Welcome, Guest: Register On Nairaland / LOGIN! / Trending / Recent / NewStats: 3,193,943 members, 7,952,802 topics. Date: Thursday, 19 September 2024 at 02:01 AM |
Nairaland Forum / Nairaland / General / Business / My Tech Start-up Journey (42592 Views)
Could You Start Up An Online Business? / Journey: (DAY 20 - $105 so far) Follow Me As I Make Money On Fiverr From Scratch / A New Tech Start-up, Can You Call It A Success After 3 Months? (2) (3) (4)
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (Reply) (Go Down)
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by surveycash(m): 10:45pm On Mar 23, 2015 |
uo067: Go to Google and type in "Book title" filetype:pdf without the quotes and hit ENTER 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Mordyb: 10:55pm On Mar 23, 2015 |
Op dont take offence From all this parable you wrote i cant decipher what you do all i can deduce is that you like to read books and get info but people like steve jobs did not start making money until they were able make lay men like me buy into your idea because idiots rule the world because of money. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by dokunbam(m): 10:59pm On Mar 23, 2015 |
Bookmarked |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by mezualvex(m): 11:05pm On Mar 23, 2015 |
God bless you all. Really its been a long time coming, am so pleased with all of this. please someone help me out, am a tech. lover but also a novice,actually pondered over all this for a long time but until I got unto nairaland I then knew there was certainly s sense out of my thoughts. am planning on getting a IT degree soonest but need to start something from somewhere,please help me |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 1:00am On Mar 24, 2015 |
yusufu16: Thanks for your comments, much appreciated. Yes my wife is already fully on board, she's handling sales and marketing. We have also moved out of the office pending my return, will assess at that stage what is the best option going forward. As for a PR specialist, i'm not yet at the stage of delegating such a key task. I've gotta learn at least some aspect of how to do it before handing it off to someone else. Also i'm still quite early stage, still learning and refining a lot of variables. Knowing my start-up doesn't make much difference. Advice on general principles is what is key rather than specifics that often don't turn out to be helpful. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 1:04am On Mar 24, 2015 |
Wallie: Wow man! I feel your pain. Just not enough hours in the day! Would love to hear more about your fund raising experience. I'm currently bootstrapping and hope to raise my first round in the region of 6 figures USD in the next 12 to 18 months. Start writing that book! 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Nobody: 6:01am On Mar 24, 2015 |
1k001:include Entrepreneur.com 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Nobody: 6:05am On Mar 24, 2015 |
1k001:you mean the one that held at Lagos Oriental Hotel last year? I came too. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Jaraworldsms(m): 6:29am On Mar 24, 2015 |
Great Job bro.keep moving forward. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Ikegift4real(m): 8:17am On Mar 24, 2015 |
am currently working out a biz here in Nigeria with some experts, I just shared ur post with them am its a moral booster for us. meet u at d top. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 12:13pm On Mar 24, 2015 |
Mordyb: My purpose is not to sell my idea but to describe my journey to help me make more sense of it and help others relate too. If i do try to sell you something i will break it down and make it understandable. For now just enjoy the parables. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 1:26pm On Mar 24, 2015 |
Traction Back to normal service. After gaining all the background work and arriving at our MVP, the next step was acquiring users. One of the many resources i read had this quote: 'Almost every startup has a product, what failed startups don't have are enough customers'. I thus set about figuring out how to acquire customers. I knew that big ticket sales targeting business and corporates would pay well. The problem however is the long sales cycle and amount of work required. I left my team on the ground to pursue this angle. I focused mostly on online channels. Now consider i had never attempted to sell or market anything much prior to this so i set out to learn. I watched several youtube videos, listened to podcasts, read books. Here's what i did practically: I set up our social media pages - FB, twitter, google plus, pinterest, instagram even nairaland. I was waiting for people to come to me, didn't happen. So i did what was logical, i threw money at it. I set up a google adwords campaign. Using my analytics i was able to see increase in traffic via adwords but no signups. We then altered our home page to look a bit more inviting. Explained a little bit more of our value proposition. We placed prominent call to actions (CTA), minimized the distractions on our page. I've since learnt and tested it myself that you need to give people only one option, greater options paralyze people. So with everything i promote now i try to put only one CTA, this is hard to do but trust me it works. Anyway with search engine marketing (SEM) we saw increased traffic but no signups. Hmm how do i solve this now i thought. So i learned some more and decided to offer a