
Learned to do:
Photography, social media, website, Etsy store.
SkillSoniq — I didn’t understand how it was going to work
Skillsoniq was a real startup: pitch deck, weekly calls, offshore product development. It still exists, just changed the product. At that moment, Skillsoniq was offering adaptive tests in MS Office and gave users recommendations for training courses for their skill level.
I wanted to have experience working in a startup, so I joined a team of four as a Finance lead. My task was to build a financial model to raise VC money.
We hit all standard mistakes for a startup:
Our product was for everyone, our target audience were Millennials, we hoped to reach 1 million users (1% of LinkedIn users), etc. Our customer development finding was something like “80% of users like our tests”. Our first marketing session was focused on the question: What can we do to get a viral effect so millions of people would know about our product?
We didn’t make customer development before building the product. We didn’t test our concept before raising money. We didn't find model that works or even models that didn’t work, not a single sale! I had some doubts, but I didn’t know how it should be. I had an employee’s mentality: the boss knows what he is doing and I’m just working here.
My lowest point was a task to start doing fundraising myself. I had no idea how to do it, but I said: “Sure!” Couple of weeks later, when the founder asked how I was doing, I told that I already put together a list of people to contact. And that wasn’t true either…
Around this time, the founder decided to pause the project and let everyone go.
Lessons learned:
In a startup you need to understand everything.
Before joining a new venture — state your goal clearly.
See quickly if it’s working for you or not. If not — leave.
Things learned:
MLS
EdTech environment
VC are people as well
Disruption Career — I didn’t take the leadership
Alex Krol is a known public figure in Russia in education. When he announced a crowdsourced startup to solve employment issues for people around the world — I was ready!
This time I had a clear goal for myself: To start writing. WRITE!!! — was on stick-it notes around my apartment. But it’s hard just to start writing… About what? So, I got a brilliant idea that I would write about our startup venture.
We were going to find experts in relevant fields or learn quickly ourselves how to do everything and earn millions on the way! It was an appealing idea: to help people to find better jobs; around 70 people signed up and we began.
I think there were too many of us and that was a problem. We started too big: several teams, weekly calls, Slack channels, tasks and results flowing in all directions. I went on weekly calls during my lunch break, took tasks, did some things — it didn’t feel right. We had a lot of ideas, energy, experience around us, we all were busy doing something, but we didn’t produce any measurable results. We wanted to test everything, create several landing pages and do A/B tests — great ideas, but we couldn’t agree on what to put on our landing, so, I believe, we never advertised it.
I think we lacked leadership. Alex expected that someone from the team would take the leader’s position and guide the others. But it didn’t happen. And you don’t need to be the brightest and most experienced person. You just need to take responsibility and win the trust and respect of people.
Some voices in my head were telling me: You can do it. You can be a leader. Just speak up and take responsibility. But I was afraid… Job, family, startup, people, expectations, vacation. It probably wouldn’t work if I did, but it doesn’t matter. I didn’t speak up and I failed myself.
We could do something: make more mistakes, give promises and not deliver, create a course, that no one needs, etc. We could learn from our mistakes. But we didn’t do anything.
I left the project in September, it was shut down in October.
Lessons learned:
Be the leader when one is needed.
Start small, produce results constantly.
Know your goals for the project and track them.
The biggest danger is to fail to do anything.
Thank you for reading my first article on Medium. See you later!
#Startup #lifelessons #Entrepreneurship #education #business #selfimprovement
