Back to Square One

I want to start by thanking you for reading this.

It's been four months since Herodesk.io was launched. So much has happened already. Stuff that I've experienced, been asked about or thought about, that I want to share.

Before starting this blog, the first thing to decide was: What do I want to share and where? This blog will be my personal thoughts and "journal" on starting a new business. I don't think it's appropriate for the Herodesk blog, and it'll be too random and unstructured to just post updates on LinkedIn.

Also, I don't want to spend time setting up a personal blog with Wordpress, and Medium.com doesn't feel right either.

So, here it is: My LinkedIn newsletter about going back to Square One and starting a new business.

Why start a new business?

May, 2023

I left my previous job in January 2023.

Since I joined that company six years prior, it'd grown from 45 people in Skanderborg, DK, to more than 2.000 employees across Europe.

It had become a whole different company - as it should when growing so much in such a short time. New leadership, a top-down management style and a new strategy meant I would lose much of the independence I cherished.

I soon learned that corporate life and I just aren't compatible.

I am strongly opinionated about what I do and cannot "just do a job"

I still care about the people, the product and the customers, but my job there was done, so I handed over the torch.

At that time, I wasn't planning to start a new company. Honestly, I didn't have any plan at all other than taking a break. I'd been on full-throttle for 15 years. First SpeedGaming, then Meebox (my two first companies) and finally DanDomain.

I spent the following months thinking about how I wanted to work in the future and found that:

• I am strongly opinionated about what I do and cannot "just do a job", so I want to do something where, if I'm not in charge, I want to be among those who are. I really (really, really!) don't like someone telling me to go in a direction that I disagree with
• I'm okay with working many hours, as long as it's for a cause that makes sense (to me, at least)
• I cherish the freedom and flexibility that I've gained and don't want to return to a (65 hour per week) 9-5 job

So, yeah... That doesn't leave too many options on the table.

Finding a product

June, 2023

The Product is the most important part of any business. After deciding to start a new business, I needed to figure out what this new company should do and what it should sell.

Over the past few years, the helpdesk industry has been moving up in both price and complexity.

I started to narrow it down:

• I wanted to stay in the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) industry. Building a product that is sold as a subscription to the customers
• The product should solve a problem for small and medium-sized businesses. I care deeply about them!
• I want to steer clear of enterprise customers, as they tend to demand all sorts of things from the product to sign up (basically, they want to define your roadmap for you). I'd much rather have many small customers who can use the product as it is than a few large.
• I want to minimize external risk vectors. In Meebox, we hosted other people's stuff, which led to all sorts of obscure problems. In DanDomain, we hosted webshops, which gave uncontrollable and enormous load spikes whenever someone got featured on TV or (even worse!) on Black Friday.
• The product should be important to the customers, but not a matter of life or death! Shit happens, especially in tech. When that happens (and it will happen to everybody at some point, don't try to fool yourself!), it should be super annoying, but it shouldn't be a question of life or death.

--

When working at DanDomain and in the Danish e-commerce industry, I noticed how many were struggling with their customer support. It didn't make any sense to me. There are so many huge companies offering different helpdesk/support solutions.

Why aren't they solving the problem?

Then, I saw a pattern. Over the past few years, the helpdesk industry has been "moving up" in both price and complexity. While there are lots of tools to choose from, they are either too complex, too expensive or don't really solve the customers' problems (sometimes even a combination of the three!)

So there it was. I found something that checked all the boxes!

? I got to be an entrepreneur and have my own company.

? I could build a SaaS product targeted SMBs, return to product development, and focus on the product, the technology and the code

? It is in the customer service sector that I find so important and, at the same time, neglected by many businesses

Perfect! All that's left to do now is build the product and business.

In the next post, I'll write about how I want to conduct my business. My "Rules of Engagement".