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    Home Unlabelled Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 09, 2018) Entrepreneur

    Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 09, 2018) Entrepreneur

    February 09, 2018

    Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 09, 2018) Entrepreneur

    Accomplishments and Lesson Learned Friday! - (February 09, 2018)

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:07 AM PST

    Please use this thread to share any accomplishment you care to gloat about, and some lessons learned.

    This is a weekly thread to encourage new members to participate, and post their accomplishments, as well as give the veterans an opportunity to inspire the up-and-comers.

    Since this thread can fill up quickly, consider sorting the comments by "new" (instead of "best" or "top") to see the newest posts.

    submitted by /u/AutoModerator
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    How to get the most from your AdWords landing pages – a six-chapter guide covering best practices.

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:58 AM PST

    Hey everyone, a little over a year ago I was thrown into a marketing role which I knew very little about (yay startups!). I dove into the field and quickly learned how deep the rabbit hole goes. One of the first things I did was begin studying up on Google AdWords, and oh boy I was overwhelmed.

    Luckily, I am a decently good note taker, and as my knowledge grew so did the stack of notes on my desk. Eventually, I realized that there was not a concise guide or resource on the internet covering AdWords, specifically how to make landing pages for AdWords campaigns, I put these notes to use and began condensing the knowledge as much as possible for my guide to Google AdWords landing pages.

    Since then, I have posted a couple chapters on Reddit and passed it along to friends and colleagues. I received some awesome feedback which I used to improve the guide.

    I posted a chapter of this guide on this sub a while back and most people seemed to enjoy it. Hopefully, this can help those of you out there who are looking for a guide that cuts straight to the heart of the information. I would love to get some constructive feedback, too!

    There is a lot of content in the six chapters, so I am hoping the mods will let me just post the link to the guides.

    Full disclosure I am the Co-founder and COO of Landing Lion. If you have any questions about that, feel free to DM me :)

    https://www.landinglion.com/guides/adwords-landing-page/

    submitted by /u/hunterbrennick
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    $25k/mo selling healthy pancake mix.

    Posted: 08 Feb 2018 06:42 PM PST

    Hi /r/Entrepreneur, it's Pat from Starter Story again, where I do interviews with successful e-commerce entrepreneurs.

    This is one of my favorite interviews I've done so far. I actually did this interview about a month ago, but never got the chance to post it on Reddit til now.

    Here's a TLDR:

    • Ashley is grossing $25k/month.
    • She started the company out of her apartment kitchen.
    • She made it on Shark Tank (see the video below).
    • The business mostly runs itself now as a passive income source.

    Hope you enjoy reading:

    Background.

    Hi, I'm Ashley Drummonds, and I am the creator of the ABS Protein Pancakes High Protein-Low Carb meal replacement line! The ABS Protein Pancakes is an All Natural, High Protein, Low Carb Meal Replacement that allows people to enjoy pancakes and waffles every day while sticking to a healthy nutrition program.

    One serving of the ABS Protein Pancakes makes 3-4 pancakes for under 250 Calories, under 8g Net Carbs, and over 24g Protein. It is all natural, gluten-free, and low in sugar. Each bag makes approximately 40 pancakes, and one serving can be whipped up in less than 5 minutes making it super easy to make a quick, healthy and delicious meal!

    We have three flavors of ABS Protein Pancakes: Chocolate Chip, Vanilla Cake Batter, and Cinnamon Roll. It's great for fitness enthusiasts, those who follow a low carb nutrition program, on a weight loss program, or anyone who just wants to enjoy a healthier option for pancakes and waffles. It's also great for individuals on a low sugar or gluten-free diet, or if you're just looking to get more protein on a daily basis!

    Shark Tank video

    How I came up with the idea.

    Before starting ABS, I was a personal trainer for seven years with a passion for helping people feel better and hit their fitness/weight loss goals. I always had a desire to do something bigger that allowed me to have more free time while still helping people. I am a foodie at heart and have a passion for breakfast food - specifically pancakes. Years ago, I came up with this protein pancake recipe that I used to make every day for myself as part of my breakfast routine.

    At the start of 2014, I was going through a bit of a rough patch and needed to do some soul searching to figure out where I was headed with my life. I was still so passionate about the fitness/nutrition industry, but I knew that I couldn't be a personal trainer forever and expect to make the money I wanted to make. I spent about two weeks meditating, journaling, and setting out clear goals of what I wanted my future to look like. I came out of that realizing "the answer" or "the how" would happen naturally through life, the universe, and God.

    One day I woke up and starting making my morning breakfast with my protein pancake recipe and the thought popped into my head: "I wonder if anyone else would eat this recipe as a way to help them stick to their nutrition. Could I package this recipe and sell it?".

    So I started telling my personal training clients about it and gave them little ziplock bags of single serving sizes to try. They loved it. They started telling their friends about it, and before I knew it I had someone on social media reach out to me asking to buy it because they had heard about it from a friend. That was when I started realizing I had a product I could turn into something big.