trial period. Many people differ on whether this is a good idea. My thought is in a new market where my approach is quite different to what people are used to, it would be good to give them a trial. Hopefully we would be able to convert most trials through our great product and service. So our trial period was born, still no users though. I got my team to go out on the street and talk to people individually, we were able to get a few people via this method. Was quite difficult and variable however. Next thing i set up was the blog. I figured that half the battle is educating people on the problem they have. When they see that it is indeed a problem then we will swoop in to offer a solution. The blog was thus born. I worked on the blog and have published 21 original posts in a matter of weeks. On one frenzied occasion i wrote 5 blog posts in a few hours. With all this content i had to find a way to distribute. I went to social media, posted them and got a bit of interest. Put the posts into some targeted advertising and voila! started to see some action. I started to get hundreds of hits to the site. Out of this we were able to convert a percentage to become users. This model has yielded pretty good dividend so far. I know almost with surety now that if i put out quality content and distribute via ads on social media i will get some sign ups. I'm now a believer that content is king and social media advertising works. I'm now trying to split test a few things to see what works best. My testing so far has led me to realize the group i should be targeting the most as i get the most sign-ups when i post material related to this group. The other channel i think will work quite well for me is business partnerships. I'm working on a couple currently and hope they turn out ok. The bad part though is they are dependent not just on me. What i do when proposing partnerships is to think laterally and creatively. I also highlight the huge market potential of our partnership to the other business. All businesses like money, I try to present it to them in the right manner. I relegate what I stand to gain to the back burner to at least foster the relationship initially. So in all this traction bit is the hardest thing of all, crack this and you're in business. I'm still learning and would love your input as to traction channels that have worked for you. One book i highly recommend is 'traction' by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin mares. It details all the traction channels that are available to a startup. 4 Likes 2 Shares |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Wallie(m): 4:07pm On Mar 24, 2015 |
@1k001 What's your revenue model? I can see digitization and access being a low-hanging fruit feature if you can get partnerships in place. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by yusufu16: 6:37pm On Mar 24, 2015 |
1k001: Another lesson learned.. Waoo this good. In online marketing, it is better to try out the different methods with different variables and see which one perform best. Also to reduce cost, its better to stick to one method that work best. 1 Like 1 Share |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by databoy247(m): 9:09pm On Mar 24, 2015 |
Traction. So in all this traction bit is the hardest thing of all, crack this and you're in business. I'm still learning and would love your input as to traction channels that have worked for you. @ OP, nice post you have here. I had to pick the highlighted above, maybe i could shed some light. Let me start with an excerpt from Steve Blank "Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. In other words your primary role as an entrepreneur is to ensure that there is a good fit between the product and the market and if there is, you can evidence traction from which you can then confidentially scale your business." From learning and experience, i believe traction can be measured from your early conversions. Your product or service has hit the market, what is the conversion rate? If there is high demand for your product or service and if this demand is translated into sales, then you have irrefutable evidence that your business has traction. The greater the sales the greater the evidence of traction. Personally, i was able to achieve this (and still trying to achieve more) by doing something really unconventional. Meaning, it is the norm for every start-up to draw up a business plan and ensure their activities correlates with what is on paper. I did not start with a business plan because the market right now is so unstable in that what worked for you 6 months ago, may not work for you now. I knew what i wanted to do and i just started. The trends, the clients, the environment and even the state of the country's economy dictated the pace and direction of my project. Just like you, i tried so many methods and always pivoting my system until i started getting leads, and after much more metamorphosing i started getting demands and these demands now translated to sales. I have learned not to do things because i see others doing them. I did not just use attractive website designs and aesthetics but i also applied simple psychology. Questions like: "How do i get more leads?", "How do i communicate to my leads"?, etc filled up my thoughts. I simply used one of the oldest methods out there: Email Marketing. I could have as well converted my project website into a membership website and "be like others", which i actually thought of. But i