Reflections on start-up life: Week 11

It’s always great to look back at the goal from last week and realise you achieved it (refine and rework business pitch ready for Sydney). It’s not so great when you realise that’s the only thing you’ve done!

I was reflecting this morning that even now, as a two person, “pre-revenue” company (the fancy way of saying broke), we have enough work to employ at least another two people and keep them productive and busy. One would be a full-time engineer to help Alex as he’s started down the design path for the real engine — between that and a half a dozen other small programming jobs (tweak some features in Twendly to validate the business model, update the BinaryPlex website), they would stay very busy.

The second person while I’m dreaming would be a marketing / sales person. They’d be busy researching the market, doing competitor analysis (look, progress — we have competitors now and we even know who they are!), helping out with pitch slides, and starting to utilize their extensive knowledge and contacts to find us some early sales.

As you might gather, there is still only the two of us and work for about four. By Friday I began to feel that even if we hadn’t “caught up”, we at least had our heads above the water again.

This week is a significant one, we are taking our idea on the road to Sydney. This has been a bit of an act of faith (but what isn’t in start-up land); we picked a week, said we’d be in Sydney and started trying to get slots with different people to hear our idea. So far the first three days are quite full now, Thursday and Friday we have some time if anyone wants to catch up and say hi.

The most significant lesson I think I’m continuing to learn and have reinforced is it’s never too early. If you’re not sure your ready, go for it anyway and the feedback will get you to the next stage quicker than you otherwise would of.

Should be a lot of fun.

Highlights?

• Our first long term commitment — we WILL still be here in April, we’ve booked tickets to Chirp the Twitter Developers conference. Also our single biggest expense (beyond setting up the company) due to the travel and accommodation associated with it as well.
• Great feedback on our pitches which helped us build a better pitch.
• Actually spending a week on Business Development, not Product Development.

Lowlights?

• My Nan passing away and the funeral.
• Getting bored and fed up with countless revisions to slide decks.

Goal this week?

Make some great contacts in Sydney and really road test our idea with investors.