    Creating the product and launching the business.

    I started marketing ABS on social media. Every day, I would post on Instagram or Facebook telling my followers to send me a direct message if they wanted to order.

    I did everything manually at first. When I received an order, I would send the customer an invoice via PayPal (I didn't have an online store at the time) and go to the grocery store and buy the ingredients in bulk. I bought a cheap scale to measure out all of the ingredients for one serving and used mylar bags I bought on Amazon to put the mix inside. I also purchased a heat food sealer (used for tight sealing freezer bags for meats and frozen goods), so I could heat seal each bag.

    Once the customer made their payment, I went to my local post office, grabbed loads of priority mailers (because these are free and flat rate shipping costs) and would print off a shipping label using Microsoft Word, then go back to the post office to mail out the orders. I did this every day, and during some busy times I was showing up to the post office with a moving box full of priority mailers for orders to go out. I became very familiar with the employees at the post office!

    I started all of this in my apartment kitchen averaging probably 8-20 orders each week. I was definitely grinding. I was exhausted every day running to the post office, the grocery store, mixing up bags, sealing them, printing labels, then back to the post office to ship them out. I usually had to do all of this in the evenings after I finished up with my private personal training sessions. This was often as late as 11 PM, and then having to wake up at 5:30 AM the next day for more personal training sessions!

    I had somewhat of an "official" launch where I live in Tampa, FL. The local news station ABC Action News had me on the air for a 4th of July Health Segment. At this time, I didn't have a website, professional packaging or anything - I just winged it. Looking back, it's funny how terrible the packaging was. I had to go to Target to buy a food saver bag and slap a Kinko's label on it and pretend like I knew what I was doing. It worked though! Fake it 'til you make it.

    As business grew, I realized I needed to move away from making the product in my apartment kitchen.

    The hardest part starting out was researching and learning all of the rules and regulations of packaging, manufacturing and fulfillment processes. I searched all throughout the country for a manufacturer who would make my product. However, I was too small for any manufacturers to take me seriously. They had minimum order requirements of thousands of units which I wasn't producing in sales.

    I spent the majority of my time "googling" and asking anyone I knew lots of questions. I finally found a manufacturer out in San Diego who was willing to negotiate with me and produce a minimum run of 500 units for my very first order.

    But even making a relatively small order from the manufacturer like that was a tremendous learning experience. I had to figure out packaging, labeling, and branding. I also had to learn about barcoding, how to make a nutrition label, how to get nutrition certifications, expiration dates, and the list goes on. It's a lot! I don't think people realize how much work goes into each package of any product they use or consume, and how many hands are involved in the process of packaging alone.

    To come up with the packaging design I actually hired a local creative service that specializes in logos and branding and it took weeks of going back and forth to come up with the design, colors and logo that "felt" right to me and the brand. To come up with the nutrition label I had to send the ingredients to a lab in California for them to test all the claims then send back the certified nutrition label. I thought the barcode was something you could just put on the package or would be handled or my branding people. It was not until they asked me to send the pdf copies of my barcodes for each label that I realized I had to do it myself (You have to register it on the Gs1 website). You learn a lot when people ask you for things that you don't even know about.

    Attracting customers, social media, and Shark Tank!

    Since day one, I have attracted almost all of my sales from social media, mainly Instagram and Facebook. To this day, I still use that as the majority of my marketing and exposure.

    In 2016 the ABS Protein Pancakes aired on ABC's Shark Tank as the very first episode of the 2016 season which brought HUGE exposure to ABS and brought customers from all over the country.

    The Shark Tank exposure was and still is incredible! My website crashed 2x the night of airing, once when it aired on the East Coast, and then again when it aired on the West Coast. I had maxed out my server protection to allow for the highest traffic possible, but it still couldn't handle it. I went from about 50 visitors to my site to over 30,000 in a matter of seconds. It was incredible! The sales I made in weeks after the Shark Tank episode surpassed the previous year's entire sales numbers.

    I still implement social media strategies such as Facebook ads, Instagram hashtags, cross promotions, contests, and influencers to continue to grow the brand and customers.

    With Instagram, I've been most successful doing collaborations with like minded-brands. What I do is reach out to other businesses and brands who have a mission that aligns with ABS, or if they have a product that compliments ABS.

    For example, I've reached out to a lot of protein bar companies, nut butter companies, and fitness gear businesses and have collaborated with them on giveaways. What we do is agree on a specific amount of days that we will share posts that include both of our brands, having followers repost and tag us in their posts. Then, at the end of the promotion period, we give away a few bags of product. This is HUGE because people start reposting like crazy and tag all of their friends because they want free stuff! All it costs you is some time and a couple of bags of mix. This is also a great thing to do in the beginning when your marketing budget is tight and you are looking for inexpensive ways to grow your following or leads.

    Handling competition.

