6 ms·

Building a company brick-by-brick

46 points by cuponthefloor 12y ago

andylstephenson 12y ago
Solid advice - good write up
- cuponthefloor 12y ago
  Thank you! Glad you liked it.
mychaelangelo 12y ago
Thanks for sharing and highlighting the runway point. Follow-on funding shouldn't be an after thought once sh*t hits the fan. It should be baked into forecasts/plans from the get-go, if it's something that will be needed either for growth, or as a margin of safety.
- cuponthefloor 12y ago
  That is 100% correct. It was a hard lesson to learn but we are now pretty savvy to the process. However I think that it is very hard to plan for a buffer margin. There are very few business plans that I have seen that plan for buffer margins.
ehurrell 12y ago
Great read, I think a lot of startup blogs skip the ...start bit and jump to "here's how we scaled!" Glad to see an Irish company talking about this stuff too (though I wasn't sure if ye were Irish until I read that Darragh was your first hire :P). Good luck to ye!
- cuponthefloor 12y ago
  Irish founders... english company. Shhhhh Myself and my co founder are from Kildare and Wicklow respectively.
  - ehurrell 12y ago
    I was wondering why I hadn't seen ye about :P Irish people going abroad to start companies seems to work well, good luck :)
toumhi 12y ago
Thanks for sharing your journey! I really like your product and might try it for clients (saas companies) :-) I was curious how come your product has been developed for so long and then I read your previous articles and how you pivoted from chatroulette-like conversations to better for online chat conversations for companies. Good luck!
- cuponthefloor 12y ago
  Thanks for the kind words. Feel free to get in touch with me directly re. using the product for clients. More than happy to help with anything like that. Yes our journey has been a longish one but we have a great team and supportive investors who have helped us a lot.
welshguy 12y ago
"I have found very little written about the journey to $10k and the struggles it brings". I agree. First mention of customers: "We were seeing some interest and already had some nice early sign-ups (approximately 250 sites)". What about the story of those first 250 customers then? Because I have found very little written about the journey to the first 250 customers and the struggles it brings.
- cuponthefloor 12y ago
  Those customers were for the old product. There is not really much point in going into how we got them as the product changed. I will be going through how we got our first 100 customers after the 4 post in this series! If you want to subscribe to the blog you can get the posts as they go live.
dzsekijo 12y ago
Can't seem to be able to subscribe to the blog. At least, Bazqux gives ProtocolError "error:14077410:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:sslv3 alert handshake failure"
Infinitesimus 12y ago
Good read. Thanks for writing this. Provided just the reminder I needed that hustling isn't easy but often necessary for the survival of a company. Good luck with the slight pivot :)

46 points by cuponthefloor 12y ago

andylstephenson 12y ago

Solid advice - good write up

cuponthefloor 12y ago
Thank you! Glad you liked it.

mychaelangelo 12y ago

Thanks for sharing and highlighting the runway point. Follow-on funding shouldn't be an after thought once sh*t hits the fan. It should be baked into forecasts/plans from the get-go, if it's something that will be needed either for growth, or as a margin of safety.

cuponthefloor 12y ago
That is 100% correct. It was a hard lesson to learn but we are now pretty savvy to the process. However I think that it is very hard to plan for a buffer margin. There are very few business plans that I have seen that plan for buffer margins.

ehurrell 12y ago

Great read, I think a lot of startup blogs skip the ...start bit and jump to "here's how we scaled!" Glad to see an Irish company talking about this stuff too (though I wasn't sure if ye were Irish until I read that Darragh was your first hire :P). Good luck to ye!

cuponthefloor 12y ago
Irish founders... english company. Shhhhh Myself and my co founder are from Kildare and Wicklow respectively.
- ehurrell 12y ago
  I was wondering why I hadn't seen ye about :P Irish people going abroad to start companies seems to work well, good luck :)

toumhi 12y ago

Thanks for sharing your journey! I really like your product and might try it for clients (saas companies) :-) I was curious how come your product has been developed for so long and then I read your previous articles and how you pivoted from chatroulette-like conversations to better for online chat conversations for companies. Good luck!

cuponthefloor 12y ago
Thanks for the kind words. Feel free to get in touch with me directly re. using the product for clients. More than happy to help with anything like that. Yes our journey has been a longish one but we have a great team and supportive investors who have helped us a lot.

welshguy 12y ago

"I have found very little written about the journey to $10k and the struggles it brings". I agree. First mention of customers: "We were seeing some interest and already had some nice early sign-ups (approximately 250 sites)". What about the story of those first 250 customers then? Because I have found very little written about the journey to the first 250 customers and the struggles it brings.

cuponthefloor 12y ago
Those customers were for the old product. There is not really much point in going into how we got them as the product changed. I will be going through how we got our first 100 customers after the 4 post in this series! If you want to subscribe to the blog you can get the posts as they go live.

dzsekijo 12y ago

Can't seem to be able to subscribe to the blog. At least, Bazqux gives ProtocolError "error:14077410:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:sslv3 alert handshake failure"

Infinitesimus 12y ago

Good read. Thanks for writing this. Provided just the reminder I needed that hustling isn't easy but often necessary for the survival of a company. Good luck with the slight pivot :)