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Very thought provoking. The biggest lesson I learned with my failed ecommerce startup was not understanding who my customer was. We started out as a B2C and b
by livestyle 13y ago
Very thought provoking.
The biggest lesson I learned with my failed ecommerce startup was not understanding who my customer was.
We started out as a B2C and before we knew it we had other biz's wantint to use our site (think costco for autoparts).
We were so focused on being this huge retail source that we missed our best customers.
Sadly when I finnaly woke up to this reality we were $400k in the hole and 3 years into things.
I suggested a pivot before I knew what a pivot was. My partners voted to stay focused on consumers. We cratered 4 months later.
Lesson learned= Know your customers and what they value.
- trevorgeise 13y agoInteresting. Did you raise capital for the company? So what would you have done differently, or asked another way, how do you approach a new business idea now. Do you start with consumer research? Just focus on a light weight MVP to look for market validation?
- livestyle 13y agoSorry just saw this. Yes we raised from angels. It was a painful exp. Challenge your assumption. In my case coming from a b2b background I had the pain point of having to call around to a bunch of different sources to get parts. I wrongly assumed consumers had the same pain point. I move much more methodically now in terms of who is my actual customer. Hope this helps.