Me, Myself and Muziboo

A Bootstrapper’s Diary

The big question that awaits us all after we – a 2 or 3 member bootstrapped team – have cranked out enough code to launch a web product is “How do we market it?”. A sensible question to ask considering all the effort that has gone into developing it. And the answer that we most often settle on, though considered somewhat trite, is to go for online advertising, press releases, e-mail campaigns and the like to fetch probably the initial hundred users. In-spite of making a headway in this direction, there is a nagging dissatisfaction that we all experience for the reason that these answers can only go thus far…fetching a few hundred users. It is at this point that we are plagued by the inevitable thought: If there are hundreds of them using the platform just a few months from launch, it is only a matter of getting the word out to a million of them and success is all ours to celebrate. Hence, let’s go full hog on the all obvious approach of pumping more resources into mass marketing.

Does this thinking make sense? Intuitively yes. But from personal experience, we have understood that this approach, at this stage, is useless at best and detrimental at worst. Let’s see why.

A few months from launch, most of us are still finding our ground; looking to carve a niche. And the initial traction just indicates a possible need in the market for a product like yours and nothing more. What is pertinent at this stage is to engage with the early users to understand how your product is perceived, how your hypothesis of solving their needs with your product has worked out and what can be done to offer them better value and better experience. This step is extremely crucial for this not only shapes your product but also helps you validate your market. Also, undertaking this step offers the invaluable opportunity to evaluate features based on user needs and stop development efforts in directions that have not been welcomed thus saving precious development time and resource.

Another much overlooked aspect in the user engagement step is how it helps in making evangelists of your early adopters thus setting the ground for Word Of Mouth marketing. Right after launch it is quite possible that you perceive your product to be a bunch of features thrown together to be marketed to millions. However, over the course of your engagement with your users, you will realize that your product is not just about features but an experience in itself that needs to be improved for better adoption and wider consumption.

If you skip this crucial step and spend your time and money on driving mass adoption just months from launch, you will most likely be pumping resources into marketing a half baked product, a solution for a need that is still not validated, a company philosophy that hasn’t fully evolved and a positioning that is fragile. And how does all this prove detrimental? You have cut your existence short by exhausting limited resources. And you have unhappy customers or non-complaining ones at best.

A Bootstrapper’s Diary

Stories of successful Internet companies are heart warming fairy-tales – after they have exacted their fair share of efforts, from the founders, to get scripted. Any news of Internet success in the market leaves the self proclaimed ‘gurus’ mouth-watering, with an appetite to use start-up jargons and generous doses of ass-kissing, to give their ‘I told you so’ nuggets for wannbae entrepreneurs.  Start-up lessons are a dime a dozen in the WWW, as there are MBAs and weekend hackers. What leaves an odd taste in the mouth is that very few come from people with any experience at all. Most are abstract and aimless cliches feeding illusions of milk, honey and big-money which often work to the reader’s disadvantage.

Disadvantageous because, only entrepreneurs with real experience talk about setbacks and challenges (those everyday realities of business) rather than predictable fluff (build smart products; be committed as founders; stay ahead of competition) . Any straight talk is  glaringly missing in today’s discourses. These fake pundits have taught us enough to celebrate success, which may not be a bad idea by itself, as long as we don’t miss out on discussing those practical techniques that help in reaching the goal without quitting.

As an entrepreneur that has sustained the same business for 2 years, without soliciting or even needing an investment, I frequently get asked “How do you do it?” and “What is the journey like?”. Beyond all these plaudits, I sincerely feel, Muziboo could have gotten here faster with some sensible advice – admittedly, this was hard to come by. Hence my decision to take it upon myself, to discuss ( and not teach ) through a series of posts  all our experiences and learnings that we (Prateek and I) have gained through Muziboo under the heading ‘A Bootstrapper’s Diary’ in this blog.

In my opinion it hardly is. By saying its an alternate career option are we trying to tell the students that they can choose to work with Wipro or Infy or heck, they can do something on their own? Well entrepreneurship is not an alternate choice, its a personal option chosen by a person after having some experience to understand himself and what he wants and how he wants it.

