Startup lesson learned - Don't quit your job before there is interest in your product

This one stings a lot, and not only on the bank-account side of things. The truth is, we started EnVsion because we were just too excited to build something we felt we’d be more passionate about than our sedate but well compensated consulting jobs.

I was also personally itching to build my own thing again. I was not, and I am still not interested in a corporate career 🤷🏿‍♂️.

Read on for more details on our journey.

We should have never quit our jobs so early

When we quit our jobs, we had no product, no well-articulated problem, no customers, no revenue, no audience. Frankly, all these “no”s should have made the decision to quit my job even harder, but I was either too naive or stupid to reconsider. I was supremely confident we were smart enough to figure things out despite this cloud of uncertainty.

But, we were not ready. Because of this glaring lack of preparation, we were just not ready for the torrent of setbacks that hit us on our journey.

Before quitting our jobs, we should have made sure the ground was fertile enough for us to venture into the wild world of entrepreneurship. We should have made sure we had a growing understanding of the problem we were solving, some interest from potential users and customers, and a clear plan of action.

18 months of setbacks

The consequence of all this is that we struggled for over 18 months. During this time we dug into our personal savings to sustain ourselves and the business. We did not pay ourselves a single cent of salary during this period. We hired people to help us build things without having conducted deep enough research. And we didn’t get the hiring right either. Eventually, I had to let these people go either because they were not meeting my expectations or because we could not afford them anymore. It was a huge and costly mistake, and I take full responsibility for it.

These days I also console myself by saying that I did not waste money all this time: I paid for an apprenticeship (or MBA 🙃) in company building.

Because we started on very unsteady ground, we iterated on a lot of business ideas. Some pivots were just very bad ideas in hindsight. Eventually though, we began building what would become EnVsion today.

In between, we unsuccessfully tried to fundraise, after going through the process for over 5 months from Q2 2021. We got close, but didn’t clinch the funding that would enable us to continue pursuing our idea on a full-time basis. During this whole period, product and business development ground to a halt. Failing to raise capital after also putting the company on pause was a crushing blow that felt difficult to recover from.

Additionally, we had reached the point where we were dangerously approaching the red line in our finances. There was no more fuel in our tanks to keep the business going in its current form.

Epilogue - going the bootstrapping way

In the end, it was either we found jobs again or fell into personal bankruptcy. I let you guess which choice we made… We have now gone back to full-time jobs and are currently bootstrapping EnVsion, until we can get back to it in a full-time capacity.

I work on EnVsion early mornings before work and in the evening, plus weekends. I don't consider it a grind at this stage though, because I'm learning a lot along the way. I actually feel very grateful to have the chance and strength to work on this business

This work surprisingly feels more and more like play to me these days. That’s why I carry on.

Thanks for reading this post! I share my learnings and progress while building EnVsion! EnVsion helps UX researchers save time highlighting, clipping, and sharing key moments from user interview videos with their team so that they can build the products their customers will love.

You can also follow my journey on Twitter.