The power of feedback

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made as an entrepreneur was not ask for feedback from the very beginning. And that mistake turned out to cost me a little fortune.

A couple of years ago, I started one of Romania’s first online TV channels: BrainTV — TV for smart people. I made two fundamental mistakes with that project:

Firstly, I thought I know the market. Which I didn’t, because as it turned out later — there aren’t that many smart people in world.

Secondly, I didn’t ask my target audience if they want my product. I assumed smart people are going to watch “intelligent” video productions (which weren’t that intelligent now that I think about it). Assuming is bad, I tell you, as I discovered later on that most of them don’t have time to watch videos online.

Rookie mistakes, I know, but I was just a young chap with some money in the bank. It was the worst investment I ever made, now that I think about it.

Now, compare that with how we’ve done things at Brainient in the past 18 months: started with a video management platform, after a few companies told us they need it. Built an alpha and started signing contracts. The contracts showed us they’re really serious and they actually want the product. We continued building the product and asked for feedback very early in the product development roadmap. We iterated. Asked for feedback again. Discovered their main problem is video monetization, not video management. Iterated. Asked for feedback again.

You get the drill. Ask for feedback. Now.