Report: “Growth”

August Report
3 September 2018

Jay Kumar
Jay Kumar
Sep 3, 2018 · 3 min read

I work and forever try, but I’m cursed, so never mind
And it’s worse, but better times seem further and beyond
The top gets higher the more that I climb
The spot gets smaller and I get bigger” —
Lil Wayne

Another month of victory and defeat has passed, though there have been more victories than defeat this time. Growth exceeded it’s sales target of $50k — we brought in $50,502.50. Of that, $13,502.50 came from Upwork and the remaining $37,000 from a combination of upsells, cross-sells, and referrals. This number could be higher by $900. It will take a few days for us to know for sure, but at minimum, it’s $50,502.50.

It feels good exceeding the target. Each success drives the flywheel of evermore success. Every month of growth brings us closer to raising a good Series A and generating net profits. The former is important in that it will remove the possibility of Invisible’s defeat. The latter, because partner salaries will have been paid in full and each Partner would then be receiving dividends based on the amount of shares they hold.

Despite this, there were numerous problems this month, the chief of which was Ernest not providing the lift I was expecting. After two weekends of him not sending client responses on Upwork, Marshall and I fired him.

Moreover, the revenue we brought in this month would have been higher if I had a tighter grip on the channel (we went roughly 13 days this month without closing anyone on Upwork), ensuring that quality proposals went out and quality responses went out fast.

Ultimately, I realized Upwork is not Invisible’s deep and repeatable distribution channel at this stage. We’ve managed to convert 3 clients we found from Upwork to Invisible. To do this at scale would require clients to trust us with more and more of their work, us to be faster on responses, faster at doing the work, faster in delivering the work as close to perfect as possible the first time, and us anticipating the clients needs before they vocalize them. We aren’t there yet now, but will be there within the next 1–2 months. In Ernest’s stead, an agent in Operations will be running the Upwork machine and we’ll be systematizing it this week so that is is purely run by agents.

Going Forward

For September, my goal is to it $75k in revenue. I plan on achieving this through several ways:

  1. Meet with every single client and either: find an existing process that best matches their needs or design a new process for them
  2. Have Upwork run purely by agents in Operations. This should reduce the coordination cost I’ve absorbed the past few months
  3. Begin creating prospecting process I can delegate to my SI to run. I want my SI to become my own SDR I can deploy to prospect and largely qualify leads. This would give me tremendous leverage in closing clients.

Each success raises the bar higher. In these early stages, its both terrifying and exhilarating having all these responsibilities thrown at me. It’s very much a “sink-or-swim” environment. And I love it. Every success brings our shared vision of Invisible closer to reality. And every defeat a real reminder of the consequences of a misstep in strategy or sloppy execution.

I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Invisible: Reports

Reports.

Jay Kumar

Written by

Jay Kumar

VP of Growth @Invisible Technologies

Invisible: Reports

Reports.

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