6 important lessons that we learned
After 2 years and thousands of hours of work, Answerly.app is all set to go live in 3 days. This is probably the best day of my life. Can't explain the feeling of having something completed after investing years of work in building it. Throughout this journey, I've learned a few very important lessons.
Team: Just because he's a friend, doesn't mean that you have to offer him a partnership in your startup. Trust me! it never works out.
Divide key responsibilities: Every startup requires attention in all different areas such as:
- Development
- Designing
- Financing
- Planning
- Marketing
Never try to handle it all: You must divide these responsibilities among founders. Discuss it and have a signed agreement while forming the partnership.
Determination: I have faced a lot of challenges throughout this journey. I also work as a content writer and made nearly enough just to cover my monthly expenses. Still, I kept the development of Answerly as my made priority and covered the development expenses instead of worrying much about my expenses.
Start budgeting before building: When I started working on this project, I just went for it instead of properly calculating the total expenses that it would require. If I knew beforehand, I would have planned the development accordingly. For example, I tried to implement as many features into the platform as possible. Sure, it looks perfect now, but maybe I shouldn't have waited for it to be perfect. This would have saved me thousands of dollars.
Plan your marketing: It's important to start building a community even before building the project. I just wish that I had started using Indiehackers 2 years ago. But it's never too late, right?
Focus: Most importantly, don't abandon your project just because of a new shiny idea that may work better. If you're starting a startup just for the sake of starting a startup, better not do it.
Good luck with the launch!
Thanks :)
Great insights Raza. I'm curious about your initial marketing strategy. Did you use any proven marketing / growth hacking technique or was it a trial and error approach with multiple channels?
Hey Justin, last month I experimented a few marketing strategies, spending no more than $200/strategy. A lot depends upon the type of platform/tool that you're building. For example, my primary targeted traffic is:
I ran a paid campaign on twitter, reddit, and pinterest and the average cost per user acquisition was ~$1.6 (which is pretty high for me)
I did some viral marketing on Reddit where I didn't pay for ads. I just extracted a list of suitable subreddits to post on, created an inspiring article on my journey. The reader must feel connected to the story that you're sharing. Talk less about the product and more about how it will benefit the user.
Using the method above, I was able to bring down the cost per user acquisition to $0.4. I think I'll just stick with what works for me and try to further optimize this strategy.
Thank you for your detailed reply! Extremely informative