put into consideration the following; - My target market. My target market will signup into the membership site, BUT i will have problems communicating with them. How will they read my research and all i have to offer? One solution; stick with email marketing. I did this because this is one strategy that builds trust and rapport. And when those two indicators are present, there will be demand which will inevitably transcribe into sales. Also, i did this because i realized that my target market and client are categorized into the too-much-busy-schedule class. In order words, they depict the Nigerian corporate niche. They are so busy that they wont even have the time to visit the website, login, and read whatever is in there....wasted efforts. They rather read what ever i send to their email via their phones or whatever device they may be carrying at any given time. So i decided to stick to this method (simple psychology) and it worked. Now i can measure my level of traction, because i have an increasing demand which keeps giving rise to the sales scale. And this is evidenced by my email activities and statistics reports from my email providers. My point is no matter the value you deliver, if it doesn't generate demand and sales, then you have to keep pivoting your methodology and seek new methods to grow your business which you are doing. So, to answer your question, in a nutshell, i discarded the idea of a business plan. Not using a business plan, is a plan i am experimenting which seems to work. Another thing i observed was that no matter what you are selling, if there is no trust, it will be difficult. And gaining trust from our angle of operation means building rapport with potential clients and then they will see the real value of what you are putting on the table. I hope i am able to answer your question, if not then forgive me, cos am still learning sir. 10 Likes |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 5:06am On Mar 25, 2015 |
databoy247: Great post @databoy247 I quoted the bit on email marketing as i'm not yet a believer. Many rave about it but in my little experience, the best open rate i've had is only about 6%. Click rates are even worse. Perhaps I've not put in enough effort or time, may come back to it later on when i build a bigger email list. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by databoy247(m): 9:17am On Mar 25, 2015 |
1k001:I was not a believer also but after studying loads of materials and tutorials, i decided to give it a try and it worked. I most times have as much as 47% open rate and as high as 23% click. You dont need a huge list to achieve this. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by DigitalIdeas: 1:06pm On Mar 26, 2015 |
databoy247: Can I know your list size? 47% open rate and 23% click is above industry standard. It will be nice to share with us the list size and methods of generating them. An open rate of 20% is regarded as a success. 47% open rate in email marketing is abnormal. Kindly share your email marketing methodology with us. Thanks in advance.. 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 9:08am On Mar 27, 2015 |
DigitalIdeas: I had the exact thoughts, @databoy247 please come school us. 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 9:40am On Mar 27, 2015 |
Service Delivery Across the Nigerian business landscape, a lot is left to be desired in their operations. None however irks me more than customer service. Poor customer service is so widespread and acceptable that we actually don't notice it. It wasn't till i left Nigeria over a decade ago i came to realize that this was the case. Thus in creating my business I've tried to imbue the idea that we must deliver great customer service. The way i've approached this is to start from within. Thankfully I've been blessed with quite a good temperament. I've hardly ever been known to raise my voice or get angry. It's perhaps the way i was raised. I often have been the one to break stereotypes in people's minds of the 'loud, aggressive Nigerian'. Case in point, after i'd first interacted with my father in law who's not Nigerian, he asked my wife, then girlfriend, are you sure he's Nigerian? He doesn't behave like one. Anyway i digress, my point being we Nigerians have gained this not entirely inaccurate stereotype of being aggressive. This aggressiveness is reflected in the way we do a lot of things, including our customer service. Personally i just try to be nice and courteous to everyone, including those that wrong me or i stand to gain nothing from. To the people that work(ed) for me I'm nice and fair to them. I respect them and treat them like adults. I don't ever shout. I never ask them to do something i wouldn't do myself. My hope is that by doing this, I create a pleasant working environment where everyone is happy to come work and never want to leave. The hope is then that this joy in the workplace translates to the way we treat our customers. We have the target of having a customer contact within 8 hours of signing up, preferably in the form of a phone call. We aim to speak to all our customers and keep in regular contact. When we speak on the phone we smile, it's amazing how this comes through in the conversation. We always try to build consensus and never antagonize people. Most of all we listen and try to solve the particular problem the customer has not the one we think they have. We're by no means perfect in any of this, they're ideals we continue to strive for. When we interviewed people we had a little role play. It was that of an irate customer to test how the applicant would respond. Some responses were shocking! In one instance the applicant blamed the customer for a problem that was clearly not theirs. Some of my aphorisms - Treat your staff right - Love your customers and solve their problems - Smile always (even when on the phone) - The customer may not always be right but their feelings are always right. - Always agree and build consensus. Don't use 'but' use 'and' - replace 'but' in the following sentence and see the difference 'I understand how you feel but...' The bottom line is to always have a kind and personable demeanor. Read the book 'How to win friends and influence people' by Dale Carnegie for more. 3 Likes |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by lifestyle1(m): 9:53am On Mar 27, 2015 |
Is your startup health niche related ? |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by freetowns: 11:36am On Mar 27, 2015 |
1k001:Nice one man. When I left Nigeria 7years ago to Europe, this was one thing that struck me most-customer service. Our customer service in this country is dire to say the least. Even after all these years 4 Likes |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by databoy247(m): 12:48pm On Mar 27, 2015 |
DigitalIdeas:A screenshot is attached (sorry, am on mobile for now). Like i said it don't matter if your list is small or huge. I have a little above 1,000 subscribers for now and still growing (i started this project in Jan). My system is such that if i dont send updates in a week, i'll start getting calls from my list urging me to send somthing. The only secret ingredient is to build rapport and deliver value. And you just have to try as much as possible to get targeted subscribers and not just random audience.
|
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by Nmeri17: 9:56am On Mar 30, 2015 |
op one thing about treating people (customers, house helps etc) "right" is that they start taking you for granted. you lose respect and look weak. the aggressiveness is actually a protective covering for the wearer 2 Likes |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by balogunsam(m): 7:57am On Apr 01, 2015 |
Nmeri17: I disagree with this. I've tried both and believe me what the OP suggested is best. You can be firm and still fair to people who work for you. The aggressiveness and military-like approach will earn you nothing but eye service, lack of dedication and gossip. Male friends with those who work for you but set boundaries. They'd give their everything to do their best for you and your enterprise and bring things to your table they could normally have kept from the almighty "oga" 5 Likes 1 Share |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by balogunsam(m): 7:58am On Apr 01, 2015 |
databoy247: I sent you an email sir. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 5:05pm On Apr 06, 2015 |
User Engagement Well done @databoy247 on the rather impressive email marketing numbers. I've only been able to get max open rates of 11 percent. Following from this my current focus is now user engagement. I've thus paused my user acquisition efforts except for a few long term growth hacks that are already in the pipeline. I figure there's no point in acquiring all theses users and not be able to engage and retain them. I'm currently researching, mostly via youtube, ways to increase engagement. I've settled on trying to standardize an on-boarding process that will have some gamified features. I imagine it will take a bit of technical time to deliver (wish my co-founder was full time). I'll also need to be on the ground to road test it and get direct feedback from users. I foresee gamification as being central to retaining users and increasing their lifetime value. Our user numbers are still quite small so it's as a good a time as any to start to test what on-boarding and engagement processes will work best. Obviously this will have to be iterated as things move along. I welcome any inputs from anyone on what has worked for you. 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 6:24pm On Apr 08, 2015 |
Negotiation I just closed a business partnership deal i'd been working on over the last few weeks. The initial deal was with a certain other new business. They sounded interested initially so i sent them a proposal. After the proposal went, i kept thinking of how i could deepen and sweeten the deal further, so i dug around for further options. I searched out for the necessary expertise needed via google, linked in, twitter and facebook. Finally i came across a suitable option. I got in contact and sent of a few emails. I was careful to try build a rapport first. I extended compliments and praise on the excellent work they were doing. I take this approach with most people i meet, the idea being that people often feel oblige to reciprocate with an affirmative response when you start out by praising them. One has to be careful to be genuine though as i almost got caught out. After getting a bit of rapport going, i finally sent through an alternative take of the proposal to the new partner. This was well received and we started to plan on how to realize it. Turned out that the second partner was better suited than the first. The first still hasn't gotten back to me while I've largely sealed the deal with the second partner. In the course of trying to hammer out specifics we had to go back and forth over a few things. I drew upon some of my negotiation classes from my time in B-school. A few general things i applied. - Always know your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement). This means that you know what your option is if the deal falls through. This reduces your desperation and enables you set an appropriate price for the negotiation. - Always seek for a win-win situation. Never leave whoever you negotiate with feeling like they lost. - Make the pie bigger. Make everyone see the bigger picture and focus on the benefits of a deal for both parties. - Insert more negotiation points. For example if you're haggling over price, try insert other points such as other services. instead of going '' I'll give you 25 not 30 dollars'', do ''I'll give you 25 dollars + an extra service/ thing''. When done smartly, this extra layer enables more flexibility in the deal and more potential of keeping everyone happy. - Never make two offers in a row, always wait for a counter offer. Conversely, try make the other side make two offers in a row. It means they can make 2 concessions without you having to make any. Finally as i learnt from this episode of the first partner bailing out but the second coming through, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Always shop around and seek multiple options in parallel, saves you a lot of time and effort. *Only 3 weeks left now till i officially take the leap to become a full time entrepreneur * 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 6:17am On Apr 10, 2015 |
Wallie: Sorry i didn't respond to this earlier, only just saw it as i was reviewing the thread. As for revenue, we are employing a SaaS model. We get subscriptions from clients, ideally monthly to suit usual cash flows but looking at the financial industry in Nigeria, we bill annually instead. I wish we could have things like direct debits more widespread and easy to set up. It would make payments easy for businesses and people to manage. We also have an option for a one off sale but this wouldn't really suit the value we would like to provide. Partnerships will be key for us but it's been proving a bit tricky to get in place particularly as i'm not currently in the country. Nigerians like face to face things. Hopefully when i land (in a few weeks) i can focus on this. In Africa partnerships will no doubt be key for all tech businesses. It allows the introduction of something new and different under the ambit of something people already understand and use. Look at how aggressively the likes of Iroko are chasing them. In the last few months they've announced partnerships with various telcos across Africa. Partnerships are the way to go. 1 Like |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by 1k001(m): 4:35am On Apr 16, 2015 |
Growth I've been looking at strategies to try and fuel growth and came across (again) this paul graham article on growth. http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html. Essential reading for any tech founder. Essentially he says that the defining feature of a startup is high growth. This is thus what every startup founder should aim for otherwise you're just a regular business like the bar or restaurant down the road. The actual thing i was searching for when i came across the article above was: 'ideal growth rate for tech startup'. Paul answers this quite well in his article. He opines that the target should be 5-7% weekly, as this the rate the good YC companies grow at. Note also that early on this is achievable, if it isn't then you have to seriously consider a pivot. Think about it, going from 1 user to 2 users is 100% growth. Whereas going from 45 to 50 is 11%. The absolute number is greater in the latter but the growth rate much less. Things only get harder as time progresses. Paul suggests a laser like focus on growth rate weekly. Keeping this rate steadily means an increasing amount of users weekly. This equates more and more work on an ongoing basis. In our startup, we currently have an average weekly growth rate of 15% to date. I plan to start tracking this rate from week to week and aim for a target of 10% weekly. Hopefully this can fuel our growth and keep us in the 'startup' range. I'm resorting to applying some methods that have worked for user acquisition so far in other ways. The first has been to vary the location. As a result we now have a few users from another African country. I had looked at engagement previously but growth will be the focus for now. |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by empowerdex(m): 12:29pm On Apr 26, 2015 |
surveycash: hey surveycash ive tried this technique please can you help me with the link or maybe u send me a copy ill really appreciate alex cowan's book, could only find chapter one and it was revealing |
Re: My Tech Start-up Journey by surveycash(m): 4:14pm On Apr 26, 2015 |
empowerdex: Let me have the full title |
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) (Reply)
ABA Mega Mall, Potential Biggest Mall In Africa / Arthur Eze Shows His Ogene Dance Steps, Gifts Group N500k / Earn Weekly Pay With Longrich Business
(Go Up)
Sections: politics (1) business autos (1) jobs (1) career education (1) romance computers phones travel sports fashion health religion celebs tv-movies music-radio literature webmasters programming techmarket Links: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9) (10) Nairaland - Copyright © 2005 - 2024 Oluwaseun Osewa. All rights reserved. See How To Advertise. 154 |