@devin_rogers54 Honestly, you're right. I wasted time on pointless things. Things that seemed important at the time, but not so much now. If I knew exactly what was needed and how it was going to be implemented, along with all of the tools that I discovered later on. I would've been done with the MVP in a month. But, now if I think about it, as a first time founder who just had Software development experience, I believe that was bound to happen. The best I can do know is to learn from my mistakes and try not to make the same mistake twice.
@ericro You’ll never know exactly what needs to be built on a startup. Only thing u can do is optimize for quick iteration (which is why choosing “heavy” languages or frameworks is bad at that stage)
@devin_rogers54 Mismanagement for sure. Oh we had customers. Just no real tech product. The MVP is still in the exact same state as I left the startup 2 years ago, 80% done. The CEO is still to this date running around and trying to acquire customers, and when he raise a bit of funding he immediately spends it on marketing people. There is no substance in the business whatsoever.
I don’t agree that most MVP can built in weeks in most cases. A few can, but certainly not most. But that’s another discussion.
@omadaze Since I have no startup experience, I won't know what's the best use for the provided funds, so I'm taking the bootstrap approach. It's slow. It's frustrating, but I can go for funding approach when I want to scale, or when I've validated my MVP.
@ericro Did you say you’re starting a marketplace? If so, bootstrapping it will be near impossible unless you already have one side of it. Marketplaces are very hard to start, because getting both sides of the marketplace at the same time is very difficult.
I highly recommend reading The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling or listening to the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast. He regularly talks about marketplaces and how difficult they are to bootstrap. His book and podcast are geared towards bootstrappers (been listening for 10 years now). It’s amazing content and has made me successful bootstrapping as well.
@ericro Do you have ready access to funding, because if you don't have connections already, it's going to be frustrating to get funded once the markets get dry
@ericro It's a good question! Probably no right or wrong answer. I would say it depends on what assumptions you want to validate first.
Do you see glaring gaps in the competition? And do you think that you can close those gaps in your product, and that's how you'll gain traction? How can you test this assumption best?
@ericro I also agree with launch the network first. With a marketplace you need both customers and suppliers to start using it and a critical mass before even launching. Nobody will use any marketplace that has 0 suppliers and/or customers. You need to have hundred’s of them signed up before day 1 launch.
@ericro IMO, If you are seeking investment, I would recommend building and launching a beta. Get your product in the hands of your users and get feedback. Build a product that people want and use. Investors are very selective and want to see traction. If you can’t show a PMF then it will be hard to find funding.
@ericro You’ll need to find a niche with unmet needs to truly differentiate. Hard to get people to jump from one software to another unless bigger value or significant cost savings. Think you have this?
@ericro Build first, launch later. This is how you begin.
But eventually you must switch to Launch First, Build Later. Get the product out there in front of ppl and fail fast. Timing and knowing when to switch is the key.
