oh yeah…the competition

Yesterday was an amazing and also discouraging day. We finally had the call with the large corporation that was mentioned last week. It went fine, as expected… but it served as a good reminder to keep tabs on the competition.

We learned of three recently launched companies that are doing some version or some aspect of what we aim to do. Some are very successful and have been mentioned in techcrunch. This is obviously a disheartening blow. While your nose is buried in your own business – development, marketing, legal, etc., it’s easy to lose sight of what’s going on in the market around you. There’s a tendency to freeze the market the way it was when you researched it for your business plan… but the market is dynamic, and you have to keep up – or else risk falling behind. Things move quickly out there, and all those companies that have been in hiding for the past couple years are starting to emerge. If you know what they’re up to, you can morph your product or strategy as you go. But if you assume they don’t exist, you may launch with a ‘me too’ product that goes nowhere.

Here’s to the competition: encouraging in that it validates demand for our product, discouraging because it moved quickly and gained some market share. It’s ok – just another challenge to conquer!

If you build it, they won’t come

Admittedly, I dreamed big dreams earlier this summer when I thought that we could develop and launch our site in a few months. I thought that if I could just survive for a few more months (through September), we could launch our product, secure funding and, voila, myChef becomes my full-time employment. Now, as the development schedule continues to be pushed back, as I struggle to make ends meet, and as I contemplate the future of myChef, I realize that it’s time for a reality check.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that my ambitious time line for securing funding was simply a pipe dream. That while it’s nice to think I could work on myChef full-time for a few months and then be in a position to get serious money (enough to support myself), it’s just plain wrong. In the absence of a technical cofounder, Katie and I are dependent on third party development firms. We love our partners, and their work is great, but we aren’t able to move as quickly as we’d like, simply by virtue of not working next to one another. That aside, even though I’ve always known that launching a website does not equal acquiring customers, only recently have I begun to come to terms with the fact that it will take us several months (or longer) to build any attractive amount of traffic. Launch date is not the magical date when myChef becomes successful – the date we acquire our desired numbers of customers is. You would think after spending so much time reciting Steve Blank’s mantras, I would have come to terms with this earlier.

So what does that mean? It doesn’t mean we won’t try to secure funding when (or even before) we launch. We will, because we know we’ll learn from that experience, and though we’ll likely get turned down, we’ll do better the next time around. It doesn’t mean that we give up – we’ve come too far for that and are oh-so-close to realizing at least part of our vision. It doesn’t mean much, except that it’s a longer road to success, that the real work is yet to come, and that we must find supplementary sources of income. A slight change in plans, but what’s a start-up if it’s not unpredictable? (Apologies to those who loathe double negatives). Forward, march.

Fun with Woordle



Well-wishing conspirators

I really thought the email had disappeared into the black hole void.  I was lucky enough to have a warm introduction via email made between myself and a large potential corporate partner (who shall remain nameless).  Three weeks went by after an exchange between myself and someone in the firm – she agreed to forward my email to ‘everyone.’  I had already given up, had resigned myself to sending a follow-up email in a couple days, when… lo and behold, after three weeks: you’ve got mail! (No, I don’t use AOL, but it still has that nice ring to it).

And it wasn’t just any email. It was an email stating that the head of business development at said corporation wants to speak with us next week! Wowza. I’m not saying that anything major is going to happen in this meeting, but it’s a big opportunity.

I’m too tired to write more tonight, and must get beauty rest for our first (food) photo shoot and this big meeting, but just wanted to show another example of why you can’t give up.  Truly, the world is conspiring to help you.

An entrepreneur’s curse: it’s all about runway

So here’s what I’ve been agonizing over for the past couple of days: how to generate income until we get funded. As you’ll note in my “About” section, I am currently living off the good graces of my sister (see her blog here) and my brother-in-law.  While it’s wonderful living with them, at some point in the not-so-distant future, I need to find my own place and have my own life again.  How does an entrepreneur do that if they are devoting 24/7 (practically) to their start-up and their start-up generates no revenue and isn’t yet funded?  Something’s gotta give.

So…what gives? Do I give up my time or my lifestyle? Do I compromise on medical insurance to have flexibility or do I take a day job to maximize the paycheck and security (and have extra cash to put back into the business?)  Do I give up income entirely for another couple months and move to Florida to live with my parents?  Probably not.  I have been agonizing over whether or not to apply to ‘real jobs,’ what kind of real jobs to apply to (such that they don’t demand all of my time and soul), and how to afford rent/living expenses for “just another couple months.”  But there’s the rub (as wise dad pointed out) – “just another couple months” might not be good enough.

“Just another couple months” is based on the assumption that there is funding on the horizon. This is part I of the entrepreneur’s curse: optimism. I mean, I’m not stupid or egotistical (I try not to be, at least), and I therefore recognize that there is a chance (not that small either) that we may not get funded. But I certainly don’t make plans around that chance… I am the ever-optimist, ever-buoyant entrepreneur! Of course I will get funded within my expected timeline, of course myChef will be a huge success, and of course, it will all be worth it. Reality check scenario:  we don’t get funded this year, we don’t get lots of traffic, December rolls around, and there I am without a steady paycheck, benefits or stability.  I may be an MBA, but looking for jobs around Christmas when all the other MBAs are in high-gear recruiting mode just doesn’t seem like the best strategy (again, wise dad and wise boyfriend pointed this out to not-so-wise me).