I am immensely puzzled by the sudden trend to promote entrepreneurship in colleges through courses as a part of the syllabus. Well it definitely makes sense to learn how to draw up a business plan but thats just a part of a business course! Entrepreneurship to a large extent is about perseverance, patience, ability to take initiatives, responsibilities and myriad challenges. When such is the case how is anybody gonna teach all this in a classroom. If there was so much logic and science behind entrepreneurship that it can be taught in a classroom why are entrepreneurs still dabbling?

Well, what made me twitch was this . If I am not wrong, its NEN conducting a course for teachers to teach entrepreneurship to students. Is something grossly amiss about my understanding of things?

Is NEN sure about what its goals are? If they are out to create an ecosystem around entrepreneurs and startups, it can have tangible benefits. But pumping resource and energy into spreading and celebrating entrepreneurship at college level when nobody has any clue seems to undermine the true spirit.

The obvious reason for more and more people to try their hand at entrepreneurship with a web venture is because of the significant decline in hardware costs and the availability of Open source Software these days. That apart theres no real need for an office which greatly brings the overheads down. And a few success stories in the industry definitely pep you up to scratch your itch for the ‘big buck’

But the million dollar question here is how would you want to define success for your venture. Is it always about attracting a million eyeballs to your service and heading for an acquisition? Or bet on the hyped up ad sense revenue stream? (The sad realisation now is none of the Social networks of any kinds will ever make money through ad networks cos people come there to stay and not click ads to hop on to the next website.)

Worse still are this bunch of people who consider VC funding as success by itself. What most fail to realise is that one has every chance of going bust and failing in their attempt to impress the world with their service even after all the millions that they bag. Numerous such VC funded startups hit the dust.

In my opinion there are only two kinds of ventures. The ones that make money and the ones that don’t. If you have service used by millions of people but you still havent figured out a way to make money, but banking on acquisition, its pretty lame. Cos if the acquisition exit does not work, you will die.

When can you make money. Only when people find your service great enough that they consider its worth paying.The most often heard advice from everybody in the circle these days is ‘ Dont worry about revenue models. Concentrate on providing value’. And this often comes from people who have never burnt their fingers with anything. All they do is read a few blogs and preach. How long can a bootstrapped web venture go like this. Especially if you are a media site, with increasing user demands, one has to step aside and think “Am I offering enough value that one day when I make it paid, people will care for my service that they pay and use”

Here are a few of my opinions

1) If you believe in an idea and there are enough stats to let you believe that there is a market for it, don’t validate your idea with too many people. Get yourself to build a prototype. Your users are your best critics. Its tough to translate ideas in your head to people around with just words. Even a basic prototype can turn heads.

2)Dont be different just for the heck of it and dont stick to a niche which just serves an elite. As far as possible keep the consumer base wide.

3)As your service takes shape you should concentrate more on what you can offer that people wouldnt mind paying for.

4)Decide ways to get the word out to people. Do not get carried away with every Tom, dick and Harry’s airy-fairy offline marketing suggestions. Offline marketing and brand building comes with a cost and in the initial stages, spend more time on fine-tuning your service than going offline to increase user base.

5)You will always encounter extremes of opinion about your service. No point getting carried away or getting low for either of these

6)Dont spend too much time on refining your UI. Make sure the colours are comfortable and the navigation is intuitive. Most people find it easy to put your service down on the basis of UI. If they are not users of your service, dont even care hearing them out. If they are users, explain as to why you stuck to a particular design. At the end of the day, people come for your service not for those frills that u managed to add

7)Web 2.0 is only associated with ajax, gradient colors, drop shadows and shiny buttons. They all can go only so far in acquiring or retaining users. Concentrate on providing a service where the content generated by the users means something. If you are running a service just to plot the social graph, its a bit too late. All possible combination of graphs that need to be created are already created by the biggies. Its hightime one banked on the value of the generated content.

8)Try not to run a service which has already failed multiple times elsewhere, especially the US. The US market is a good indicator. Unless you really have something in the local context, its not a great idea.

9)If you are the first of the kind to start something, please look around as to why it doesnt already exist. sometimes some services don’t exist for a reason!

10)Last but not the least, it takes some guts to bootstrap and believe in your idea. Web is not the quick buck as most people perceive it to be. Its a long haul if you are aiming to run a sustainable business. Hence stay put!