    I don't see it as competition. I think people are drawn to ABS and other brands like mine because of the connection, the story, and the quality. I know that there are other brands out there that have great products that are helping people as well. They will attract different customers than I do and that's perfectly fine. I simply run my business and my brand the best I can and I think customers appreciate that more than anything.

    Where you are at now and what are your plans for the future? I am very grateful that the last three years of hard work in building a foundation for ABS is continuing to pay off. In the beginning, I always knew my goal was to have an online business that was automated so that I could travel, live life and do whatever else I wanted to do.

    The hard part was putting in the time and effort to build strategies, funnels, emails, etc. Now, I am very grateful that the business is mostly automated. If I want to go away for the week and not touch any emails, I can. The business will still run successfully.

    As far as the future for me, I recently launched ABSFitLifeTV.com which is an online membership video library of at-home workouts, dumbbell workouts, nutrition tools, and mindset tools to help people stay fit while traveling, on the road or in the comfort of their own home. I call it the "Netflix" of fitness! This has been my most recent project that I am continuing to improve.

    I'm also exploring one of my other passions of wine and recently became a Certified Sommelier, and I'm super excited to see what kind of doors will open from that. Ultimately, I want to continue to grow and explore my passions more than anything!

    Tools I use.

    The ABS Protein Pancakes storefront is on Shopify which I think is the best platform for e-commerce businesses. It just makes things so easy! As far as other tools I use:

    • Klaviyo: Email marketing platform.
    • Instagram: My main social media platform.
    • VHX by Vimeo: Video platform for ABSFitLifeTV.com.
    • Recharge: Subscription platform where my customers can get their ABS -
    • Protein Pancakes auto-shipped every month at a discounted price.
    • YotPo: For customer reviews on Shopify.

    Advice for other entrepreneurs.

    When it comes to making decisions for your business, trust your gut and listen to your own intuition. Take others' advice for your business with a grain of salt, even if they are successful entrepreneurs. Only you know what's best for your brand.

    See your entrepreneurial journey as a marathon and not a sprint. It's the daily things you do that keep you moving forward. If you try doing too much at once, you will burn out, get frustrated and give up. Just take one step each day or every other day that brings you one step closer to your goal, even if it's as simple as researching a new platform or making that one phone call.

    There have been multiple times on my own journey when it was tough, and I wanted to throw in the towel. When this happens, I usually take a few days off to refresh, regroup and just zoom out to remind myself of the bigger picture. Don't let the day to day grind make you forget the big picture goal.

    Full interview on Starter Story.

    submitted by /u/youngrichntasteless
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    23 Side Hustles

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 05:05 AM PST

    I made a list of 23 Side Hustles.

    I would like to know which ones are worth expanding on or if you can think of any better ones:

    1. Tutor students
    2. Write copy for websites
    3. Create a personal blog and getting users over time
    4. Do freelance programming
    5. Do freelance graphic design
    6. Create a band and book gigs or work as an accompanist
    7. Work as a task rabbit doing tasks like grocery delivery, research or handyman work
    8. Offer yourself as moving service on weekends if you own a truck.
    9. Flip things. Buy and sell for higher. For example try buying on AliBaba Express and selling on Amazon using Fulfillment by Amazon.
    10. Find companies and get them to let you manage their social media marketing. Become a pro with instagram, twitter, facebook, snapchat, pinterest, adwords, facebook ads, etc.
    11. Teach a class about anything you are an expert in. E.g. if you are really good at painting, run an art workshop/class or a paint and wine session for adults.
    12. Organize a meetup for something like a trip to a nearby hiking trail or camping and take a small fee.
    13. Sign up for thumbtack as a cook or handyman.
    14. Drive for Uber or Lyft until you satisfy the sign up bonus requirements. After that it becomes pretty inefficient (taking into account expenses like gas and wear on your car you don't earn that much).
    15. Rent out your car on Turo or similar on weekends or whenever you don't need it. Make sure to use the referral bonus to get an extra $100.
    16. Walk dogs or take care of them when their owners are on vacation (Use an app like Rover to make this easy).
    17. Takes photos and sell them. Try selling as stock photography and when you get skilled book a wedding or start doing aerial/drone photography.
    18. Mow lawns or do other landscaping.
    19. Shovel snow from driveways.
    20. Do design work on dribbble or 99designs or behance.
    21. Rent out a room on Airbnb.
    22. Rent a pressure washer and pressure wash people's driveways or houses
    23. Donate Plasma

    Also at my blog: https://frugalcricket.com/23-side-hustles/

    submitted by /u/frugalcricket
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    There's many people browsing the subreddit right who are stuck in a job wishing to start a business but too scared too. What advice would you give them?

