Right out of school, another person and I had a startup building a managed VoIP solution.
We didn't start selling early enough, and underestimated the amount of time closing our first sale would take. That lead to my business partner taking another job to make ends meet, and not able to meet obligations to our company. Since he was managing the relationships and I was doing the tech, I basically was left trying to manage the relationships from scratch, many of whom weren't interested anymore. I very quickly ran out of money before we could sign a contract.
Lessons (probably too many to list):
1. B2B sales is a lot harder than the tech. Make sure you have the runway to compensate for learning how to sell.
2. Make sure your business partner(s) are as committed as you are.
3. Don't use your own money, or at least have multiple sources of income.
4. Have a good advisor. I feel like if I had someone I could have asked questions to, I would have been more successful, or never would have taken the risk.
5. Probably most importantly, don't look at it as a failure, but a learning experience. I was pretty depressed when everything came crashing down, but I learned later that it was a valuable experience that put me ahead of a lot of other people just due to the sheer amount of work it was.
I had a similar experience with managed VoIP. The first almost-accidental customers seemed like a good sign that the most minimal viable product could work as a business. But we did not start selling early enough, and it played out almost exactly as you described.
Lessons:
1. Sales is hard, especially if you have never done it
2. Commitment -- everyone involved should have skin in the game
3. Hardware is hard, even when you don't manufacture it -- refurbishing + firmware modifying ip phones, poe equipment, etc ate into our runway
>>> 2. Commitment -- everyone involved should have skin in the game
For those who don't get it, this means :
- don't expect anybody to help you more than what he already helped (i.e. past help doesn't imply future help)
- someone not as involved as you can become predatorial (for example, by requesting, after years of super nice cooperation, a share of the profits, of the intelectual property, etc.)
- someone who helps your for nothing may hide some agenda
- someone who helps you may realize that what you do together might hurt some of his othe business (and thus starts to undermine your business, not just leaving it)
>>> 3. Hardware is hard, even when you don't manufacture it -- refurbishing + firmware modifying ip phones, poe equipment, etc ate into our runway
This is a great point, and brings back so many bad memories. Every phone provisions a little bit differently, and so many settings have unintended side effects. I spent so much runway building a dynamic, generic templating system when we should have just gone to market mostly static coded components customized on the fly.
We didn't start selling early enough, and underestimated the amount of time closing our first sale would take. That lead to my business partner taking another job to make ends meet, and not able to meet obligations to our company. Since he was managing the relationships and I was doing the tech, I basically was left trying to manage the relationships from scratch, many of whom weren't interested anymore. I very quickly ran out of money before we could sign a contract.
Lessons (probably too many to list): 1. B2B sales is a lot harder than the tech. Make sure you have the runway to compensate for learning how to sell. 2. Make sure your business partner(s) are as committed as you are. 3. Don't use your own money, or at least have multiple sources of income. 4. Have a good advisor. I feel like if I had someone I could have asked questions to, I would have been more successful, or never would have taken the risk. 5. Probably most importantly, don't look at it as a failure, but a learning experience. I was pretty depressed when everything came crashing down, but I learned later that it was a valuable experience that put me ahead of a lot of other people just due to the sheer amount of work it was.