Start-ups: When nothing goes your way.

LinkedIn is filled with success stories. As with all social media, the majority of people - in our case, founders - are only sharing highlights of their journey.

• The first deal for the month
• Secured investment round
• Got a new partnership

aaand then they proceed to claim that they have cracked the formula of how to be a successful founder.

The truth is this journey is FAR from linear. I think that only sharing the good stuff shows a very distorted version of what it feels like to start a new company.

The truth is, start-up life is completely chaotic!

The main reason I started this newsletter was to give an honest and transparent view of how it feels to start a new company from scratch ( or 2, in my case).

And the BS I read on all socials couldn't be further from the truth.

It's complete and utter absolute f*cking chaos!

Things go great, then horrible, then great again, then even worse, then you catch a break.

That cycle repeats on a daily basis.

What I mean to say is:

It's ok that you're struggling, it's ok that some days you lose all hope. You're doing an incredibly difficult thing. Don't give up on yourself!

But in order to keep the spirit of transparency and not make this into just a motivational post, I'll share some of my latest f*ck ups:

I have calculated everything perfectly. Besides one thing...

So I have put down a PnL, I have my runway calculations, decent to great traction, a lot of interest, and everything is going great, right?

Oh, sweet summer child, no, no, it's not. For every aspect that I have accounted for and planned for, six more haven't popped up.

So what happened with skills. that was planned to launch a couple of weeks ago our IT Development company gave us a timeline, and then they hit issue after issue after issue.

Have I calculated for delays since I've been in software sales for the past 8 years?

Yes.

Have I calculated for 2 months of delay for an - almost-of-the-shelf build for apps?

No.

Have we been hitting all milestones until that happened?

Yes.

Did that same fact end up biting us in the end?

Oh, absolutely!

How hitting all your targets can end up hurting you I hear you ask?

Well, let me tell you:

Let's say you have created a lot of interest in your service. Users and partners are looking forward to the launch of your platform and are eager to invest.

Preparations, marketing material, branding content, and word of mouth are all orchestrated to build momentum and build up to a peak.

During those efforts, there are still costs (not a lot, but still) associated with those activities.

Everything builds to a point where you are ready to monetise, you can almost taste it.

aaand then you can't funnel that interest anywhere because of technical issues...

I thought I had calculated everything correctly. Apparently, I did not. I've spent a couple of days being angry with myself for not being able to foresee this.

Then I started understanding that the best thing I could do here was learn from it and move forward.

What I mean to say here is:

Whatever you do, you will hit roadblocks. The road to even launching something is turbulent, let alone making it profitable. The sooner you accept the chaos the sooner you can pick up your speed

At the end of the day, what this forced us to do was to adapt on the fly, pivot, and extend our runway in a very short time.

Learning to adapt quickly to change will be your biggest asset.

Luckily, fast pivots in strategy have been in my toolbox from a long career in Sales.

We did manage to find alternative channels to funnel the interest we created, find solutions to the tech issues, and extend our runway simultaneously.

That took a lot of brainstorming, creativity and A LOT OF WORK.

Learning how to adapt your strategy based on roadblocks, market conditions or customer input is crucial for your survival.

You are not alone. All Founders are struggling with similar issues.

After countless conversations with fellow founders, that's my main takeaway.

We are all facing similar issues.

One of the main ones is that ALL advice out there is offering long-term solutions to short-term issues.

When your company's SURVIVAL is on the line because you have 2 damn months of runway left, doing long-term projects won't cut it!

It becomes frustrating - almost insulting- to talk to start-up consultants from the world over and hear the SAME vague advice and plans that MIGHT pay off in a year.

The last thing we did was to use our experience in order to build a methodology that allows companies or sales teams to pivot fast and implement short term solutions.

After implementing that solution in a company similar to ours, they opened up a new segment after the session and won their first deal in that segment within 6 weeks.

If you are looking for a short term fix for your revenue or runway, let's have a chat.

I know we can help out.

Have a look here . Not all projects need to be time-consuming. There are ways to improve your cash flow faster than you think. Break The Box

What do you think? Have you experienced the same issues as a Founder?

How did you solve them?

Share with the rest of us :)

Until then:

Keep building, you will make it work out in the end!