    Posted: 08 Feb 2018 09:45 PM PST

    Particularly from those of you who've been in that 'safe, secure job'?

    submitted by /u/corin20
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    Should I start a carpet cleaning business or a pressure washing business?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:46 PM PST

    Hey guys,

    So I posted on a different forum a few months ago because I was interested in starting a carpet cleaning business. I did some research in my area and even though many recommended that I go for it, I still had my doubts for two reasons:

    • There are 36 carpet cleaning businesses competing in a market of roughly 225,000 people.
    • According to SBA, the average business in my area is making $185,000 annual revenue. Now this number can be skewed simply because there are so many carpet cleaning businesses and it is very likely that some of these are one man operations and they arent scaling, thus bringing these numbers down. I dont know how I would research this though.

    So because of these concerns, I started looking into the pressure washing business. And this business caught my attention for the following reasons:

    • There are around 15 pressure washing businesses in a market of roughly 225,000. I assume that window washing and pressure washing are two different things.

    • According to SBA however, there are only 8 pressure washing businesses in my area, and the average revenue is 681,500 annually.

    Now, I am completely new to this, and I honestly dont know if I did my market analysis correctly or if I still have alot to go through. In addition to this, I havent considered startup costs. Is a pressure washing machine more expensive than a carpet cleaning machine?

    As of right now, it would only be me in this operation and I would eventually scale it up. I have a 70k job but I want out of it and want to start my business. However, because the job pays so well, I would be doing pressure washing on the side. How would that affect my business initially?

    I also attached a picture showing a comparison of these 2 industries in my area. This is all the market research I have done but dont know if this is enough.

    Comparison

    The 500,000 number is what I input into the tool because that is the amount of revenue that I am aiming for on an annual basis.

    submitted by /u/jjjllee
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    we all know the public school system sets kids up for failure...

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:19 PM PST

    My favorite quote by Elon musk is "when something is important enough, you do it anyway even if the odds aren't in your favor".

    I look back at my entire public school education career and I can say that besides learning formulas for math, I don't think I needed it. I want this community to understand that I'm not saying I'm too good for school, what I'm saying is that schooling didn't prepare me for anything.

    I want to start my own business, but I want to be passionate about it, because if I'm not I know it will fail. One thing I am passionate about is success itself, and seeing others around me succeed, and it saddens me seeing everyone around me struggle and be discontent knowing they are just going to have to work for someone their whole life.

    I don't want to work for someone any longer than I have to, but I guess my Elon Muskish idea is

    Developing my a new form of education that broadens students horizons. Instead of reading plays and having busy work, we look at entrepreneurs, businesses, ideas. Etc.

    Of course we still need to keep certain aspects of public education, but at some point we need to break away from it. I want to help people realize their true potential.

    Bombard with questions and comments

    submitted by /u/twitterbae
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    The things I learned from joining a startup accelerator

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:07 PM PST

    This is one part of two. I am still writing the second part. This part is more about what I learned doing the process and the second part will be more about the journey. Hope you like it

    It can feel super frustrating to jump from source to source, trying to find out information about starting a business. All to no avail.

    No matter who you are, as soon as you get into the world of entrepreneurship — it's like you've been thrown in a pool with no ability to swim. You sort of know what you're supposed to do; wobble my hands, wait no — too slow, need to go faster, panic. You're drowning.

    I was there too.

    August 9th of last year was the first time I've spoken to the world about the Cabrero— the first portable pour over coffee maker. It was my pitch to the CUNY accelerator, and looking back, joining was one of the best decisions I've made as a young entrepreneur. Because I learned how to swim.

    I spent the next four months as the founder of my first company. Many days had me ecstatic, and many nights flamed with fire. Co-founders joining, others leaving. At the end, there was Yaron (co-founder) — together we pitched, and we got the investment.

    This is us

    Ah, sweet glory.

    I'd like to start you off with a 'mini-accelerator', summarizing the important things I learned. This'll be separated into two parts: this first part will be more general and will provide the 7 rules I learned every entrepreneur should know. In the next part I'll get into specifics.

    Pick the right co-founder/team.

    This is the first point for a reason (and it'll be the longest one). Your team IS your company, the wrong dynamics is the number one reason for failure, and the right team is the number one reason for success.

    Most people that start their own companies tend to have 'alpha' personalities and would rather do it all alone. Don't even think about it. You will fail.

    When choosing teammates you've got to hit some major check-marks:

    Sit down and figure out the most important skills you're lacking. You're a tech company with no developer? are you f***ing kidding me.

    Choosing the right skills is actually second to being absolutely sure that this next person understands and believes in your vision. Conflicting views on the future of the company will destroy you. Make sure you're on the same page with the amount of time/money that this person is willing to spend, whether or not you'll be accepting VC funding, or whether they are willing to adapt when (and yes it is a when, not an if) you start running into problems.

    Jamie Wheal and Steven Kotler coined a term they call ecstasis in their book " Stealing Fire". It is an idea practiced by the top performers who go into alternate states in order to take a step above the rest.

    When Sergey Brin and Larry Page were looking for someone to join the team — they had access to the most talented people in the world. Skills weren't the problem, they needed someone that could look rise psychologically above the rest, so they placed their candidates in hell week (similar to what you see navy seals go through) and started testing whether the individual retreated to their ego or became one with the google team. They ended up Eric Schmidt.

