123LinkIt

This blog post is a little different from the ones I usually post. Instead of discussing new releases or blogging tips, I’m going to share our journey from when we launched our alpha this past March. I hope it helps you gain a different perspective of our Company and gets you excited about the road ahead.

Twenty-ten has been a heck of a year for 123LinkIt. I’m not a big fan of New Year resolutions because I feel they’re a waste of time but I decided it would bode well for me and the Company to take a step back and look closely at our accomplishments last year. The results didn’t surprise me and it turned out to be a good learning experience.

I decided to share a list of our ups and downs as well as some of the lessons I’ve learned and our plans for moving forward for twenty-eleven. I tried to be as transparent as possible without giving too much away for obvious reasons. Here goes!

What Went Well (aka, our wins this year):

1. Launching the alpha – Eleven months in the making, this was a tremendous milestone. I can’t tell you how good it felt to see a first working version of the project. I remember tweeting I understood how serial entrepreneurs can possess a God complex. It feels amazing to have an idea and see it come to fruition, especially after months of hard work. Without a doubt, this tops the list.

2. Feedback from users – Despite how excited I was about our alpha, I constantly battled the notion of releasing our first version. I’ve been following the lean startup methodology and I wasn’t sure I wanted to release a product that in my eyes was too simplistic. Did we strike the balance between a bare-bone version but include enough features to hook users into trying us out and providing feedback? There was no way to find out other than to launch it and it turns out we did. The feedback we’ve received from users has been tremendous and it constantly amazes me. In fact, it’s encouraged me to do the same for other startups. I highly recommend you do as well. Those two minutes it takes you to write what you think of the product or to submit an idea can do wonders for the product. Companies, especially small startups like us, do listen. On that note, here’s our GetSatisfaction page if there’s something you want to share.

3. Evangelized users – If you told me that it’s actually going to be the users who complained about the product that will turn out to be our best ones, I wouldn’t have believed you. Heck, with my gambling personality I would have probably bet you money and lost. It’s counterintuitive and that’s been the case. One example I’ll provide is a user named Stephen who wrote a blog entry about how he was giving up on our tool because it wasn’t working for him. I caught the Google Alert, left a comment and we went back and forth a few times. Now we converse regularly on Twitter, exchange personal emails, Gchat/Skype and I even received a very sweet Christmas card from him. I would go as far as to say I made a new friend.

In general, I’ve also learned that people seem programmed to think companies don’t care about them OR that they’re bigger than they actually are. Of course, you can use the latter to your advantage sometimes but you’ll be amazed at how quickly you can change someone’s mind or empower them to be an evangelist just by taking the time to listen to them and simply by caring about them

4. First Place at Temple’s Business Plan Competition – I’ve entered the business plan competition at Temple University, my alma mater, four times from 2004 to 2010. I seemed to have a knack for winning their Innovative Idea Competitions (which precede the Business Plan competitions) and I took home First Place, Second Place and First Place again 3 years consecutively with a multitude of ideas (Yes, I’m one of those “Oh I can make this better” or “This idea is going to be the biggest thing since Google” crazies).

I entered this past year and would you believe the idea I finally executed on didn’t place in the Idea Competition? Thankfully, I’m one of those people that becomes even more energized when rejected or underestimated. We made the finals and our team was ecstatic, especially because we were competing in the Graduate category and we were facing off with graduate students, faculty and other alumni. I practiced my presentation so much I lost my voice the night before and had to spend the morning gargling salt water in the bathroom until my slot came up. All in all, we walked away with First Place and $10,000 in cash and prizes which was tremendous for our small bootstrapped company.

5. Traction without active marketing – Like everyone else, I made projections about the number of traffic hits, users, blogs and revenue we would rack up and I was extremely conservative knowing we weren’t going to put any marketing dollars into our alpha launch. The purpose was to get the tool out there, obtain feedback and iterate until we got to beta. However, we were mentioned in blog posts, forums, Twitter, magazine articles, etc. I almost wanted it to stop because I felt like our product wasn’t ready yet but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

6. ShareASale ThinkTank and Affiliate Summit event – As a pre-funded company, it’s hard to allocate money for trade shows and events but I’m glad I was able to make it happen. Mingling with people in my industry was key in building relationships and growing my company. The events have helped me acquire partners, advisers and users. I learned that the real networking happens at the after-parties. My only reservation is I need to do a better job at following up. Tip: Try getting a free press pass before purchasing your ticket.

7. Great advisory board – I remember joking during my presentation at the Business Plan Competition that I’ve surrounded myself with people smarter than me. The thing is, it’s true. My advisors – and I probably have more than I should – have been key in pulling the Company through the down cycle of our roller-coaster ride. My board is full of technologists, entrepreneurs, and affiliate marketing experts. My only regret is I don’t update them as often as I should.

Now it’s time to flip the switch and discuss what could have gone better last year:

1. Turnaround between releases – When we first launched our alpha in March, we were releasing updates on a regular basis, probably around once a month. As the year went on, the months started spreading further apart and we had one period where it took us three months to push a release. What happened? We decided to cram so many new updates into one release and wow our users by saying “hey look, we listened to you and added X, X and X” that it took us a loooong time to work through the bugs. Lesson learned.

2. Crash of August 2010 – To continue on the story above, working through the bugs turned out to be a massive failure. Our plugin crashed when we released the aforementioned update in August. And it crashed hard. Not only could new users not use the tool but existing users who upgraded lost all their previous links. We recovered quickly and redacted the version less than 48 hours later. We’re constantly working on refining our test environment so this doesn’t happen again. In addition, our evangalized users have been extremely receptive to testing releases for us.

3. Disadvantages of hiring Computer Science students – A bootstrapped startup squeals at the idea of having CS students help them with development mostly because of the cheap labor and I was no different. When my CTO mentioned he had two friends he wanted to bring on the company, I enthusiastically lept at the concept. As great as they have been, it’s not the same as having someone full-time and dedicated to the success of your startup. Students must defer when schoolwork, projects or competitions take priority. Most of the time, startups can’t afford that.

4. Disadvantages of working virtually – At our biggest, we were a virtual team of 8 people. This consisted of myself, Alex, two part-time developers, a designer, and three interns. The developers and designer are overseas in Europe and my interns and I get together once a week. We use email and have played around with different collaboration tools to stay in touch. While we’ve done the best we can, I’m not sure I would do it again in the future. There’s something to be said to working side-by-side with a team member. The dynamic is very different.

5. Disadvantages of working from home – I moved back in with my Mom when I decided to pursue this venture to cut down on my expenses. While it has certainly achieved that goal, I’m not sure it’s worth it. I love my family. That said, the constant barrage of questions and favors and the incessant knocking on my door leads to unproductive and frustrating days. On the other hand, there are also times when I’m in front of my computer for 10 hours straight, eating granola bars to meet a deadline and I don’t talk to anyone. I’ve been pondering the thought of getting my own place in the City and how it may help me grow the company more, even though I would be increasing my expenses.

6. Not getting to Beta – This was the big milestone we did not achieve in twenty-ten. There are a couple of reasons I won’t get into here but I will say we quickly learned not to share dates with partners and users.

Moving forward this year, there’s a lot that we’re working on. Our main goal is to make the plugin so automated and easy to use that you just install it and forget it. Look out for updates coming soon!

By: Yasmine – Founder & CEO