Startup Struggles — 30th August

Ben Tossell
Aug 31, 2018 · 2 min read

For members of the newCo program, I prompt people to share their updates, progress, feedback, barriers and questions regularly. I’m going to share the ups and downs of building newCo, daily. Without any funding.


Thursday 30th August

  • 1 new customer
  • MRR $1,563
  • Total Paid Customers — 169
  • Total Registered Users (incl paid) — 292
  • Facebook Ads — 12 leads, £24.80 spent
  • Quora Ads — 4 leads, $21.29 spent
  • How I felt: 😐😬

Tasks Complete

  • ✅ Product call and planning
  • ✅ Post on IndieHackers, Reddit, Twitter looking for feedback
  • ✅ Change the Hero text on homepage
  • ✅ Add testimonials section on homepage
  • ✅ Add ‘How it works’ section on homepage
  • ✅Post new tutorial
  • ✅ Post new content to 30DayStartup
  • ✅Send email newsletter to over 5k signups
  • ✅Answer questions on Quora
  • ✅ Stop all FB ads

Extra things I did to help finance my company

  • ✅ Sent a quote for 2 website builds
  • ✅ Entered conversation about another site build
  • ✅Turned down one client

Goals this week

[ ] Create the first online program for newCo as a Demo and reach out to companies to trial it.

[ ] At least 10 new paying members

Barriers

  • Development time is tight this week

Where I need help

I still need to figure out three major things:

  1. A customer acquisition strategy
  2. Communicating what newCo is/does more effectively
  3. How to make the program so valuable that people tell other people

Reflection

It was a day of feedback mostly, I felt better because discussing with Mubs about the next product release and timeline makes me feel good about what’s going to happen very shortly!

I got some feedback around the product and how it came across, which was helpful to notice.

I’m in one of those situations where I think the next release will be the time where things start to kick off. This likely won’t be the case but I’m confident in that it’s essential grounding for the next phase.

Plan for Friday

  • [ ] Email Product Hunt subscribers
  • [ ] Answer questions on Quora
  • [ ] Post new content/tutorial
  • [ ] Cross-post material to Medium
  • [ ] Combine everyone into one batch
  • [ ] Set out instructions and links for check-ins, updates etc
  • [ ] Alter on-boarding email

Extra Thoughts

Still considering the family & friends funding route.

I actually looked at jobs. I had the moment of ‘Shit, if I can’t do this then what job could I even get? Could I do something part-time/contracting?’ — this happens at least once a week and started about a month ago.


I’ll be building in public for newCo and you can follow my journey on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bentossell

Let me know what other things you’d like to hear from the day to day struggles 😬

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade