Ready for Spring — after 6 Month re-building Syntinels

This article is inspired by?Refounding Vise,

a medium article about the painful process of rebuilding an U.S. based Grownup

— thanks to? Samir Vasavada ?for your transparency and to? Max Linden ?? for your hint.

Today, sitting at the sunny “Aa”see/lake in Münster,

my aim with this article is,

to motivate and enable you,

as an early stage founder,

to not skip your vision or values

in non-sunny “Aa”,

but “shit hits the fan” phases of your (entrepreneurial) journey.

Happy spring, keep building something meaningful ??.

A. Basics — where we are coming from

Pareto

You can skip this part and still get all the learnings

from the next paragraphs.

But to get a better understanding of our situation,

I want to provide some context for you first.

Context

We started our business end of 2019.

Selling a solution to help business

build meaningful relationships with their buyers.

3 founders, hacker, hipster, hustler,

2 of us while still studying,

1 next to his main business, a software agency.

Addressing a massive and unsolved B2B problem,

we’ve had the 1st customer signed within the 2nd month.

Without a product, we started to provide services & tons of Excel sheets,

and transferred our concept step by step in technology.

Before we have paid ourselves adequately,

we started hiring a young, hungry team through our University network.

Our company culture had a family vibe.

We’ve learned a lot together and celebrated successes on a regular basis

in a consistently growing team.

Strategy was our biggest deficit,

execution, our biggest strength.

B. Challenge —we faced in 11.2022

Spoiler

After 3 years semi successful early stage building,

we hadn’t reached PMF —

Detailed described by my Co-Founder Malte Lohaus in?this article.

In correlation with the economical downturn

and with a nonalignment regarding our overall strategy,

for 1 of us 3 founders, it was time for new shores.

That presented a pivotal (shit hit the fan) moment,

so what to change first?

Without a profitable business model,

a growing team of a good dozen juniors,

and cash for <6 months,

we had to make some tough decisions fast to win time:

• Going to the?bank?and taking a?loan on private risk, again.
• Asking existing?customers?for paying 2023?bills in advance - thanks again!
• Laying off part of the?crew?to?reducing?burn, for the first-time.

Quick Results

By end of November,

we were half of the crew,

50:50 dismissed and changed by themselves.

Having a broken “family culture vibe” when reality kicked in,

facing a pivot over winter with limited energy after a challenging 2022.

In this phase of high pressure and low resources

we intuitively focused on 3 things —?Customer, Crew, Cash.

Today we see it as a necessary trigger moment

that change our way to work fundamentally.

C. Solution — what we changed over the winter

The tough decisions in November were just short time solutions.

Necessary based on a lack of strategy, clarity and customer centricity.

We knew, if we do not solve this,

we won’t be able to build something great.

1. Brutal Honesty — with the co-founder

Malte and I are trying to crack this case for years on a daily basis together

— for both of us, it’s the first entrepreneurial project.

Our first passwords back in 2020 was “Unicorn2025”,

you see, we are not lacking in optimism.

But after 3 years building,

losing a founding partner recently and facing a challenge time,

it felt right to feel each other’s pulse.

Sitting Friday — Sunday in our office,

we created financial clarity, calculated scenarios and preparing decisions

but before, we were as honest as you can imagine to each other

- on a business and a personal level:

• What pisses you off on my way to work — what you?ever wanted to say?
• Do?you?still?believe?— can?we?solve this problem?with a product?
• Do?you?have the?energy?for this — can?we?still?inspire others?
• What is your personal dead end — what is our?“Game over”?

By Sunday eve, we had 100% clarity of each other’s position,

able to taking decisions intuitively, including the others perspective

and trusting each other more than ever.

… of course, we should have done this session earlier, as a trio.

2. Transparency — for the Crew

After we had clarity, it was time to give it to the crew,

answering the uncomfortable questions proactively

• What’s in the bank — how long can we pay salaries / can we all stay?
• Our CTO leaves — what is our technical perspective / who?owns the IP?
• What’s the direct customer feedback — what is our product perspective?

In the retro, I think, we could have solved this step much better.

By November, we still hided some uncomfortable information,

trying to create a “everything will be great” mode

and lacking in self-confidence.

But we got better day by day.

Quitting 4 great people was the worst morning of my career so far.

I’m happy, that they found a new place thanks to our network

but mainly thanks to their great skills.

From 01.12.2022 we have rolled up our sleeves in the new, small core team highly transparent.

3. Fairness — and stand by your words

After creating transparency with the crew,

we started to give it for all other Stakeholders.

We expected a lot of progress for 2022

and promised it to early customers, partners and investors.

I was afraid to be seen as this guy that tells a lot but will not deliver a bit of it — but my ego is not what interests others,

right?

Wrong.

After giving transparency to our stakeholder’s reaction was mostly

How do you guys feel?

How can I help most?

Everything happens for a reason, keep on going, I trust you.

That’s the moment you know, you took a good decision with people.

Backed by this trust,

we’ve been able to find a good solution with our founding partner,

by talking a lot in regular iterations, being fair to each other

and trusting in a great lawyer on our side (PM me for an introduction).

I’m proud and thankful,

that we can still look at each other as friends.

Even though we don’t do business together anymore.

4. Clarity — to convince new stakeholders

We still had to convince new

• customers to validate and grow together
• crew members to build great technology
• investors to extend our runway

The key to achieve that was clarity and focus.

Next to great traction — not our big strength these times,

seniority and self-reflection gives trust to join a case / team.

Therefore, we played our solves challenges proactively as strength

and asked for advice on the current challenges.

Collectively, we stopped overselling.

For me, that is one of the major changes that even influences me privately.

5. Focus — to be aligned, fast and intuitive as a team

Earlier in this monologue,

you’ve read that we’ve intuitively focused only on “Customer, Crew, Cash”.

This is what we still do

to drill down our

5 year Vision in

1 year Missions and

3 OKR per quarter — “Customer, Crew, Cash”.

Simplification is one of our new core values that makes us more efficient.

Et voilà

In Q1.2023 we overachieved our targets for the first time,

having more customers and runway than before,

after “close to death” just 6 months ago.

D. Future — in new chapter starts with this spring

In conclusion, we strayed too far away from where we started. Now, we are operating like a small, hungry start-up again. We’re better off in almost every way.

Samir?in?Refounding Vise - my favorite quote of the underlying article.

In our early stage organization,

it should never have been different.

But we got de-focused and re-focused painfully.

Now, the only thing we care about is

P...

roduct that solves a relevant problem for our customers and is a

10/10 solution for the user.

M...

aximizing time with our customers with our entire crew.

F...

ocus on our vision to enable B2B companies to?interact in Synergy

and don’t run out of cash on this journey.

Hopefully our story is helpful for you to survive tough times.

Thanks to everyone that used to be part of our journey,

helping us to survive the winter.

Now we are thrilled to continue,

better than ever.

Yours

Flo & the?Syntinels?Crew