2024 was for TESTING - 2025 is for BUILDING

During the Christmas holidays, I've been reflecting some more about last year and what I take with me into 2025. And the more I think about it, the clearer it gets:

2024 was for testing.

2025 is for building.

Remember, up until Nov 11th., I was the only employee in Herodesk. I had some freelancers and agencies helping me (mainly on the marketing side), but that's it.

So, I constantly tested a ton of stuff and learned a lot about what?not?to do.

Go-To-Market strategies.

High-intent keywords are waaaaaaay too expensive (remember whom I'm competing against). Organic Facebook posts don't move anything. Your LinkedIn posts don't translate 1:1 to something that works on Twitter.

Organic and authentic content and top-funnel ads work much better (for us, at this stage, anyway).

Self-onboarding is difficult to nail.

A huge part of the TAM (total addressable market) is underserved because they can't (or won't) self-onboard. They need help. They need someone to walk them through things and get them up and running, and only then will they use the product.

But boy, once they're onboarded, they stick!

I still want to nail self-onboarding, and I hope that in 2025H2 we'll see a 50/50 split in new customers between self- and assisted onboarding.

Say "no" to customers.

Even though we don't have any single account that drives >5% of our revenue, I still found it difficult to say no to customer requests out of fear of losing them, even though I somehow knew what they asked for wasn't the right thing to do for the product (long term strategic, anyway).

Over the next few weeks, we'll become super clear on our ideal customer profile, go-to-market strategy and 2025 goals.

I've promised myself to stick to it, which means saying "no" to some customers and requests that'll pull us in another direction.

Keep It Simple, Stupid!

(I'm the stupid one here, btw.)

I read a lot, which inspires me a lot.

I like to think big, to dream, to build systems and processes.

If I read a book about OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), I often find myself spending hours trying to build the perfect OKR system for Herodesk (I'm facepalming myself as I write this), while simple yearly goals that are broken down into quarterly focuses and monthly tasks would do just fine at this stage.

You should see what I've already set up in ClickUp! for a 2,5 person business...

Anyway, I've promised myself to waste less time dreaming up systems designed for >20 ppl. organizations and more time on what we need now to get to where we want to go.

The only place where I won't budge on quality and (what some might see as) overinvestment is the product code.

I find pride in building a product that works great. In writing great code that I can revisit after 6 or 12 months and go, "Hey, that's a great solution".

This is a learning from before Herodesk.

No hack 'n slash.

No dirty quick fixes.

Invest the time needed to build something that'll last, that works great and brings customers value, and that doesn't stack up huge piles of technical debt that'll come to haunt me (with interest!) down the road.

(I can feel another post about this coming soon...)

In 2025, we will put those learnings into action.

Set clear goals for the year. Financially and product-wise.

Double down on what we've found to work for us at this stage and put it into perspective for our goals.

Design simple (remember, Anders: Simple!) systems and processes to support us getting there.

Remember what's important: Build a great product that our customers love.

It's pretty clear to me that I bring the most value to the business when I focus on product and strategy.

That's why I hired Sara to be our first customer success manager: To own and execute the customer journey, and talk to and help our customers. Something she's great at and loves doing.

A friend of mine (a start-up CEO) posted in a SaaS community the other day: "We just hired a COO, but I have no experience having one onboard. What should he be responsible for?" and the unanimous answer was: All the things that drain your energy.

What an absolutely brilliant answer!

I expect to hire more people in 2025, too.

I'll remember that advice when deciding which roles to hire.

Where does it hurt? What's needed to allow me to focus on where I create the most value for the business? What drains my energy?

To wrap it up and just to be clear: I'm not saying we've found the holy grail or something. We still need to keep learning every freaking day.

The day we stop learning is the day we lose.

But having spent a lot of time testing lots of stuff, I now have a pretty clear idea of where to go and what to test next.

So my conclusion when thinking back on last year is:

2024 was for TESTING. 2025 is for BUILDING.

LFG! ??