It was a delight when I woke up one morning to find out that my startup, my dream, had been featured on VentureBeat.
I couldn’t believe they’d done a story about my startup, even though I had been the one that pitched it to them. I had hoped I’d be featured but never expected to; after all, thousands of people pitch to them every day and don’t make the cut. I read the article, smiled and hoped that clients would start coming in by the dozen.
Sadly, it was not to be.
Rewind
I have always had interest in technology, but I never learnt to code. My first foray into starting an online based venture was in 2008 when I registered my first domain, 9jalive.com. I was 22 and there weren’t too many entertainment blogs as we have today.
I was a good writer, I knew, and realised that I could make a name for myself but there were many hurdles to cross. I had no personal computer, no internet at home and I had a limited budget. My parents wouldn’t help — I’d collected around N30,000 some months earlier to pursue an inane online business which I had nothing to show for. Above all, I couldn’t build a site myself.
To cut a long story short, I taught myself Joomla, created the site and before I could say jack, my hosting fees expired and the dream of owning a blog evaporated.
Years later, with many ideas bubbling in my head and many distractions in life, I decided to create something else and registered the domain www.adsolut.net. It was to be a digital marketing startup. I was to be the only staff; with my sister willing to come on “if it works”, because she’d already helped funded some crazy dreams.
I gathered all I could and launched the site. It got featured on TechLoy and VentureBeat where it was hailed as ‘a pioneer in digital marketing in Nigeria’. Adsolut is currently crawling and my failure at propelling it has taught me some lessons about starting up a venture; lessons to stabilise my next venture.
The startup school of hard knocks
Here are some of the lessons I’ve learnt so far:
- Assume you won’t succeed and have a plan B: starting up a new venture is exciting. You’ve prepared for it. You are bound to succeed because you believe you would. After all, you’ve researched and understood what to expect and you know your market. This is called hope. How about reality?
- There are no rules to succeeding: you’ve read books and articles and studied your favourite entrepreneurs. You know what worked for them, you want to follow in their footsteps but should you? Take what worked for them and evaluate it. It might not work for you but you can always mould it to suit your needs.
- Doing business in Silicon Valley is different from doing business as a Nigerian: I thought my life as a startup owner would become more exciting after being in the press. I knew corporations get to spend millions to create awareness for their products and I’d done it for free; shouldn’t I reap a reward for it? What I got, rather than clients, was endless traffic from the world over. I would have preferred just one client rather than a thousand page hits. So next time you see your venture in the press, have this in mind: ‘Press doesn’t always mean shit.’
- Have an advert budget: an advertising budget is essential and advertising shouldn’t be ignored. Getting your business out as an entrepreneur has become easier these days with the proliferation of social media sites. A $10 well targeted budget on facebook would yield returns and increase your ROI.
- Know when to throw in the towel and don’t let failure put you down: so your dream venture isn’t working, should you sob forever? Letting go sometimes makes sense, or at least, taking a break. I took a break from Adsolut when it didn’t seem to be working and at the beginning of this month resolved to getting it back on its feet. As a sworn entrepreneur, someone who has pledged to never work under another person, I knew it was time to put my ego aside and find a job (which has proven to be tougher) but at the same time, couldn’t abandon my startup. I resolved to rebranding as a freelance social media marketing startup and at the same time applying for a day job as a digital marketer.
- Learn to walk first before thinking of flying: don’t start with a suite of services, start with one and slowly introduce the others. When starting up Adsolut, I included in the list of services we offered, every form of marketing technique I knew but still didn’t pick up. Maybe, just maybe if we’d been known for one product, we might have succeeded in that line.
And some of the challenges I faced…
- Who have you worked with? This is where networking is essential. As a startup owner, make sure there are examples of your works readily available for references and make sure you have at least one client who’d readily recommend you to prospective clients. Network. Don’t be an island. Even if you know what you say you know and there are no references for it, you know nothing. I got a lot of calls and emails from prospective clients who asked me that question and I couldn’t give an answer even though I could render the services they demanded.
- Abracadabra marketing: this is also one thing I noticed, Nigerians aren’t patient. I had a client who wanted me to open a facebook page for them, maintain it and guarantee sales. It was a shitty job and the terms weren’t too realistic but I couldn’t reject it as I was desperate. The company sold android tabs and wouldn’t spend a penny for sponsored posts. I was to gather likes and guarantee sales organically. With few likes and a single product sold in days, the client cancelled the deal. I was not a magician, I told them. How was I to promote a new page from scratch and get thousands of followers within a week without sponsored posts? Never let desperation push you into working with clients with unrealistic terms.
- Get an office: even if it is only a desk in a co-working space. Get one. Nigerians tend to only want to work with companies with a physical address rather than one that exists only online.
These and many more were some of the challenges I faced as a startup owner in Nigeria but I see them as lessons and hope to not make the same mistakes next time. Failing is a vital tool to succeeding. You fail to not fail again. Only few people succeed on the first try and if as a startup owner, your venture isn’t working as expected. Don’t see the whole time you spent working as wasted, see them as experiences and business lessons and the experience could come in handy someday.
On my CV I boldly display my status as a CEO and it helps get me invited for job interviews. An interviewer asked me once that since I didn’t have too many clients in my startup that how did I know I was experienced enough? I gave him this answer — I am like a soldier sitting at the barracks. I go for trainings and exercise my brain everyday and keep up with trends. The fact that I haven’t been to war doesn’t mean that I can’t fight a war. I am ready to fight. It is not my fault that there’s no war.
Think of your failed venture as a preparation for the battles ahead. Use it as a weapon.
Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight cc