    Of course, you are not google — and no one will agree to go through hell weak for you. But in a more practical sense, it's useful to look for mindful & open minded entrepreneurs to become a part of your venture.

    Don't fall in love with your company, fall in love with the people its for.

    Two words: design thinking. Your product might be inspired through problems you face in your own, but ultimately, designing your product requires one really important thing: go out and find anyone having the problem you're solving, dig their brain, and be empathetic.

    You often find entrepreneurs getting a false sense of confidence that they have a great product, when really, the only problem they are solving is their own. Take away any preconceived notions you have and just listen.

    You're likely to pivot — many times.

    You can't dwell on having to change routes when so much work has already been done — the best you can do is learn how to make those mistakes faster. If you're pivoting often, that means you are testing your routes and making changes before they kill you.

    Competition is good. Just do it better.

    Never let your competition get in your head. See it as a sign that your market is one that is worth going into. Keep pushing and doubling down when things get tough — the weak hands will fall, and you'll gain a huge advantage.

    Did you know Lyft was a thing way before Uber? The latter clearly became the winner in this battle, simply because their model for ride sharing was — well — better.

    Learn to separate your emotions.

    This is a serious remedy that needs to be taken at 3 doses a day, because it saves so much time. If you have someone giving you direct, honest feedback you can just skip the whole part where you dwell over your hard work being "s**t" and go straight to making it amazing.

    Of course, there's a clear line separating a sturdy critique and just being an ass. Your intention is that line. Unless you're an amazing actor or a psychopath, you can't fake your intention and everyone else will be onto you. Bad, bad vibes. Just be genuine, it'll take you far.

    When you're down, change your perspective.

    Things may seem overwhelming, but Rome wasn't built in one day and neither will your company.

    I like to ask myself a simple "what if" question. Once you imagine changing your circumstances, your brain can't do anything but process the information objectively.

    I've started to notice this concept when giving a great piece of advice to someone else. I'd be able to be present and sympathetic on a completely objective basis — which is what allowed for me to see the right course of action, yet I would later realize that I wouldn't do what I've suggested when/if I was in the same situation.

    Just to refer to the third point as an example, the question to ask is "what if I didn't pivot?". You then quickly that the alternative to pivoting is death — not so bad anymore.

    Don't overwork yourself and burn out, be efficient instead.

    Get rid of all the clutter. The more you simplify your life — the more attentive you'll be to what's important. Working hard compensates for lacking money, add an extra flavor to the formula and spend more of your time figuring out how to be more efficient.

    These are the rules you should always keep in the your back pocket. Lots of other miss out on them and get lost in the clutter — do yourself a favor and remember these, they'll save your butt right from the start.

    Keep on rocking.

    submitted by /u/scienceshmaience
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    What is working well in your city of 1M or less and can be replicated in other smallish cities?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:50 PM PST

    I'm really interested in business you're working on that can be replicated in other, smallish, cities that you're not looking to franchise.

    We've all heard about detailing shops, laundromats etc. but do you have a unique business that could/should do well in other smallish markets?

    submitted by /u/Omerbaturay
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    How do I capitalize on a big name Partner (Web Agency)

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 08:50 AM PST

    We are a new web design agency (a couple months) and only have a few projects in our portfolio. One of my family members works at the medical department for a very prestigious school and reached out to me for web design services. They are having a conference for cancer and want us to redesign the website. We would be able to put our agency as partners, get testimonials, and they'd let us attend the conference and give a presentation. We would also be able to redesign one of their global health program websites. At the moment, I think we will niche down and try to work with healthcare businesses. I was wondering how my agency could really capitalize on this opportunity.

    submitted by /u/KhalDrogba
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    What alternative career path were you considered before becoming an entrepreneur, and what moment did you decide to switch?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:12 PM PST

    I'm deciding between software development which seems more stable or business which seems more exciting. What are your experiences?

    submitted by /u/84935
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    Flux: The €85,000 Failed Modular Multi-Messaging Client

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 07:20 AM PST

    Hey /r/Entrepreneur! Rich Clominson from Failory, the website where we weekly interview failed startup owners, here.

    I have just published a new interview with Jan, CTO of Flux, a failed modular multi-messaging client. His startup raised a small angel round of 70K € and invested another 15K €. A combination of many issues led to their failure.

     

    Read now the story of "The €85,000 Failed Modular Multi-Messaging Client"!

    Hi Jan! What's your background, and what are you currently working on?

    Hi! I am the founder and CTO of Flux, which was a modular multi-messaging client. I studied a bit of physics and philosophy before, but I am mainly a self-taught full stack developer. Right now, I am in the middle of open sourcing all software that we built and using it as a basis for consulting and freelancing for companies that need a messaging platform. I am really grateful to all our investors that allowed me to do this and I am confident that somehow something new and bigger will evolve out of this unique situation.

