3 Reasons Why My CAD Engineering Service Failed

I did not understand what it takes to launch a service business

Photo by Mental Health America (MHA)

5 years ago, I started a company that offers CAD service for small local business.

I was working for a local start-up manufacturing company (not tech) who does not have the budget to spend on a decent software. This made me assume that there must be other local companies out there who has the same struggle. I also talked to one of my previous supervisors who can provide me with work.

That to me was a validation that my idea should work…but it didn’t.

Here’s why…

Reason #1 — the idea required further validation

That old supervisor I had that mentioned how he can give stuff to work on was unable to give me stuff to work on. While it’s true how most small and start-up manufacturing companies don’t invest in a decent CAD software, it does not mean that it is really needed. A lot of times, if things are working out with the old-quality tools they have, then there’s really no reason to upgrade.

Reason #2 — I don’t wanna cold call

I could’ve created a list of local manufacturing companies and called each one of them if they needed “cheap” CAD service. However, the thought of cold calling without any previous work to show or even a process on how I do things made me back out. The last thing I want is to have a bad first impression.

Reason #3 — I did not understand how much time it requires to run it

I’m an experienced CAD designer. It’s one of those things I’ve done for a living. Therefore, this whole thing should be easy because the only difference is that I’m not doing it for another company — I AM the company. But I failed to recognize the obvious fact that as a company, I need to learn how to market and sell my service, I need to do accounting, invest money on tools, have an office and the most important of all…time.

Conclusion

I had to give up the whole thing after a year simply because I haven’t put in the time to launch a service business.

That seems like a big waste of time on the surface, but the truth is, I learned a lot from it.