It’s so difficult to spot existing problems
Edit: This whole below experiment was great! I learned new things and found there is demand for such services, but there is also competition. Last but not least there is also great community that support such project (7 day startup). I chose different path for a while, but will stay close to the group, as it’s inspiring and great.
My story is no different to many out there, especially one I take the biggest inspiration from. I have spent years working on various IT projects, gaining experience, knowledge, and connections. Each time I worked on making other people successful I knew I do good, but of course there were some failures and lessons to learn. Started early with small PHP works, played a bit with ERMs in C#, then moved permanently to website development from first clunky versions of PHP, through Visual Basic at WAYN.com to professional vanilla JavaScript at Nokia. My last challenge as a gear in the machine took me to game development, where I enjoyed last days of Flash/Flex existence working with GameFactory on titles for big players like Adobe or Wooga.
Hard work paid off and my former boss referred me to build a new team for his friend. We spent great years building and maintaining holiday rental site, later acquired together with a team by biggest at the time holiday home rental vendor in Europe Leisure. I learned a lot — how to setup and manage team, how to negotiate work scope, how to resolve the problem when the roof is on fire, how to motivate best members and how to remove the difficult ones (the hardest thing in my career so far). Luckily the core members continue to work for new owners and some of them kicked out own ventures repeating my path.
I repeated the same scenario later with a more difficult project (from communication and expectation management point of view). I reached the point. I was tired of proving others, that they should trust my team and me and let us work. I packed my things, found a corporate vacancy at Time Inc. The UK and started to spend evenings on my stuff.
If you would like to name this period, I’d suggest using name “pivot”. Everything has changed and kept changing. I discovered new specialty areas taking over whole adOps maintenance in the UK for this publisher, I mutated my projects every single while learning that what I was doing isn’t solving any real problem. My life pivoted massively when I became a father (what brought amazing calm of mind and motivation, all excuses disappeared on a day). I found work closer to home, in an amazing team dealing with cutting edge NodeJS, VR and lead generation for massive IT B2B players. I was satisfied with what I do but felt hunger. Hunger of getting things done.
Of course. The amount I learned with every next pivot of my “businesses” made me who I am, where I can pick and choose a job and do things I love. But I felt that I haven’t answered the main question — what is a problem worth solving?
I read wise books, invested time in sensible planning, lean process, data-based decisions. I shaped project which should answer issues I observed while working with Time. I knew I have an answer and I have hit the wall. Not only I didn’t appreciate the amount of work I need to invest in building a finished product to solve enterprise issue. I didn’t realize how narrow and difficult this market is.
But I had some luck. I met with the owner of one of the Russian business newspapers in London, trying to pitch my idea. Within a minutes we stopped to talk about my brilliant idea and discuss real issues she had with the business. I didn’t realize that at the moment, but that was exactly what I always bested at. My product was help combined with knowledge. Not trying to be next Steve Jobs building sophisticated software, but expert knowing what way will be the best. Also, I have built a great network of connections with over thousand IT specialists ready to pick remote jobs on the day. That was my asset I never knew I had.
You may expect that I will write now how I made great numbers with that. No. I hope I will write soon, how I helped many businesses to make their life easier. As now is the moment, when I pivot one more time, to the roots and focus again on what I do the best.
I have looked on my inspiration again, WPCurve and found that there are so many things your or your business may need, but aren’t delivered in that simple form. Unlimited support 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days as in a year. Not massive builds or implementations which could be done by thousands of amazing agencies (who also carry gigantic overhead and are expensive), not very narrow Wordpress support delivered by Dan; but a wide range of jobs that no one will help you do at hot. Jobs which normally require you to hire a full-time team, with different members for each work.
So whenever you want to spin new server, create database, install Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal or other CMS, setup NGINX or Apache web server, install your domain or SSL certificate, connect your domain to Google mail and apps, debug and fix bugs in custom code — when it happens that you need fast response to not damage your business — then you will be able to reach to us. For a relatively small monthly fee, we will be whenever you need us to help, wherever where others wouldn’t even pick a job.
No more struggle with finding freelancers, hiring people, paying for expensive full timers. Your problem was solved so many times, we know how to solve it, we did it thousands of times, we will do it again for you when you need it.
I write it in the moment when I haven’t launched yet. I will. I a day. So, if you will go now to my page SIELAY.com, you will see the only maintenance page. I write that to you, so you have a chance to think, how many times you lost because you couldn’t afford enterprise level of development work? How many times you overpaid for agency services for simple jobs?
If you want to learn more, please simply click on ❤ icon below and follow me. I will give you a regular bunch of information, on how we can help your business, but also what great services are available there. Let’s grow together. Hassle free. For less.
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