Rejection was an eye-opener for my startup

It’s uncommon to come back throughout a first-time founder who has all of it found out — transferring rapidly, failing rapidly and leaping on to the subsequent merchandise, all whereas being scrappy, hustling, and attempting a number of avenues to analysis and launch their viewers and product.

I fell into the class of somebody who was treading very rigorously and wished to convey the very best world-in-class product on the market.

It’s not that I didn’t converse to prospects or that I didn’t converse to the fitting prospects; I didn’t converse to sufficient prospects, and I didn’t ask them the fitting questions — till it was too late.

My co-founder and I received the thought to construct a product like Geeks and Consultants in 2020. Our drawback assertion was fairly clear to us — accessing specialists is just too troublesome if you wish to attain out to somebody to get fast recommendation on a subject — you spend an excessive amount of time watching movies and studying prolonged blogs! A fast face-to-face dialog is way simpler and faster and will get you the personalised response you want.

We began digging a bit deeper and located that a number of use instances could possibly be utilized to this drawback — consultants, material specialists, and content material creators — might be a part of as an knowledgeable and provides recommendation to customers.

In fact, we rapidly realized that we wanted a targeted and particular audience. After a number of buyer discovery and interviews, we concluded that impartial solo entrepreneurs wrestle to get first-hand recommendation about startups. Social media DMs and discovering “somebody who is aware of somebody” doesn’t reduce it. That’s why we began narrowing down on this viewers to provide them a listing of specialists accessible to speak to 1:1.

With a bootstrapped method, we needed to discover environment friendly and cost-effective methods to method our viewers and get sign-ups as soon as our MVP was prepared in September 2022. We received our family and friends members to hitch. (One of the essential issues a founder can have is a robust assist system, and I’m greater than grateful for the hype squad I get to depend on every day!)

Our consumer base had been rising at an affordable tempo with natural, word-of-mouth advertising and marketing working and customers referring others to hitch our market. Nice! Possibly we’re able to take this up a notch?!

I started approaching accelerators, mentors, buyers, and different networks to get on to the subsequent step and rapidly transfer ahead with their assist. I even received a response from some advisors who invited us to current our thought and product for potential funding and entry to their ecosystem. I used to be thrilled with how issues had been going and felt able to make the leap.

It wasn’t till the second assembly was over that we heard again from the group with a rejection. I wasn’t mad or upset; I used to be simply dissatisfied. I confronted rejection once I was fundraising for a non-profit! I even confronted a number of rejection in job searching once I first moved to the USA.

What dissatisfied me was how I wanted I had accomplished far more sooner. I learn the guide “The Mother Take a look at” a bit too late within the day. I “hustled” to seek out scrappy methods to succeed in my audience by merely sitting at my pc. I spoke to all of the individuals to information me to grasp this essential pitch, however within the course of, I misplaced monitor and focus of the product and customers. It was an actual hit within the intestine to know that I had let a number of issues go off my radar.

For starters, I used to be so focussed on the MoM development of customers I didn’t even have a look at retention. After I checked out some retention figures, I didn’t even perceive cohort-based retention. I had no thought what the customers wished most. Secondly, as soon as I did perceive retention, I fully missed the large image of how I’d enhance the LTV of the customers. Thirdly, I had been “speaking” to prospects, however as a substitute of getting out of the constructing and discovering them, I used to be ready for them to answer my messages on Slack, Reddit, Twitter and so forth.

Within the 6 weeks of going from nearly getting funded to getting rejected, I realized a lot in regards to the significance of not standing too near the elephant. I wasn’t connected to the product or the thought, however I wasn’t married to the consumer both as a result of I didn’t know the consumer’s journey nicely sufficient.

I received again to it, and listed here are some issues I did:

1. I received out of the constructing and attended IRL occasions to fulfill potential prospects, interview them, and perceive their ache factors.
2. I constructed a number of touchdown pages to A/B check what the audiences resonated with and despatched them a follow-up kind to ask them for suggestions.
3. I received into scrappy mode, joined Fb teams, Telegram, and Discord channels, despatched DMs on social media, and personally wrote to 100s of potential prospects about what I used to be constructing.
4. I drafted newsletters impressed by among the greatest content material creators I’ve been following and despatched them to the segmented audiences to see what they resonated with and in the event that they’d be completely satisfied to get on a name.
5. I examined completely different hypotheses of who can be my prospects by testing B2C and potential B2B purchasers who I might pilot the product with.

As complicated as this sounds, it’s now starting to place the complete puzzle collectively for me. As an alternative of main with the product, I’m main with the customers. However first, I’m discovering a very good variety of customers with whom I can share my product and deal with how I can present worth to them sooner or later. I’ll preserve iterating the product based mostly on discoveries and retention metrics.

What can be your recommendation for a first-time founder (bootstrapped) looking for product-market-fit? Let me know within the feedback part!

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