     

    What was Flux about? How did you come up with the idea?

    The main idea is quite old and evolved out of discussions with friends at university. The main pain point we had at that time was that Facebook just entered the German market and we experienced firsthand what it means to have all your messages and friends stuck in the data silo of studiVZ, which was the German copycat that was used before Facebook. The basis of all product iterations was always that we tried to build something that lets you own your data but still take part in mainstream social media with normal non-nerdy friends. First prototypes were before diaspora but similar federated social networks. We quickly learned that support for all data types (images, events etc.) was too much, so we focused on the most important one: messages. The second learning that led to the product idea was that replacing the status quo was impossible so we focused on building a professional messaging product that used existing messaging channels like Facebook and email.

     

    How did you build Flux?

    We did never enter a growth phase and failed already in private beta. But we had a few thousands of users on the waiting list. We mainly got them through giving talks and public pitches as well as exposure from our accelerator StartupBootcampBerlin.

     

    Why did Flux fail?

    A combination of many issues, probably any one of them would have been enough for a failure, so I am still somewhat proud of what we achieved. This is my overview in no specific order:

    • Looking for investment too early/ at all: The product we tried to build was just not that interesting to investors, I see why with my knowledge now, but at the time we thought it was just about not trying hard enough. In retrospect, it was stupid to look for bigger investors at all, at least in Berlin. Had we just tried to sell consulting, services and custom solutions and building the product along the way instead of the wasted VC time we would have gotten much further. The wrong impression I had was based on reading mainly US-based blogs as well as listening too much to people from the Berlin startup world that gave advice on how they thought or wished things would be instead of the actual experience of success in the current world.

    • Bad cofounder fit: Me and my business cofounder were extremely opposite characters and at times there was a great synergy but more and more often this lead to a lot of friction. Also, co-founders should probably know each other for more than a year before, but we just met for the venture. Lastly, I highly overestimated the available funding in Berlin for this extremely early stage and kind of product and so assumed that a business person who is good with people had more to do than was the case. I naively thought he could just go and sell a prototype to a VC and then build up the office and hire the people as well as do finance and contracts when in reality all we needed was people to work on the product until we could show traction.

    • Over-engineering: I am responsible for over-engineering a few aspects of flux. I changed a lot since then, to not make the same mistakes again. But reading about extreme programming and MVP is one thing but I don't think I was able to really "feel" what it means without having gone through the situation. The following are the main over-engineering mistakes:

      • Overestimating the convergence/ availability of REST APIs: I thought all companies will publish a REST API with converging concepts for paging, endpoint structure, authentication, references and pretty open usage restrictions. Therefore, we built a DSL for connecting and consuming REST endpoints. In Erlang. We could just have built the first connectors manually and then at a much later stage still develop a DSL and automate the process if it would have made sense then. This was also a big problem because investors asked us about 'secret sauce' all the time, so the technology for connector building seemed really important to us. When in reality the problem was we wanted to impress investors in the first place.
      • Over/Under engineering Client Model: I did not know about observables and Rx, maybe they did not even exist then, I'm not sure. The point is the same however: the view model for flux became very complex and depended on multiple asynchronous processes and a locking system to generate it consistently grew hard to manage. Today I would not have half the headaches from then because of RxJS or similar tools.
      • Too early adoption of micro-services with wrong service boundaries: I tried to use whatever developer resources I could get my hands on and allowed them to use languages they thought were great as long as I also found them interesting and fitting. This lead to a mixture of Erlang, Go, Ruby and JavaScript that became extremely hard to support especially as developers with different knowledge joined and left. In retrospect, I should just have completely bought into the node.js wave, but at the time node.js was nowhere near the solid platform it is today and as we over-estimated the short-term funding and growth possibilities: we just thought that investing in reliable and scalable services would pay of sooner than it would have and that the language zoo would be no problem as the team grew bigger.
      • Technical idealism at the wrong place: I am and always was a CouchDB fanboy. But at the time the concept of CouchApp was also on the horizon and I was so much into the vision of distributed, independent and self-contained web applications, that I tried to make the whole architecture work in such a future. This future never happened and I could have spent a lot of the time working on actual product features with immediate impact.

    • Bad luck on timing: When we started, Twitter's API was still hugely unregulated and Facebook and Google had an XMPP API for messaging and saw it mainly as a relatively unimportant extra for their main products. But then messaging was the new big thing and they changed to a more closed and even more walled garden strategy. This was before business messaging accounts were on their focus, so we did not have the old API but the new APIs (e.g. Facebooks pages messaging) were not available yet. Needless to say, this was a small disaster for a startup with very limited resources. Luckily, we supported emails as a channel from day one so we could focus on email use cases. Maybe email support would have been on the over-engineering list too, if it did not allow us to build new iterations in this difficult time. Good email support is a huge pain to build, but once you have it, it's so powerful, that I do not regret a single sleepless night building it.

