I failed as a first time founder and here is how I am turning it around.
I failed to grow https://motionbox.io over the past year, by now I thought we would be at $20k MRR. The sad truth is we are only at $500 MRR. The reason is because as a first time founder I haven't been doing a good job -- our competitors are probably laughing to the bank.
Lucky for Motionbox I don't give up, you'll have to kill me first. In this post I am going to share how I plan to turn it around so that you can learn from me. Let's get started.
Take a step back
In this situation the first thing you can do is take a step back and learn more about how to achieve product market fit. The aim is to objectively find the problems in the video creation space and find how to effectively serve an underserved segment -- with 0 bias and ego.
The goal is to create clarity about the market segment we can best serve based on financial validation. We'll start with implementing the "Mom Test" no less than 5 interviews per week with potential customers. Over the course of 4 weeks, if we can't get 10 paying users, we will have to radically rethink our initial hypothesis.
Look for the gaps
We are in a saturated market, and it's getting harder and harder to compete. The way we will win is through observation and finding the pain points the competitors are missing.
The best way to ensure success here is conducting the methods described in the "Mom Test" and doing it well -- like a professional athlete, discipline, accountability, and execution are important here .
Make use of your experience
Not all is gone to waste, if you're in my position or ever get here then all is not lost. You still have some code that contains a solution and can shave weeks off of dev time.
You've felt certain pain that is a necessary in order to make the correct decisions going forward. Your failures are the stepping stones toward success.
Final Thoughts
Never give up, never back down. Self awareness is vital, don't lie to yourself, avoid sunk cost fallacy and get back to being on the right track. This post is not only to share what I've learned plus the mistakes I've made. It is also incredibly cathartic for me.
I am going to journal this experiment and share it. Would this be something you're interested in tagging along on? Also if you've read the Mom Test or are interested I think some sort of book club could be useful where we share notes.
Thoughts?
i just wanna ask you bro how much does it cost you to serve th eproject like that i'm a developer and i think it's quit exprensive
Getting a business off the ground is hard, especially if you're from a technical back ground. I think it's easy to burn yourself out building an amazing tech product, then have no energy left to build the actual business.
What do you think went wrong with Motionbox?
Building the rendering engine, making the whole product stable, and fixing bugs took all of my attention.
I spent very little time talking to customers because I was too passionate to see the tool I wanted to see.
The good news is I have a beast of an engine that can virtually render anything I want it to render. It runs in parallel so rhetorically one day I can render 1 hour videos in minutes.
Now I need to cool it on the tech and find ways to achieve product market fit. It’s essential I remain patient and rewire my habits. The goal going forward is to position ourselves different and to serve a market that no one is paying attention to. This is where I believe the mom test will be useful.
I am sorry but you have a $500MRR business and you are saying that you failed?
If you haven't read the post below , have a look.
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/holy-heck-this-is-hard-8ebe864174
Only 1% of Indie hackers make 2KMRR.
By extrapolating, you could say that you are actually in a high revenue bracket when it comes to Indie Hacking.
I understand that you are not where you want to be in terms of revenue and it sucks, but you are far away from having failed.
Its way easier to go from 500 to 600MRR than it is to go from 0 to 100.
If you ask me you are almost there. Good luck to you.
Thanks for linking that post, it's eye opening to realize most people on this platform are struggling... I am often blinded by the success of the few.
Thanks for the kind words. This post wasn’t meant to be a pessimistic sob story. The only way to win is through optimism and I like your perspective.
However, a hint of reality vs blind optimism is needed. After 6 months of trying to rank via SEO were still only bringing about 4K visitors per month at a 0.005% conversion rate. This is far from product market fit, but we’re not too far off.
We can’t compete with some folks in terms of position. I do believe we have a powerful system and an awesome UI.
In order to win I think a few slight tweaks will accelerate us towards PMF and that is the point of this. If you’re getting smoke signals and a false sense of positivity but haven’t truly hit PMF you gotta be careful.
PMF is a sign the market really needs what you have and can’t really get it anywhere else. You can’t keep up with the demand and revenue is growing faster than you can count. This is a sign of success in my definition.
The fight isn’t over but some recalibration is needed. 2 steps forward 1 step back
I am glad that you are seeing things this way. I hope my words were not too harsh. There weren't meant to be.
I just thought that in light of perceived failure it is easy to forget that you are actually doing better than most.
Its tough out there. I have two products, one which has been released a while ago and another one in the pipeline. So far I have made a grand total of 0$.
That is the reality for me. From my point of view you are successful. From your point of view you have somewhat failed.
As you said being positive is good but it is also important to not take our eyes off the ball and strive for more. More revenue, more customers. And you are doing just that.
I think you ll make it.
Thanks man, tomorrow is another day for the both of us.
That’s what I love about life. New day === blank slate to kick ass.
Let’s wake up and make it happen
Gran transmisión de experiencia.
Me da a pensar que si no nosotros mismos, todos requerimos un apoyo a nuestro lado mientras levantamos nuestro negocio: un experto en ventas.
The idea is great and your site looks very clean. I agree with the other comments, $0 -> $100 MRR is much harder than $500->$600.
I'd be very curious to know what tactics you deploy to gain more traction. Hope it works out! Definitely looking forward to your growth journey
We are working on SEO https://foundationinc.co/lab/canva-seo
I actually found the team that Canva was using in this article. I realized that Veed was using them also as a secret weapon.
70% of their traffic comes from SEO. So when we get that in order we will be dominant.
A few other things we're working on at the same time is affiliates https://motionbox.io/affiliates and strategic partnerships.
There are many competitors in your fields. What is your competitor advantage / unique selling point from the customers' point of view? Robust and fast rendering is good, but it is a technical strength and it doesn't really count. What pain points are you solving for your customers that other platforms are not doing or not doing well? Creating videos together is the 1st selling point on your home page. Are there a lot of demands for this feature? Just curious.
Not a huge demand for collaboration quite yet. We use it internally and for debugging it's awesome. It just feels right that this needs to exist, taking a bet here.
Our templates https://motionbox.io/templates help users make videos faster and our animated text is $20 worth of value in itself which gives users tons of value.
I think you have a badass SaaS, the platform works really well...not giving up made you build the tool everyone needs! Have you seen your competition? their stuff stinks!!! but MAYBE you may need a real growth hacker in your ranks to get past the cliff and explode in growth!?
I agree, more energy is needed towards growth. Working hard on making it happen and putting the pieces together.
We are not out only in an introspection phase, ready to soar. SEO, affiliates, and strategic partnerships. Plus testing some fun viral strategies.
@motionbox I just bought "The Mom Test" and read most of if over the weekend. It's a great book! The hard part for me is actually talking to potential customers and asking the right questions :P
Thanks for the encouragement! Happy hacking :)
Nice, I think it’s a tool in the overall entrepreneurial game that is essential.
What do you find to be the most challenging parts around finding potential customers?
I’m in that phase and happy to chat about it. Feel free to DM me on Twitter https://twitter.com/michaelaubry/status/1299428788707573760?s=21
I'm kicking myself for not starting with customer research sooner. Now I have to try and do customer research with no personal bias toward the MVP I've created! I need to solve their problem, not create a product that I think is the hypothetical answer.
I'll definitely hit you up on Twitter, but the most challenging parts for me right now are:
I'm also trying to figure out the pricing model to go with and how that will affect the other pieces.
A great book!
If every founder can overcome the challenges, then the business will succeed: