The past month was a slightly anxious one, inclusive of an unexpected platform hiccup and a few more features that needed to be de-bugged. However, we’ve progressed and we’re officially live! Check out v1 of the site: www.diywithhelp.com
It is intrinsically rewarding to be at this milestone. A large part of my motivation for switching to an entrepreneurial path was the lack of creative fulfillment I was feeling for the past ten years in the obnoxious gauntlet of big corporation politics. So, this week I allowed myself a muted fist pump in solitary celebration.
However, I know this is a small step in a long journey. I now turn my attention to customer acquisition. I’ve got some rough plans to test with most being on “organic” or “free” endeavors versus paid advertising tests. I’ll dive into the logic and relative success of these time-investments in a later post, but my focus is immediately on signing up the platform “sellers.” These would be the tradespeople or experts that give project advice to DIYers over the calls.
If you know anyone you think that’d be worth me pursuing, feel free to send me their contact information or business listing. Or, you can have them reach out to me directly at [email protected]. These could be your cousins, your high-school classmates, maybe even someone who worked on your home personally that you found to be competent, honest, and a solid communicator. If everyone who wanted to help could give me, or send, two personal ideas or recommendations – that would be a far greater business contribution than you may initially realize!
In any event, below I’ll share more details on the bumpier month of September. I am sure I’ll inevitably edit history as we all do unintentionally to an extent, but I do aim to be as transparent as I can about the challenges that pave the way for future successes.
September Hiccups
The past month for the business is certainly one I’m glad is behind me. We had an educational “failure” of sorts with our hosting platform. Essentially, we used 350% of our monthly allotted server capacity in a single day. For a site that hasn’t yet launched to the public, this was a head-scratcher. I gave my dev team 48 hours to try to solve it, then I personally engaged the support team of the hosting company to find out I’d have to wait 3 weeks for the monthly usage counter to reset. Highly unsatisfied, I turned to personal networks. I ultimately scoured for any Harvard Business School grads that worked out the company in Harvard’s alumni database. This last tactic paid dividends.
The VP of Product was an HBS grad, and thankfully was a very nice one. I told him my situation, and after a soft defense of the company policy, he helped grant me a waiver of the largely inexplicable and anomalous usage which allowed my site to come back on. This issue took nearly two weeks to resolve. This was painful, but I’m glad it happened well before we were in a revenue-generating state. It also made me go deeper on some of the limitations of these “no code” platforms that we will have to keenly aware of going forward as we plan for growth.
All of this was layered into an already slightly tense relationship with my dev shop. The technical project team and I got on famously, but the business side of the agency acted like aggressive debt collectors and kept interrupting conversations to ask for the final payment of our contract. I eventually realized this was just a strategy they employed and as misguided as it was to gain my future business, I just called their bluff and ignored them. This just dovetails into one of my many work tracts, i.e. to find a better partner on the dev side.
………..
Since I worked backwards in time on this post, I don’t have much of a linear conclusion. Creating a site/product is one thing, now I must build a business on top of it. I know that I can’t do it alone. And while this is a one-way medium, I still feel like you all are part of my team. So, let’s just break this huddle on three with, “here we go.” …1, 2, 3, “HERE WE GO!”