So let’s discuss runway, briefly.  How much money do you have to ‘stay in business?’  In my case, I was lucky enough (and , as mentioned in previous post), persistent enough, to receive enough capital from friends and family to see us through what we’ll call Phase I of our company. That phase I does not include supporting Katie and I – we’re each on our own for that.  Now, in the absence of a sugar daddy, I turned to my family for yet additional support. So, I extended my personal runway and ability to dedicate time to myChef to: full-time for 3 months.   The brilliant plan was that the consulting firm that had verbally given me an offer would staff me on a project by the fall (I’d get to work remotely from them, and therefore have flexibility), and I would be able to do both jobs as once without compromising on anything (except the amount of free time I have).

Ha. Who was I kidding?  Dad (again…), knew and warned me that a verbal offer wasn’t good enough.  So here I am, unstaffed, working full-time on myChef, eating up my (measly) savings, all without any better sense of when I’ll get funded.  So far the projected timeline still seems realistic, but it’s still just a projected timeline.  It all depends on the development schedule, the business plan, etc.

So, I explored other ways to extend my runway beyond August: applied for an entrepreneurial grant, sought out other remote consulting positions (totally took a shot in the dark and asked a firm if they are hiring even though they had nothing posted on their site…lo and behold, I have a second round interview on Friday – that is what I mean by persistence), and, now, (heavy sigh), for ‘real jobs.’  We’ll see what comes through, but if I’m going to stay sane through this start-up stuff, I’ve got to get back on my own two feet, with or without funding. And I’ll continue to work hard on myChef in any scenario – with personal finances of less concern, my free time will be guiltlessly devoted to myChef. The only people that will suffer are my friends, my boyfriend, and, well, maybe me!  That’s part II of the entrepreneur’s curse: entrepreneurs don’t give up. This is good (for business) and sometimes bad (for personal life, health and sanity).

So here’s the moral of this really long post (and I hate to say it): it’s all about money. And you can’t have money without a product. And you can’t have a product without time. But you can’t have time without money. But lucky for you, you’re an entrepreneur, so you have part III of the entrepreneurial curse: creativity. Maybe there’s no curse on you, after all.

The curse of indecision (i was warned)

Steve Blank and Eric Ries gave me fair warning about this plague during the semester-long class on “Customer and Business Development in High-Tech Enterprises,” so I can’t say I didn’t know. But it doesn’t make it any easier when you’re in the thick of things.  I’m sitting here at 2:56 a.m. scrutinizing every aspect of the design of our homepage (is that button the right color? shouldn’t there be a space there?); [nb: this is exactly what lean start-ups are NOT supposed to spend time doing early on].  I’m meant to just be ‘good enough,’ run with it, move forward, get the darn thing built, and test the hell out of it. But instead, here I am debating  whether green and purple are really the way to go.  This is where being a guy would be slightly easier!

Indecision is the curse of the (at least, this), entrepreneur.  Indecision breeds inaction, which really is the worst thing for a start-up that’s just trying to get out.  Quick and dirty should be our mantra…but, come on, we’re girls. And we’re MBAs. There’s a lot in our DNA that makes quick and dirty really hard to execute.  The site should still be pretty, no?  Maybe not. Testing the design of the homepage with our customer base is not really going to tell us whether we should move forward or not.  We’ve got to test the actual MVP (minimum viable product); and, guess what? It turns out it’s not the home page. Sigh.

So let’s take stock:  to date, we’ve already spent a week trying to figure out the overall look and feel of our website (colors, button styles, fonts, etc.).  It was necessary to some degree, but at the point at which we landed on something we were at least 75% pleased with, we should have moved forward. A redesign down the road will be a lot easier  than handling a delayed entry to the market.

I’m not sure our path is totally in-line with the lean start-up or agile development methods (for one, we don’t have an in-house technologist, which makes it difficult to iterate quickly), but we are aspiring to it. We’re doing the best we can on our bootstrap budget, but time is  money and we’ve got to start using it more wisely. Design errors are ok right now… product errors are not. It’s decided then: the design is good enough – let’s get on with it. There. I can wear pants, too. (Or at least a skort).

Just as quickly as it appeared…

Funny thing that happens in this game: just as quickly as something appears, it can disappear.  I wrote the other day about my excitement at having a very talented food photographer agree to donate some time to our venture. I wasn’t just excited about the free work, but to see that our mission and business concept resonated so strongly with someone that she was willing to make that offer.  This was a huge deal for Katie and I, and could have really helped us set our site apart from other food sites.

But, alas. I emailed her a follow-up thank you note, and asked (per her suggestion) when this week I could stop into the studio and watch her at work.  She replied a day later, saying, ‘as much as I’d love to help you, I really can’t. Too busy this summer.’  And just like that, this woman who’d offered her services for free on the phone, who was so excited about our venture, about helping us… was just not that into us.

So, heart sinking, but not drowning, we’ll press onwards. It really is too bad, though.