Fuck-ups from my first fuck-up

Marcus Bodnia
Jul 25, 2017 · 9 min read

This is the first time I’ve actually taken the time structuring and proofreading one of the endless notes piling up in my Evernote. But I’ve found motivation for trying to do this for several of reasons. Mainly, I want to explore if this could serve the purpose as a constructive way to reflect on my learnings through life — both personal and professional. To facilitate my learning how to learn. To not replicate the missteps of the past.

But an even higher cause would be if it can inspire others, so that we can learn from each other’s mistakes, and collectively, as a humankind, achieve higher success today and in the future.

I see life to be a journey of learning. I hope I’ll never stop learning as I believe the opposite only elders the body and mind, makes you single- and narrow-minded, and deepens the cleft between the individual and our ever-changing society. As Henry Ford puts it perfectly:

None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the ‘expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible.

Closing a chapter

In the past 18 months, I’ve been working 70+ hour weeks on a core belief of the value that a marketplace for sharing space could bring in society. Spaceflex was my thing, my life, my passion — and, together with my two co-founders, the office our home for what ended being over 4,500 hours of work in 1,5 years. But at some point the pace of the roller coaster, which had taken us through an unforgettable ride of ups and downs, just didn’t had enough speed to get over the next hill. After 18 months with limited traction and long nights, we sat down and looked each other in the eyes. The question in front of us? Are we wasting the most valuable asset we human have, time, on something that just simply cannot work as a viable business? Did we have the necessary energy and personal finance to pivot? Could our individual learning curves be steeper in other projects? After many long and tough hours, we agreed that Spaceflex wasn’t the answer to those questions. We ended up going down separate paths, but any day of the week I would enjoy working with such talented and passionated people again!

Should we had done anything differently? Tons! Does it help to sit around, be in a sullen mood, and think about where we fucked up? One would naturally think it doesn’t, but actually, it does. I believe all successful entrepreneurs can agree that their entrepreneurial successes are founded upon running as a fast as one can straight into a glass wall, breaking your nose, standing back up, shaking it off and keep on running…till you run headfirst into the next glass wall! And this just keeps going. In the end, the ones who have the highest thresholds of pain and motivation to keep on running into those damn walls are the ones building the greatest companies.

Spaceflex is my first broken nose.

So here’s what was hidden behind the first glass wall that broke my nose.

2 is always better than 1.

It’s all about the team. Not only does it increase your odds of achieving your vision, but it’s also a lot more fun to share a win with people who are just as excited about this vision as you are. The team becomes your second family — in good times and in bad…especially in the bad times. You need someone to dream about the future with and not boring your friends with what they would define as work-stuff.

Work? That’s just a hobby I randomly try to make a living off.

I started the company alone. I’ve spent many long, lonely nights at Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship — though with the great company of Mads Friis, founder @ Yooowe. Amazingly, I found two of the most passionate and talented guys I’ve ever met, who were crazy enough to join the adventure as co-founders. And that was the turning point, where I realized how important being together on the shared mission is.

The Dream Team

Of course, it all depends on the specific venture, individual competences of the team and personality traits. But for most digital consumer-facing products, I would say the responsibilities of commercial, technical and product are the most critical for a startup to fill out early. You need someone to push the vision and focus on the business. You need someone to always take the user’s standpoint and dedicate themselves to create a streamlined, intuitive and value creating product. And you need someone to build a scalable technology base which is the backbone of any tech startup.

The team consisted of one business and two tech guys. We tried hiring freelancers, outsourcing, and even doing it ourselves for designing the product, but nothing cut it. If you really want to build a kick-ass product, you need some dedicated for designing just that.

Don’t drink your own Kool-Aid

Remember that the stories you tell about how your product will save humanity are just that — stories! Privately, you should be cautioned to focus on the small things; make more money than you lose, cut costs when needed, and, when necessary, to pivot to what looks like greener fields.

We deeply believed, and still do, that a peer-to-peer system of individuals utilizing their excess space would change the way we share space. In the purest Silicon Valley way we thought big, reached for the stars and didn’t limit our thinking of what could be possible. I can’t underline the value of having an ambitious grand vision, but don’t neglect building a viable business at the same time.

Keep an eagle’s eye

When falling, a domino has the power to tip over a 50% bigger domino standing next to it. And that domino can likewise tip over a 50% bigger domino, and so on and so on. Exponential growth 1.01.

