Eight years in the making, and one simple lesson; “build a product, not an idea…”

As an active part of the technology scene in both the U.S. and U.K., we have been fortunate enough to learn from the ups, downs, highs, and lows of everything from “start-ups” to “first generation platforms” and the latest “hot new software”. But the deeper we dive into this flourishing and exciting space, the more we realise just how simple the mission of our community really is.

To coin a phrase from a long-time collaborator, co-founder of Bullhorn Inc, and now founder of Yotme, @BarryHinckley, “...all we are trying to do as technology entrepreneurs is take something disorganised and inefficient, and make it organised and efficient. (Barry’s event marketing CRM @Yotme is bound to smash it, by the way, watch this space! www.why.yot.me)

As we are only too aware, the past fifteen years in technology have been a whirlwind. We have watched some great ideas fail thanks to founder burnout, and some great products bomb because they didn’t resonate with their intended market (or possibly didn’t have a market in the first place). To us, finding the middle ground (a term too often used in a derogatory manner) by building a product rather than an idea, and identifying a resonant product-market fit was imperative. This approach seemingly makes our story stand out from so many others. We aren’t special mind you, just different.

Stockpress capitalised on a chance meeting that took place between digital designer @JessicaStorry and husband and wife development team @BartoszRomanowski and @KamilaRomanowska nearly a decade ago.

As a young and driven entrepreneur, Jessica rapidly established a wide network of loyal clients, but quickly became aware that she couldn’t do everything on her own. However, it wasn’t the likes of Fiverr that helped Jessica find who she needed, but rather the willing customer contact of two exceptional developers. After weeks, then months and eventually years of continuous back and forth, Jessica, Bart, and Kamila’s relationship extended beyond simply helping out on a web project here or there. It had become a working partnership that saw Bart and Kamila almost exclusively delivering backend development for all of Jessica’s projects. It was then (six years ago) that a long-term client, who shall remain nameless for now, challenged Jessica to work her development magic by manipulating an open source #DigitalAssetManagement platform, so their team of creatives and asset managers could actually use it in the way they needed to.

Jessica, Bart, and Kamila spent the next two years wrestling with poorly written code and ill-delivered functionality, until Bart fessed up to Jessica, that he and Kamila thought they could build a better platform themselves. No more band-aids and no more partial functionality, just a platform that worked in the way the client needed it from day one.

So, with Bart and Kamila at the development helm and with four years experience of working together behind them, they began to take stock (pun firmly intended) of the lessons learned from their counterparts, colleagues, and other clients in the tech industry and soon realised that the very real and very specific problem that existed for this client, also existed for other complex organisations. And so it was that the DAM product they’d set out to build for one client became valid in fixing a problem that faced companies across entire industries.

The process of building Stockpress happened over the course of the next four years, working mainly weekends and evenings to get the job done, while “keeping the lights on” with other projects. The first two years were spent researching the competition, digging deep into the market and understanding the challenges of professionals within our industry. The last year has been spent building the product and imagining the brand.

Jessica recalls, “We were lucky to be able to leverage our relationship with a global organisation to live test Stockpress and give us honest feedback as we built it. We essentially beta tested every feature, and even came up with some new ones, based on suggestions from a team who are experts in the DAM space.”

What we didn’t quite appreciate until now though, was just how much our "guinea pig" would help us understand our product in a live environment, this meant that we could get to market much quicker and start generating revenue.

We have been fortunate to accrue eight clients in our first two full months of trading, but, in spite of the fact that we could feel very smug about this, the reality is very different. We have a product, and a market, but to coin another Barry-ism; we have only just "reached the start line” and the path to success needs to be laden with many more clients, just like the brilliant ones we already have.

The narrative behind our story is what’s most important though. As a diverse team of individuals, we are all big enough and ugly enough (Jessica and Kamila, excluded on the ugly part) to know that being in business is never plain sailing. It requires commitment, thick skin, a willingness to listen to feedback and the ability to decipher what may be an unfounded opinion and what could be a valuable direction in improving the product still further.

Then there was the decision to only go to market when the product was just that. Not an idea, not an MVP, but a living and breathing thing. We are only too aware that our long forged relationship with our "guinea pig" allowed us to do it in this way, and we know that not everyone else is so fortunate. We researched, we listened, we took the feedback on the chin and we will continue to do so until Stockpress becomes an essential part of every Digital Asset Managers tool kit and makes the lives of enterprise organisations and their employees easier and more enjoyable.

So that’s what we have tried to do after ten years of forging a solid team, two years spent establishing the problem and identifying the market, and another 2 years of solid development. We have built a product, not an idea. We have reached our 'start line' and join a merry band of committed tech entrepreneurs, who are looking to improve the world, one line of code at a time.

As for why I am here, well that’s another story for another day…

Jessica, Bart, Kamila & Ian

(Stockpress founders)