9 Things I’ve learnt in the 30 days since launching my first startup.
A month ago I realised a dream and achieved one of my main goals for 2016 — my co-founder and I launched our first startup MuzeRoom. After 9 long months of scoping, testing, developing, tweaking, stressing, and dreaming … we were finally at a point where we agreed it was time to release MuzeRoom to the world. It was by no means perfect, but it was time.
It was a journey that ultimately saw me say goodbye to my 9–5 day job (and regular paycheck!). That journey has taught me more than I could imagine. Of course there are a literally thousands of articles already out there stuffed choc full of startup jargon like:
‘10 things that will make your startup go viral’ or
‘15 Early Growth Hacking Strategies For Startups’
These either state the bleeding obvious, or try to explain the unexplainable — neither of which are helpful. In fact, they are borderline click bait and mostly a waste of time.
And so 30 days after launching I want to provide some genuine insight around what I’ve learnt in a way that can help other people who are interested in following a similar journey. Quick and practical advice that can help you enjoy a successful launch.
1. Your friend networks are pure gold
The most logical place to start promoting your startup is to your friends. If they don’t care, who will? Don’t be shy about posting news about your startup, and ask them to share your posts! I had over 50 people share the post announcing our launch on Facebook — all free and personally endorsed by my friends. And don’t forget LinkedIn — it’s an environment where people are expecting you to post about work related endeavours.
Lesson: It’s OK to tell your friends, and asking them for a little help in spreading the word is OK too.
2. Soft launching is the way to go
ALL we did to launch MuzeRoom initially was post on our own personal social networks. It was an extremely fun few hours as we saw our first users sign up and start using the site. A few little things broke along the way, but that’s the beauty of not going big day one — you can make mistakes and learn from them without much downside. It was also incredibly motivating to start seeing ‘strangers’ coming to the site, as it slowly crept beyond our friends network.
Lesson: Start small, grow slowly!
3. It doesn’t have to be perfect — be OK with that.
By now you’ve probably read the Lean Startup. For those that haven’t, it’s an approach that encourages founders to launch quickly, fail fast, iterate, and evolve. For a while we kept trying to second guess what music fans would want, and fell into the trap of trying to launch the perfect site. The sooner you realise that’s impossible, the sooner you’ll get a site live and start learning from your analytics.
Lesson: It will never be perfect — get something live!
4. Obsess over your analytics
The whole idea of getting your startup live is to see how users respond and use it, so that you can learn and evolve. Know your numbers inside out. Start every day by looking at your previous days stats in order to try and spot trends and patterns. Use these to drive for continual improvements.
Lesson: The numbers don’t lie, so get to know them intimately.
5. Start Blogging — It works!
It seems like there’s a blog for everything these days, so I asked myself — does the world really need another one? Well since taking the plunge, I’ve had thousands of views on the 3 articles I’ve published so far, not to mention the number of meetings it has made possible, and doors it has opened. Turns out people were genuinely interested in our story, and this expanded well beyond my friend network.
For blogging I primarily use Medium because it’s easy to use, beautiful, and promotes your content through its own network. 7 days later I post to LinkedIn to get a second bite through my professional network. It’s also a good excuse to get involved in relevant dialogue on Twitter. This tweet earnt almost 50 clicks, because it was timely and relevant.
Lesson: Blog your journey, and find your audience.
6. Things take longer than you think. MUCH longer.
Growth takes time. Evolving your offering takes time. Getting insights from your traffic takes time. Getting feedback takes time. Growing your social following takes time. You get the picture.
Don’t go expecting overnight success and you can only ever be pleasantly surprised. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither was Snapchat, Uber, or Facebook.
Lesson: Don’t put a deposit down on that Porsche just yet.
7. Start winning fans, one at a time — without paying for them
We decided not to spend any money on marketing to begin with. There is of course a temptation to get a paid post up on Facebook so you can ensure a constant drip feed of traffic through the front door. But it is my strong belief that there are MANY opportunities to exhaust before you start spending. Hello Reddit, Quora, Twitter, Medium, Hacker News, LinkedIn, Instagram, ProductHunt…
In the spirit of a soft launch, you don’t want to grow too fast too soon. You want to learn, evolve, and iterate as quickly as possible. Once we are happy with the story our analytics are showing us (high dwell time, low bounce rate, high returning users etc), we’ll know that it will be time to scale because our offering will be resonating with our target audience. Only then does it make financial sense to scale users by initiating a paid campaign.
Lesson: Keep your marketing dollars in your pockets to begin with.
8. Follow your gut
I’ve read a lot of articles to help me along the way, because unsurprisingly I don’t know everything. They’ve all helped, but the truth is there is no silver bullet to success. My situation is different to yours, and yours is different to the next persons. We can all learn from each other, but copying the approach that has been successful for you by no means guarantees me your success. Take the bits you like, add your own spin, and follow your gut instincts — and in doing so, create your own fresh new take on launching a startup.
Lesson: Don’t use guru articles as a blueprint for success.
9. Success IS launching
Not many people launch startups. Getting one live is a massive win in itself. If Forbes are to be believed, 90% of startups fail — so celebrate anything you can along the way, because chances are you won’t be around much longer!
Lesson: Celebrate your launch!
Launching MuzeRoom has been a lot of hard work, but honestly most of it has been a lot of fun. I’ve learnt a lot, and I can’t see that changing as the journey continues. Hopefully the above helps you on your way — feel free to reach out for a chat!
