Hey Zan! What was it like starting your own startup with your friends, and any takeaways or reflections you'd like to share about the overall experience?
You definitely learn a LOT doing something like that.
To give you a bit of context - the company was developing an accessible software package for Android, back in the time when Android was lacking in regards to accessibility (especially vs iOS).
We started it out of university by 4 CS graduates who had no sense of business. The product didn't sell so we sold the IP for it.
The company itself is still around but operating as a digital agency with 1 of the original founding team running it.
Here's a (rather lacking) and completely unordered list of of my experiences with it:
we should definitely have someone on board from the business/marketing/design sense. We were way too engineering heavy.
sales is hard (maybe especially in the accessibility sector)
besides development and sales, you also need to worry about things like marketing, accounting, business deals, user testing.
on the plus side, you learn all about these things because you have to
speaking of user testing, it's invaluable. Everyone should do it (and do more of it)
it can be meagre existence, but any wins are the best things ever :)
emotional amplitudes are waaay more than anywhere else - highs are way higher, and lows are waaaay lower too
given that I had 1 startup (that failed miserably) I'm probably not the best person to give any advice 😂 I really liked the book The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz - he explains it way better than I can and he's got tons more experience :)
Hope this made sense ^
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Hey Zan! What was it like starting your own startup with your friends, and any takeaways or reflections you'd like to share about the overall experience?
Hi Andy! Good question :)
You definitely learn a LOT doing something like that.
To give you a bit of context - the company was developing an accessible software package for Android, back in the time when Android was lacking in regards to accessibility (especially vs iOS).
We started it out of university by 4 CS graduates who had no sense of business. The product didn't sell so we sold the IP for it.
The company itself is still around but operating as a digital agency with 1 of the original founding team running it.
Here's a (rather lacking) and completely unordered list of of my experiences with it:
Hope this made sense ^