What I Learned Building My First Startup
Four months ago, I joined the 7th cohort of the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism with an idea in mind and no clue of how to bring it to life. It was tough, a bit crazy and a lot of fun. Now it’s done. Here’s is what I learned in the journey:
1. Listen to your audience
It seems obvious, but we, journalists, rarely think about our readers’ needs. We take it for granted that we know what they need, but very often we are wrong. Think about those long form articles you never had patience to finish reading, or those interactive pieces that you saved to check out later and never did. There are tons of amazing journalistic works out there, but at the end of the day, what actually resonates to you? And, most of all, what do you think is actually worth paying for?
When I joined the Tow-Knight Center for Entrepreneurial Journalism, I wanted to create a venture based on social media that summarized the news for millennials in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Think as if The Skimm merged with AJ+, but in Portuguese. As I started talking to my potential audience and put some thought into the business model, I heard a huge NO. Firstly, millennials are not all the same. They have different interests and — guess what? — different needs. Secondly, citizens in Rio told me they were sick of the news they were getting — so I couldn’t simply repackage the news that was out there. And, most of all, how could I build a sustainable business relying only on Facebook and Snapchat?
Talking to your audience, understanding their needs and goals, and how you, as a journalist, can better serve them, is the first and main lesson I learned at the Tow-Knight. And it’s not about understanding what they would click or subscribe for, but what value your work has for them.
2. Test your ideas
When I heard I should put out an MVP (minimum viable product) within four weeks of being in the program, I freaked out. How could I launch something if I didn’t even know what my project was about? Build a crappy website or Facebook page, choose an ugly logo and a name that I wasn’t sure of, and just ask people to check it out? No way. I wanted to have a clear idea of what my startup would be, brainstorm names and logos for some time, build a pretty website and have some content on it before launching.
Forget it. The more you wait, the more time you waste. Building a project is like creating a new cake recipe (sorry for the baking metaphor). Try with a little more sugar, taste. Then put in some cinnamon, give it to your roommate. Use fewer eggs, bring it to your classmates. The more people taste it, the more feedback you have. And then you understand what works and what doesn’t; how much you are able to do and what you need help with. Fail fast and find out why you failed, so you can succeed even faster.
3. Identify your indicator
So, you have listened to your audience and launched some crappy product just to test it. Great! But hey, how do you know if it failed or succeeded? Finding your KPI (key performance indicator) is not easy. Each product has different aspects, and what means success for one may not be the same for another. Think of a birthday party: how do you know if it was a success? Some may measure by the number of people who showed up, but others prefer to think of how much fun they had. Is it the number of beer bottles in the trash can, or how great the food was? (btw, if your last party had all the items above, please invite me to the next one!)
Understanding your KPI is key to adapting your venture in the right direction. If it’s a newsletter, check how many people are actually reading it, instead of just signing up and leaving your emails unread in their inboxes. If it’s a Facebook page, how many comments and shares you have, versus the number of likes. On a site, is it the number of page views or the time people spend on it? These examples are quite straightforward, but things can get more sophisticated. Can you consider the impact of a story your KPI, instead of how many people actually read it? Could you check how much money your readers saved because of the information you shared with them, instead of how many comments they left? Again, listening to your audience is the best way to find out if your product is a success — no matter if it’s millions of people or just a few thousand, you should bring them some value.
4. Be prepared to pivot. Again. And again.
I haven’t heard from any entrepreneur that their company became exactly what they first imagined. Actually, the more they changed, the more they realized they had to change. And that’s how you bake a better cake, right (sorry, I couldn’t escape the metaphor again)? If you are able to identify what is not going well, or what could be better, you are in constant need of pivoting. If you are in the media business, you already know that. Technologies change in a blink, and so do customers and your competition. Be prepared to change your value proposition, your goals, and your target audience— and don’t get too attached to old ideas. After all, building that crappy website with the ugly logo and the imperfect name wasn’t that bad, right? You would have changed everything in a month or so anyways.
5. Nobody knows what the future of journalism looks like — and that’s the beauty of it
Imagine if you were born already knowing how your whole life would be. Kind of boring, right? Over the past four months, we’ve heard several stories of success, a few of failure and countless in between. No one knows what the future of journalism is, simply because no one knows how the future will turn out, period. There are some good bets, but guess what? Big bets are the ones that fail the most. And that’s why being able to listen, test, evaluate and adapt is so important. Who could tell that newsletters would be a hit and tablets would be dead five years ago? Experimenting with different revenue streams and understanding how fast the media landscape changes is key to surviving in this business. But being able to navigate with the flow, understanding the trends, and thinking out of the box is even more valuable. No one told us being journalists would be easy — and becoming entrepreneurs is just one more step in this adventure.
Ps: Remember The Skimm merged with AJ+ idea? It became a solutions journalism platform for Rio’s residents. Check out Do Rio’s website and Facebook page, sign up to my newsletter and let me know what you think! This venture is the final project for my Master’s in Entrepreneurial Journalism at CUNY J-School and the dream of a reporter-wannabe-product-manager who wants to help residents build a better city to live.
Ps2: A big thanks to the amazing minds of Jeff Jarvis, Jeremy Caplan, Marc Pultuskier, Natalia Chaparro, Hong Qu and the EJ17 crew who guided me through this journey; to my co-founder (and boyfriend) Ricardo Acioli who patiently listened to all my fears and doubts, to my favorite boss Aydano André Motta who shared ideas and pains about journalism in the city we love, and to the friends and strangers who liked my page, subscribed to my newsletter and agreed to be my guinea pigs in this experiment. Now, let’s go back to work ;)
