6 things to reflect back from Q4 2023 - NOW: A Reflection on Recent Lessons Learned
Let's dive right into it...
Number one is never. Never, ever leave your main business if it has been a pure revenue-generating machine for you. The moment you sort of take your attention off of it, that's when you are making the mistake. I did this. Make sure you don’t.
Number two is building products with users. Sounds good, but you need to find a perfect founder's fit as well. It's not just about product-market fit, but it's also about founder-market fit. I learned about this particular term from Y Combinator videos.
And if you believe in a certain thing, or you believe that there is a problem and you can envision that on a wider scale, and then you can develop a solution for that particular problem, then you will be able to sell that problem with all your heart in it for sure.
Number three is like building your tribe is all about building the vibe first. This tribe is whether it's your team or first line of customers, who are going to buy from you. It's all about setting the vibe, setting the tonality. It's also about platforms.
For example, we launched SpeechToNote on AppSumo and then we were told by a lot of people that we should start a community on Facebook. But I guess Facebook was never the place for us all of the internal team members at SpeechToNote. So we decided that we'd stick with a platform of our choice, like Telegram. And eventually, that worked out well for us.
Number four. I guess you need to stay prepared for repercussions if you have made a big mistake in the past.
So, yes, I have made some bad decisions in the past, in the last couple of years, and that has affected the way I run my team or my company.
Although I have tried recovering from certain bad decisions and they are bad runs over the period, I guess there will be times that I will be punished heavily for those bad decisions for sure. And I guess that time is going to come very soon.
Number five, I need to learn a lot about raising capital for a company. I've always been a big believer in bootstrapped businesses, but if you are someone who believes in running a regular business, like a proper bootstrap business, then it becomes quite difficult for you when you land in the realm of investors and the realm of fundraising.
Then you need to learn terms like SHA and iSAFE, which are nothing but convertible instruments.
Number six is I guess you need to find your audience for the product. Your social presence matters, but if your audience is not hanging around on socials, then you're probably hanging around in the wrong place. Yeah, whether it's especially if you are running a business.
You need to look at it like there are congregations available on the internet where you can find them, or if they are not online, if they're offline, you need to just go there and market yourself there.
Sometimes we get so busy talking about traditional online channels such as SEO and social media marketing that we forget to study our audience very well and forget where and don't take action towards where they are hanging out. So it's super important to understand where they are going or where they are hanging out and then accordingly take the next set of decisions.
So, that's more or less about the learnings that I have learned over the past few months. Let me know what are yours. I would love to hear back from you on this email and would love to talk about your share of learning and your share of stories as well.