The first freakout

… and hopefully the last (a.k.a. better workplanning please!)

In January 2014, I freaked out a little bit. Since leaving my job in the fall, I had:

• Taught myself to code, though not sufficiently enough to do more than build a basic MVP
• Come close but did not succeed in finding a co-founder
• Conducted basic market research

Yet in a community that pounces on overnight success stories and sometimes equates lean with blind speed, I felt like I was moving too slowly. I was painfully aware of my two year run rate rapidly evaporating. I told myself the new year would be different—I wanted to make a go/no-go decision on my product hypothesis (via substantial user testing data) by spring.

Assuming that product testing went well, I wanted to then hit a user count in the thousands by year end. Assuming worst case scenario, that growth would not be exponential, I would have to convert 5-10 users a day. This was further compounded by the fact that my product is naturally used infrequently, necessitating an extremely wide acquisition funnel.

With these worries constantly nagging my mind, I worked frantic hours trying to get everything done. I was developing the prototype and thinking about the business strategy; marketing to different groups and still trying to find partners and collaborators. As fast as I was going, it seemed like I was constantly tripping, or missing critical start-up knowledge that everyone seemed to be in on (I didn’t learn about Dave McClure’s AARRR framework until mid-January, then I discovered the world of growth hacking…).

I was having a major problem workplanning, ironically one of my stronger suits in consulting. But there’s a huge difference between workplanning when the scope is largely defined vs completely not. In a start-up world that I had little experience in, every new thing I learned was something I could add to my plate.

Further compounding my problem was that as a beginner developer, I had to give myself solid, uninterrupted blocks of time to code, and not be distracted by the every growth hack that bounced into my mind. Now, I try to split my weeks in terms of X days for a chunk of development work, and Y days for the business side. This has been immensely helpful in orienting my days and helping me to feel productive.

On the business side, I learned to calm down about user acquisition. I still think about how fast time flies, and that the last time I emailed my friends to try the prototype was two months ago. But I know that it takes years to achieve product/ market fit, which my talks with founders have corroborated.

As a result, I now focus on two to three tasks at a time, following a much more thorough prioritization to define those tasks. And though I’m still multitasking (founders don’t have the luxury of doing one thing), it’s a far cry from the seven to nine tasks I was juggling earlier.

This blarticle was written in the context of building a product that helps people borrow occasional-use items (e.g., sleeping bags, electric drills) from their friends & neighbors. Check out the prototype here.