Things I'm doing differently second time round
Hey! My name's Dani and between 2018-2021 I built, scaled and sold scribly.io. The journey to building Scribly was...scrappy. I honestly had no idea what I was doing, and I was figuring things out through trial, error and lots of perseverance as I settled into a product-market fit that felt right for my values and what the market needed at that time. Nonetheless, the business grew steadily and evolved from a bit of a hack-job into a well-oiled machine. But it took a lot of mistakes to get there, and I'm not sure how intentional the journey was.
Fast forward a couple of years after selling Scribly and I'm now working on my second startup, this time in the productised branding space.
There are a lot of things I can feel that I'm instinctively doing differently this time, and I thought it might be helpful to share those learnings with you:
1. Not building the plane as I'm flying it
I took the strategy of 'say yes and figure it out later' with Scribly. It was great, and it definitely took the business in the direction it needed to go, but this time I can definitely see that I am doing muuuuuch more planning. I'm actually sitting down and spending whole weeks figuring out systems and structures before diving into a growth phase. This never happened with Scribly, where I never really had a plan. My approach this time will hopefully make growth scalable and sustainable (something that wasn't always the case first time round). Systems that work for 5 customers definitely won't work for 30 customers - this time I'm figuring out what the best case scenario might require up front and working backwards.
2. Having a co-founder
I ran Scribly solo, and while that had its good parts, it was so lonely. I felt like I was constantly shouldering a lot of big questions alone, and it was stressful and isolating. I knew that if I would ever start something again, I would want it to be with a co-founder. This time I'm working with a good friend who has a very different set of skills to me - so far we're working really really diving up roles and responsibilities and creating ideas that are so much better than we could have done alone.
3. Investing a bit more up front
I didn't have any money to put into Scribly, so it was the true definition of bootstrapped. I invested what I could when I had the money to do it. This time, I'm putting in small amounts of money to start off on a more professional footing. For example, I'm investing more in tool-stack I'm using (not just using free options if there's a genuinely useful reason to).
4. I got myself an office
I worked from home for well over a year when I started Scribly as having an office space felt like a frivolous expense. This time I knew I needed to set better boundaries between work and family life, so I got a little office space in month one. Longterm, I'm certain this is going to be so beneficial for my mental wellness.
I'm sure there are a lot more things but these are some of the things that struck me today when I was reflecting on my journey this time round.
Curious to hear from other founders if you did anything different after 'your first'?
**Side note I used to be on IH with another account [https://www.indiehackers.com/DaniMancini], but I lost access as it's attached to my scribly email which I can no longer access 🤨
How do I find these first 5-10 members?
I built a site that finds book recommendations from tweets using Grok's X Search API
Thanks for sharing your experience, Dani! It's great to hear about the lessons you learned while building Scribly and how you're applying them to your second startup. I totally agree with you on the importance of planning and investing upfront in the right tools and resources. Also, having a co-founder to share the workload and bounce ideas off of is a great idea. As for me, I haven't started a business yet, but your insights have definitely given me some food for thought for when I do. Good luck with your new venture with Windgoo B3.
I agree with Danibelcini's comment
I don't necessarily agree with the ideas here, for example thinking how it will work for 30 users straightaway rather than just 5, BUT I like the counterperspective that we do need to plan as we scale from different magnitudes of users, and sometimes not thinking it through for certain startups can backfire.
"Shoulder a lot of big questions alone" - resonate that with highly
Same with idea about work-life boundary, that's less talked about. Though I think the solution can be working in public libraries, a cheap cafe etc. because office rent is a BIG expense. I know it's harder to setup the monitor, but it saves so much money.
Totally agree, although my cofounder and I found that we weren’t able to be productive when we were working in cafes, and it actually winded up being pretty expensive each day. Having a place to go each day where we can focus and don’t have to do the mental gymnastics of figuring out our workplace has definitely been a positive move for us. We pay around €300 for a small office for two of us for the month, so it’s also not mega bucks.
Ah I definitely remember cafes being inconsistent for real work, especially when need to call and have good wifi etc. 300 split between two co-founders sounds great, I'd totally do that.
Me as a solo founder I currently go the public library for half a day of work, and the other half in my room to save money.
EDIT: also your scribly.io looks wicked, thanks for sharing wisdom on this post (meanwhile I have 0 revenue even till this day)