All I learned by planting my start-up
The purpose of this article is to share concrete experiences , to kill the famous myth of "Build it and they will come" which suggests that it is enough to build a great product in its corner and launch it to succeed, but also to promote Steve Blank's "Get out of the Building" thought, which encourages meeting as many potential customers as possible in the first days.
I will take two concrete examples to illustrate the most important thing to do after having an idea when you set up a start-up :
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My first experience as a co-founder at Messteam in 2014 explaining the mistakes made and the lessons I learned from them.
My experience with Fetch (the startup I co-founded and of which I am the current president).
My first experience with Messteam
June 2014, I had just finished my studies and I embarked on my first start-up project with a partner met on a social network of entrepreneurs a few months ago.
Without going into detail, his idea was to allow people to build a network and make fruitful relationships through a site that is focused on communication and instant discussion. Unlike a Linkedin more focused on sharing information. The idea appealed to me, even if afterwards I realized that it was mainly the idea of ??taking part in a start-up project that interested me the most. Which is a bad reason to launch myself.
At that time I did not know much, although having read some books on marketing that is a subject that fascinates me. I never had the opportunity to put into practice what I had read.
My association with him was going to last only a few months during which we made many mistakes, which was normal since we were totally inexperienced.
Made mistakes
At no time did we attempt to confront our idea with a potential target to see if it might have interested these people. We only made assumptions and if we found a developer during our research that lasted 3 months. We would have built a product without knowing if it would interest even one person!
We made 3 errors that are common a priori since I see a lot of people doing the same around me:
1 - Believe that the product / service must already be built before validating that there is a real interest in designing it.
2 - Blinder features his site without understanding what is the true value of his idea.
3 - Do not make known his product / service until it is finished for fear of being stung the idea ...
What I learned
We did not use the right approach or the right state of mind!
This bad approach is:
- Have an idea and work a little on it
- Find developers to make it concrete (variable duration between 6 months and 2 years)
- Launch your website and your communication / marketing
- Realize that nobody's interested
- Stop or persevere
We would have had every interest in meeting as many people as possible to determine several things: Is there a market? If so, what is our target? What are the needs of these people? Does our idea respond to a very strong need / problem?
The list could be much longer, so many reasons to leave home.
Second attempt: Fetch
A few months later I find myself in the same situation with Fetch , the idea comes from me this time, I note everything that goes through my head the same evening and then?
An evening with friends
At a party with friends, I simply introduced the premises of Fetch , which allowed me to have first feedback on this idea and especially to probe the opinion of two people in priority who had the want to embark on entrepreneurship just like me.
The opinions were rather divergent but I had aroused the curiosity of the current deputy general manager of Fetch who had skills that I did not have in finance.
I saw this person who was interested to know more about a coffee a few days later and 3h after we had agreed to join us on this project.
Snow and sounding
Talking with friends about his project was one thing but it was not enough to validate the interest in embarking on this adventure. It seemed logical to start by going to restaurants before doing anything else. I had the choice between door to door and canvassing. I took the option of "door to door" despite the cold and snow that will often be present during my market research. To support my approach and have returns, I had surveys with Google Form .
With my small surveys, I began to approachthe restaurateurs with a little apprehension not really knowing how I was going to be greeted ... Short-lived scare after doing the first restaurant that agreed to answer my survey and talked with me for 10 minutes finding the idea interesting. I quickly realized that my polls would only be a pretext to start the discussion, which would be much more informative.
This market study will last until about mid-February, during which time I was able to meet some fifty restaurateurs, ten of whom I was able to talk to for over an hour. It also helped me understand why restaurateurs are not making deliveries, that they were very interested in outsourcing delivery, that there was a strong demand from their customers and how they work. they adapt our future service to their needs.
Start communication as soon as possible
We have since the beginning of Fetch had a communication strategy to make believe that we existed well before the launch of Fetch . This allowed us to quickly check if Fetch was going to interest the customer side! We quickly had a logo that is still the same now. This one was done by the person who did not particularly like the idea during the famous evening with friends!
We created the Facebook page in March 2015 and we soon started having news articles about us.
Our communication was and is always very transparent, we put the daily evolution of Fetch on Facebook with many pictures of our appointments. We quickly participated our audience with polls of the type "list your favorite restaurants"!
Be careful however: having people on the social networks that follow your project is not enough, we must also validate the fact that these people are ready or not to pay our service.
What to remember?
I have experimented with both methods and it is obvious that the best way to proceed is the one we chose with Fetch .
One of the great benefits I have had about developers is that I am not one! This forced me to collect feedback from potential customers and restaurateurs rather than hiding behind my PC to make a site.
I often hear people who have no technical skills (no developer / programmer) complain while it is quite possible to start without his skills. I used to be part of these people for a long time ...
Leave your home and see as many people from the beginning, you will learn more and your future site will surely match your target! It will be quite possible then to develop a first version of his product without even knowing how to code!
Today, Fetch is present on Nancy, Metz and Reims. The company has been growing since its launch in January 2016 and its mission is to offer this delivery service to residents and restaurant owners in cities with 100,000 to 200,000 inhabitants in France.