On the first day of Springboard, Jon said the next three months would be extremely emotional with you constantly going from being on a maximum high to ultimate low. At the time it was hard to imagine how right Jon would be. Startup Life is hard! Really hard, which from the outside is difficult to imagine.
With the help of MercuryApp, I tracked some of my emotions and thoughts on different days during Springboard. I hope this provides an insight to anyone currently on a startup accelerator and suffering low points or anyone hoping to start their journey. Keep in mind, 1 is “OMG, this is never going to work” while 5 would be “OMG, this will be huge!”
As you can see, a bumpy ride! It’s great to be able to look back at my comments and see how I can improve going forward. To provide some context, I’ve highlighted a number of points on the chart containing interesting lessons that hopefully others can relate to.
1) It’s the start of the programme and we’ve already engaged with some amazing mentors. At this point we were Meerkatalyst and focusing on .Net deployments. Some cracks had already appeared with the idea.
2) Like all great startups, we spoke with potential customers and received positive feedback. Looking back, we should have done more of this and pushed harder around customer discovery.
3) After a great few days you can see how emotions can quickly drop. Comments such as “Felt like crap, continued to attempt to work. Couldn’t work out a pitch, can’t work out how to install Azure stuff. Wifi slow.” shows how my body was reacting to the intense 15 day start. This ended with the first one and the comment “Ripped apart. Idea not sexy enough. Not big enough. Not solving interesting problems.”.
4) At this point we picked ourselves up and pushed on. After the initial feedback, we changed our direction slightly to become more of a ‘cloud management’ play.
5) This change of direction raised an interesting problem. We knew we had to change and attempted to predict market trends in order to find a focus and a gap in the market. Instead, we should have been on speaking with external people and asking very broad questions to try and identify existing pain points. A few remarks included: “I can’t pitch. Not sure about idea any more.”, “No idea about what product to develop. Too much scope.”, “Still haven’t got an idea”.
6) After continuing discussions and meeting people, we had a much clearer understanding about what we could create and the space we could play in. Just goes to show, customer development and speaking with people is important.
7) High points don’t last long, and this day led with the remark “Just about to give up.”. With more data and more knowledge about the problem space, sometimes you hear things you don’t want to.
8 ) One of the most important lessons I learnt was never give up. Keep pushing, keep trying different things and eventually you’ll get there. For us, this marked the start of the second phase of Springboard and a move away from both deployments and cloud management.
9) During the next couple of days, I spoke at the NDC2011 conference in Oslo, Norway. This was a great break, a time to recharge batteries and speak with some amazing people about what problems they were really experiencing. During this time it was decided to completely drop deployments and cloud management and instead focus on the current approach around user monitoring, error detection and application health.
10) Between NDC, the decision to move and here everything was going well. We had gone back to some of our original mentors and had skype conversations about the change of direction. Everyone was more than happy to help and while it gave us a lot to think about we become confident that it was an interesting space to be playing in.
11) Low emotions reappeared with the comment “Pitch to Cambridge angels was awful!!! Really bad design of slides. No examples, no solution.”. As a group we had practiced and while I’ve spoken at conferences before, I found standing in front of the Cambridge Angels and pitching a product idea to be a very different experience. As you can tell, I was not impressive with my own performance; however, I found it to be one of the most valuable lessons.
12) Not connected in any way to our performances at Cambridge Angels, we had a professional speaking coach attend which basically reaffirmed all the mistakes I had made during the pitch at Cambridge Angels. Personally, this was one of my lowest moments during Springboard. It was also a great motivator to improve.
13) “WE HAVE A NEW NAME!” with a move away from Meerkatalyst complete. Landing page and an initial demo all came together and after having dinner with Robbie from Red Gate a few days before, everything was moving in the right direction.
14) 1, 3, 5 all in the same day. Looking back, these happened a lot more than I recorded via MercuryApp.
15) Leading up to investor day was stressful. There was lots happening, lots changing and lots to do. However, the day proved the entire three months, the entire journey and all the emotions had been worth it.
For me, having this data proves one thing – never give up. No matter how bad things seem, great things could be just a day away. Likewise, even when you’re on top of the world, be prepared for something to catch you off guard. Looking back, one of the main problems was not acting quickly enough after speaking with potential customers and mentors who gave warning signs. The experience has put me in a much better position to evaluate ideas and know what problems to look out for – a valuable lesson indeed.
tl;dr For anyone thinking about a startup accelerator, go for it! It’s an amazing experience. Just be prepared for heartache, stress but most importantly never assume anything. Don’t go in thinking you have the greatest idea in the world. Listen to mentors, listen to customers and be critical, push yourself to always improve and produce something amazing!
I would really recommend everyone keeps track of their emotions, it’s a great way to reflect and improve. While MercuryApp has a free plan for individuals, their also providing the team functionality for free to startups https://www.mercuryapp.com/startups
I would love to hear the emotions of what others have felt while launching.
