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The longest post I've ever written!
But highly worth it. Very insightful. All the failed projects have constant fundamental mistakes under 5 categories of burning passion, great knowledge of the target market, validation, commitment and team with balance domain expertise (tech savvy guy and business savvy guy mostly):
You had a kind of catching-fun-passion for the projects instead of BURNING PASSION that is necessary to create GRIT to sustain building momentum for the projects. Be intentional from beginning in your next projects.
There's no way one can build successful business for market one does not have more than average knowledge of the market and having unquestionable knowledge of the target is the best. At least 1 member of the team must possess this. It is even directly proportional to degree of passion.
Validating the market with potential customers prior to building anything is next after ticking the first 2. The best way that's most value-adding from my experience as a venture designer and builder is to have a real time field test running with small group of potential customers, minimum of 10. (I had 35 in my current fintech project that I just finished validating). The common way is with survey.
What you did mostly was, built products and started looking for market instead of validating market and start building for the market to scale with the users on product iteration.
Commitment. Can you watch 6 TVs concurrently or like spending 10 mins switching between the 6. If you can't get value from doing that please work on becoming unapologetically focus on one thing that matter most. Giving that one thing 70% focus is good while utilizing the 30 on others but giving it >90% is the best. This is what your team members must also conform with.
Complete team with domain expertise. Lagos is the number one commercial hub of Nigeria and Africa where the most popular means of transit is through this bus call Danfo. Danfo with driver and conductor always perform better to passenger (customer). Why? Because they have team of 2 with domain expertise: Driver focus on driving effectively while conductor focus on calling passengers and collecting money effectively, both creating efficient ride experience for customers. Relate the analogy to startup.
Having a complete team from beginning is great but bringing on the remaining team to balance is good at the relevant stage. (My current fintech project is in the process of onboarding technical cofounder to balance the team, after I've validated the idea with real time offline operation)
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ I checked from Indiehacker, the Relieva Africa guy that you requested the carrd landing page URL and provided feedback.
Thank you for your insight! I agree with several points however some others make me want to question them.
I agree we lacked dedication from some point forward. It was there at first but we spread ourselves too thin. We wanted to do too many things at the same time.
But I actually disagree with having a burning passion as a necessity. Sure, it helps to push forward but I don't think it is that sustainable. I know many people who made it in some way, and none of them were acting crazy and sacrificing everything to get what they want. They were just consistent and stayed on their paths long enough to reap the benefits. A burning passion can easily do it's job and burn nothing else but you!
As you can see we scaled back to just one project. After I wrote the article I got some of my passion towards it back. And it is reflected in how the team feels as well. I believe there's still lessons to be learned and problems to be solved in this business.
Actually, I have 1 client in PoC stage and 3 preparing to start theirs. Market is pretty welcoming and these are high profile deals so even one puts us in a good place. I am much more optimistic now as compared to when I wrote this text!