    • Focusing on consumers instead of businesses for too long: Building a product for consumers instead of businesses requires a very different mindset. After it became clear consumers and prosumers would not be a big enough market it took us too long to start focusing on businesses, mainly due to the different cultures.

    • What finally killed us: Contract Negotiations with a big German business When we finally managed to make the switch we were already very low on runtime. It was clear we could just try this time. One of our investors gave us one of their lawyers but the contracts were just an endless rabbit hole. When we finally found a somewhat acceptable basis, the big company had a restructuring and the contact person changed, we had zero runtime left and instead of being able to start the cooperation we had a new contract version in the mail that gave them complete exclusivity on so much of the project that we could never have used the software with a different client. That was the end.

     

    Which were your investments? Did you achieve some revenue? Did you lose any money?

    We raised a small angel round of ~ 70K € and burned through ~ 70K € of private savings for living costs for me and my co-founder. After giving up, just keeping alive the company entity and getting everything to a happy ending cost me another 15K. Our first business deal never happened and we never had revenue, so all this money could be seen as 'lost'. On the other hand, the learnings and time we had were incredible so for me at least it was totally worth it.

     

    What did you learn?

    In addition to all the learnings from mistakes I already talked about: I learned a lot about my weaknesses and people. Lastly, I hugely improved as a developer, architect, and CTO. This personal development is hard for me to put into words, it's just too much, and it is hard to tell what is a result of growing up and what is directly connected to the startup experiences. Just so much: I am not naturally good at implanting my vision into other people and also, I am not good at letting go and accepting half-baked solutions with long-term risks when there is not enough time.

     

    What's your advice for someone who is just starting?

    I don't want to give advice; the world is full of un- or semi- successful entrepreneurs happily giving advice to anyone and even those who were successful are full of survivorship bias and most advice is bullshit anyways. If someone has a question I am always happy to answer as honest as I possibly can.

     

    Which book would you recommend?

    I think books about entrepreneurship or technology are overrated. I read abstracts about all important concepts and go into slightly more depth for things I find relevant or interesting, but reading or writing a whole book instead of "doing" just feels fundamentally wrong.

     

    Where can we go to learn more?

    I am not publishing much at the moment, but if there is any news, I will most likely post it on Twitter.

     

    Original interview posted at https://failory.com/interview/flux

    submitted by /u/richclominson
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    Why scientists suggest that the future of corporate training is governed by adaptive learning

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:33 PM PST

    Dr. Chris Littlewood explains why he thinks that the future of corporate training is governed by adaptive learning:

    The process can be broken down into 3 stages: personalisation—not only what the user will learn about, but also how, and why; the data challenge—how information gathered as the user progresses through modules can be used to further personalise the training, through the examination of which learning techniques have proved to work the best; usefulness—data and results can be stored and used to establish how effective a course was, and provide a better platform for future courses which can be quickly tailored to existing users.

    submitted by /u/ketodnepr
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    Why do startups fail?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:33 PM PST

    You should check out http://autopsy.io. It is pretty awesome. More than 100 failed startups with a deep dive into how they failed. You always hear about success stories but this is pretty cool to see also what can go wrong and why.

    submitted by /u/kinetichealth
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    Is it possible to negotiate with Aliexpress suppliers if I'm making a large order?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:31 PM PST

    I'll be making an order of about $500 worth of variations of two of their products. I don't want to have to pay fedex shipping on every variation of the two products all coming from the one supplier. I'd rather they be grouped into one shipment for one price.

    submitted by /u/arms_
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    What is some smaller company that you really envy for their idea/product

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:05 PM PST

    For me definetly https://www.notvodkawater.com/ !

    The bottles look sick, the idea is funny and the plastic bottle are insanely cheap at 10$ a piece, not sure why they don't sell them for 20$.

    What are the small companies you really like/envy.

    //Edit: I just noticed, this sounds like an ad... I am in no way endorsed with the named company nor do I have anything to do with it.

    submitted by /u/KurtisBlowIsMyJam
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    Look for some examples for 'Thank You' pages

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 02:02 PM PST

    I currently just have a pop-up for when someone completes their check out process that simply says 'Thank You'

    I'm looking for some ideas on a 'Thank You' landing page. Thinking of maybe adding my other company on the page if they are interestead to get another service done.

    Any examples would be great!

    submitted by /u/wwwdotredditdotcomm
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    I have been reached out to by a small clothing store.

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 04:41 AM PST

    Hi, I have an etsy store that sells print on demand designs, I have been reached out to by someone who is interested in stocking my designs, they are a small independent clothing store and I am looking for advice on how to reply to them, what questions should I asked?

    Thanks for any advice.

    submitted by /u/aaranaw
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    Anybody else see an increase in USPS postage prices near the end of last month?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:11 PM PST

    I ship out 8oz books and the first class shipping rate has jumped from $3.30 to $3.80...over 50 cents? That is a huge jump, did anyone else experience something like this?

    submitted by /u/gooblemonster
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    A Case for Updating Old Content (Personal Finance Blog)

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:07 PM PST

    I'll be honest. It's tough sometimes to even get my weekly post out. I've got a rhythm going most of the time. But even with that, it does take quite a bit of time and energy for me to publish/promote any new post.