The lesson? Success always comes sequentially — never simultaneously. Focus on what your first domino is and afterwards the next and the next. Before you know it, after 31 of its brothers being tipped over, the domino is as high as from here to the moon.

I used considerable amount of time thinking how to grow the business from 1 to 10, not 0 to 1. We never made to 1. We should have cut to the bone and focused on building the foundation instead of thinking how to build the castle on the top.

Have the Edison mindset

“I have learned fifty thousand ways it cannot be done and therefore I am fifty thousand times nearer the final successful experiment.” — Thomas A. Edison

Don’t fall too much in love with your initial idea. Test everything you do in a short feedback loop. Alignment of value propositions and user expectations, product ideas, optimization, retention/churn, and unit economics. That will get you to the idea, that actually works faster and before it’s too late.

At Spaceflex, we were too much in love with the initial idea of building a peer-to-peer storage marketplace. We didn’t spend enough time rigorously testing out other business models and objectively listen to the market. In the end, it turned out to be very costful. Handhold manually everything for as long as you can, and don’t start to automate till you know you’ve hit it spot-on! It will make everything much easier in creating a product with product-market fit. Looking back, we should had kept on running further down the path we started on, which was a simple Squarespace site, instead of planning and building for scale too early.

Trust your gut

There are several reasons why this might be one of the most important points. Advisors, fellow entrepreneurs, investors, friends, and family. All have opinions, and you can quickly get jam-packed with advice. What you in the end have to live with is the choices you make. If you’re not true to yourself and trust that gut feeling of yours, you won’t find whatever treasure at the end of your personal rainbow.

Gut feeling is a feeling, that you’re certain is right, even if you cannot explain why.

In our case, we rejected investors we had a very good gut feeling about. We trusted them, they trusted us. They wanted to invest, we wanted them to invest. They were in it for the long run, we were definitely in it or the long run. But because we had other investors lined up and listened to advice from our network, we tried to postpone the investment, which ended up causing the whole thing to fall on the ground.

Had we trusted our gut feeling, we would had put our John Hancock on those term sheets and things might had turned out very different.

The key is your key users

In marketplaces, product-market fit relies mainly on identifying your key users and being able to match their demands to the opposite side’s value propositions.

In the initial launch, we received a high demand for storage in the first months, which we fought for to match with our initial supply. For that, we turned our focus to acquire more supply. But soon, we found out that the supply wasn’t hard to find — earning money on space you don’t use without lifting a finger? Halleluja!

The storage market has the opposite dynamics of the housing market in an economic boom. Housing is a seller’s market. Demand is high. Supply is low. The supply side sits with most of the power. The storage market though is a buyer’s market. Supply is high, from on-demand storage to self-storage to some extra sqm in the basement. Demand is relatively low, but steadily growing. Demand has the power and is the most important to focus on to win over the market.

Identify your key users and facilitate how to create a wow-experience for these, obviously aligned with the markets current shortcomings of the users’ needs — then you’re on the right track.

Enjoy life

Taking vacation, spending quality time with your family and friends without thinking of work, meditating, exercising, sleeping, eating well. It’s all components which should not be neglected. You’ve already heard this one before in endless books, motivational Linkedin-posts and podcasts. And I had as well — but I still was of the belief that working harder would solve any problem. Which of course, wasn’t the answer.

It takes a long time to succeed with anything — with a startup, the average time from founding to exiting…is 7 years. 7 years?! Therefore, enjoy the ride just as much, if not more, as reaching the land filled with milk, honey and exits (Even though I’m using the concept of exits, I cannot underline the importance of not aiming for this as an ultimate goal. This point alone is worthy of a future post, but until now I can recommend reading about the Zebras Movement).

Don’t kill yourself during the ride. Find the needed time and the right activities that let you recover your energy — both physically and mentally. Personally, I didn’t take a single holiday for 1,5 years.

And I can see the consequences of that now.

So what’s next for me?

I’ve started meditating, found silence in my mind through summer hikes in the Norwegian mountains, got in shape, and met what might be the love of my life. I’ve started reading a lot, explore what makes me truly happy, and took a conscious decision to redefine my own personal goals and dreams. I’ve never felt this mentally grounded and aligned in a few core beliefs. And now, I stand with a feeling of being readier and hungrier than ever to take the next step in the adventures of life.

So I’m freaking excited about how technology will create the future and I want a front-row seat when that comes. But that’s for another post. For anyone, who actually reached the end: Stay hungry, stay foolish — and always keep your eyes open.

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