From Idea to Launch in 4 months

Ladies and gentlemen, here we are, a mere 4 months after workshopping ideas for our business ( I have shared that full process here if you want some inspiration), almost fully ready for our launch.

In this article, I want to share as transparently as possible what we learned, our mistakes, and a bit of what actually went pretty well.

To start, I have to admit that, leaving that first workshop, I thought that launching a full-blown company and service in such a short time was a long shot.

We struggled with time management, hopping from one task to another, and there were plenty of moments where we felt that we were making no progress at all.

But at the end of the day - and a lot of completely avoidable mistakes later - we are now ready to launch our service.

So, here are our most important findings in that journey:

1. Everything takes more time than you think.

And that's not only for people who tend to be time optimists like myself. When you are putting a whole new business together, especially if you are doing something that differs from the norm, there are so many "secret" pockets of tasks that it's almost impossible to plan for all of them.

Have you tried to draft Terms of Service before? Do web design? Negotiate partnerships? Manage a cap table? How do you deal with tax per region? Do you know the privacy requirements in the US or Canada? What about Australia?

When you are trying to build a company, you need to learn to expect the unexpected.

My advice is to keep an open mind and accept that there are a bunch of things you don't know because you can't know everything. Even if this is the 3rd company, you are starting.

Be mindful of your deadlines, primarily to yourself, because they might kill your motivation.

2. You need to deal with today's problems.

"This sounds like tomorrow's problem. Do we really need to put energy into that now?"

I don't know how many times either myself or Sara Storm said this exact sentence to each other.

Keeping focus on what you need to do today can be incredibly hard at times, especially when you're very passionate about what you're building.

Are there further commercial applications of this tech? Should we have a referral programme? What about Enterprise? Should we look for investments after 6 or 8 months? What should the first hire be?

All of these are relevant but probably not urgent questions unless you are on the line of making that decision that week.

You most likely have a lot of tasks to do and a lot of milestones to capture before you can think about hiring your first VP of Sales. So, spending any mental energy on that question or possible candidates now, when your website is not even up, is not helping you.

The main task in the early stages is to keep momentum going and build as fast as possible. Your morale and motivation are precious.

Don't waste time on problems you might face in 2 years or not at all.

3. Funding is not everything

70% of all Start-up advice has to do with how to secure funding. How to raise your evaluation. How to pitch to investors.

If you're sitting and creating a pitch deck before you have validated your idea, figured out your PMF, or fleshed out your team, you're wasting your time.

Creating a company is not all about convincing investors to fork money into your idea; it's about building something you're passionate about. Not all companies need funding.

There are plenty of ways to self-finance your projects. You should consider your options before starting a long and time-consuming campaign to get funded.

For instance, we decided early on that we wouldn't spend time looking for investments. We think it's the wrong focus if we want to accelerate the pace of building our platform and keep our vision and execution fully under our control.

With that in mind, we found ways to self-finance while running as minimal an overhead as possible.

If you can save yourself the time and effort and the possibility of jeopardising your vision, you should. The problem is that most people consider funding an absolute necessity, and that is just not true.

4. You will feel like nothing is working - a lot!

Regardless of how confident you are, you'll have several moments when you feel you can't figure things out.

Questions multiply by the day, and each completed task usually spawns 12 new ones, 9 out of which you have absolutely no idea how to do.

Then, there are plenty of moments when you discover mistakes you made several weeks ago that hurt your current state a lot. In these moments, you will doubt yourself and your decision-making.

What I've understood in the short period of doing this is that building a company is quite similar to a sales process. A lot hangs in your morale and your resilience.

There will be moments when you lose confidence in yourself, your idea, or both. These moments will kill your productivity and progress way more than any mistake you make in the process.

Learn to expect them. Learn to manage them and use them as fuel.

Doubt is just part of the game.

5. Alone is weak.

This is a phrase my wife uses a lot. It's meant to rewire the perception of being alone as a sign of strength. And this is as true for business as it is in life.

Most people, including myself, believe that as a CEO, you need to do everything yourself. Or at least have a say in everything.

The truth is that these people either burn out or fail because they haven't invested enough in building support systems both for themselves and for their company.

You can't do this alone. The sooner you understand and internalise that, the further you'll go.

If you want to build something exceptional, you need a strong co-founder, advisors, partners, champions, testers, and many other people.

I don't mean that you need hires; I mean that you need all the help you can get, from perspectives to advice to word of mouth. Assuming you can do everything yourself, or even worse that doing that makes you some kind of superhero, will just hurt you and your company.

We wouldn't be as far as we are today without the help of our Advisory Group.

Viveca Karima Viso Therése Zetterlund Magdalena Warding Tammy Bombardier MBA, CITP-FIBP and ?? SeyyedReza (Seyyed) Seyyedi

Their knowledge, motivation and expertise has been crucial to the development of skills. as a company and ourselves as Founders.

And just to give you a picture of what happened during these past 4 months:

• We have created a subscription-based training platform that will be ready to receive its first users in just a few days.
• We receive interest both from users and trainers who want to be part of our journey on a daily basis.
• We have confirmed our premise both in its format and in it's intended effect by dozens and dozens of people from different backgrounds.

And what didn't happen

• We haven't spent a single cent on Marketing
• We have invested any money in Development Resources
• We haven't asked for or received any investments

Summary:

There are plenty of misconceptions in the start-up world. Tons of crappy advice and preconceived notions.

My 2 cents after this period in a TL;DR format:

• Time and motivation are your most precious resources. Protect them at all costs.
• You don't need investors to succeed.
• Ask for help. You can't do this alone.

If you have any questions about any of these topics, shoot me an email. I'd be happy to share.

If you want to follow our journey through the final launch with skills. you can follow our page or, even better, get on the waiting list for the Alpha version here.