    For the previous month, I made an effort to revisit some of my old content in addition to publishing new content. Well, I think it's safe to say that I have definitely improved since my first few posts. My new posts looked nicer, were more interesting, had more structure, and a more refined voice.

    So I took the liberty to make updates to my past posts. It was time consuming. I didn't make huge alterations or re-write content. It was more like adding downloadable content (DLC) to a video game. Updating a program to the newest version.

    Some of the benefits of doing this were:

    Updating Info: As mentioned before, things change over time. As a personal finance blogger, maybe I've learned something new on a topic I wrote about already. Well, if it doesn't seem worthy enough to write a new article, I can go back and add it to the post. Or if something changes and what I wrote in the past is now incorrect, I can go back and make the adjustment. I want my site to stay relevant and valuable to readers.

    SEO: I had no idea what SEO was when I first started. Well, looking back at my old posts, I could see that there was no real focus. So it was definitely a challenge to bring those posts up to date with relevant keywords. But, I think that the changes will have a big impact and look forward to seeing the return on investment.

    Internal Links: Related to SEO, internal links were non-existent in the beginning. Well, if you only have 3 posts, you can really only do so much. Now that I have a lot more articles out there, I can find places to link to my other articles with relative ease. Especially since a lot of personal finance topics relate to one another. Excited to see how this lowers my site's bounce rate.

    Improving Graphics: I've been trying to make all my graphics more pinterest-worthy (since that seems to be a valuable social media platform for bloggers). I cringe at some of the old Canva graphics I used to put out. I've gone through and updated several of them to be a bit more aesthetically pleasing.

    I think there's work in updating old posts for sure. But I'm hoping that the time and energy spent doing so will be beneficial. Of course I'll keep you guys updated on just how much of an impact this was for me in about a month.

    This is an ongoing update for my personal finance blog's progress, along with things I'm trying and learning on the way. I have posted here twice before, if you're interested in checking those out:

    1: 3 Months, 2000+ Pageviews Later - A Personal Journey

    2: The Power of Promoting - Lessons I've Learned From Various Social Media Platforms

    I'd definitely love to know if you guys get into a habit of updating/promoting old posts. I definitely want to keep it up, but want to make sure it's worth my time. I know people say that you should be promoting more than you're writing. So is the trade-off to skip a post and focus on updates/promoting old post worth it?

    I'd definitely love to hear your thoughts!

    EDIT: Link to blog

    submitted by /u/aznkingkong
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    Paying someone to run events in different state? How to pay? Franchisee? Independent Contractors?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:06 PM PST

    How to pay someone to run a festival booth in a different state? The 'employee' would be sent all materials and inventory necessary to setup booth and sell products. They are expected to ring up customers and give product knowledge.

    How to prevent theft and should this person be an independent contractor or franchisee?

    How are most remote "pop up" shops run?

    submitted by /u/Awakeat5amagain
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    Can someone help me with my payform? If not can you recommend a good pay form? I'm a college student, so budget is an issue, but I'll splurge if need be.

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 01:03 PM PST

    I have a website coming along for my summer poop scooping business. I'm struggling trying to figure out how to get this pay form to display numbers though. I've been stuck for hours!

    https://m.imgur.com/a/pUTQ5

    submitted by /u/lazyanglophone
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    Living in South America. How do I get started running my own one man show?

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:59 PM PST

    So I live in Uruguay and I speak Spanish fluently. I have years of experience working in sales, customer retention and billing. I currently work as an English teacher for a school as well as teaching at a language institute. I want to teach soft skills to people here who speak English as a second language. I'm pretty sure I could start my own gig but I'm not sure where to start first. How would I go about writing up a contract? How would I appropriately approach a company with a business offer? Is there anything online or books I could buy for more information?

    submitted by /u/ThisOneLast
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    Taxes for online business¿

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:54 PM PST

    So a friend of mine had an idea for an online business, where players would buy a digital currency, use it to play games, and cash out for real world prizes if they do well enough. We're kind of confused about the tax side of things. I live in TX and he lives in OR. If we form an LLC in texas, do we also have to form an LLC in OR? Do we have to pay business taxes in both states? All states we do business in? Just the state we LLC in?

    Any good resources that would explain this stuff in a simple and concise manner, or do we have to consult an attorney for this kinda info?

    submitted by /u/fedlol
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    [Feedback] Project Management Process at Global Scale

    Posted: 09 Feb 2018 12:28 PM PST

    Hi Guys,

    Trying to understand the pm process for companies that work across continents and at a global scale. Would appreciate if someone was willing to have a discussion discussing the nuances and process.

    Trying to understand what changes from what I know / understand about PM at a larger scale.

    Thanks in advance!

    submitted by /u/V-007
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