Entrepreneurial story: We slept in the office for 6 months ... But it's still a failure.

Absrtact: We can always hear all kinds of successful business success stories, some of them in order to save money in the basement office, someone in large companies to work quietly business. People want to hear stories of entrepreneurs telling success after 9,981 of difficulties, but

We can always hear all kinds of stories about successful business success, some of them in order to save money in the basement office, someone in large companies to work quietly business. People want to hear stories of entrepreneurs telling success after 9,981 of difficulties, but in fact, many times we can fail after great effort.

Alex Klokus, co-founder and CEO of Wisdomly, a start-up company based in New York, led the team to develop wisdomly, an online education platform that later expanded into an online platform for activity. Wisdomly team members include a former VC, former Google engineer, Wisdomly received funding from the Tigerlabs and startup Chile two accelerator, but eventually failed, Alex rethink his entrepreneurial process, Wisdomly's "autopsy Report" was published on Medium:

The arduous process of starting a business

In order to make the wisdomly well, we have made great efforts, the following are some of them:

I lived in my former teacher's office for 6 months and another colleague came to live in the last two months. We use the bathroom of the cleaners and go upstairs and take the freight elevator. There are four or five colleagues who live at least one day a week at the accelerator's office. They lived in an intern's home in the incubator when they didn't live there. Our CTO from Google, in order to join us, he lost his work visa, only to return to the legal and we continue to work together. At one point 5 of our team were scattered in Chile, India and New York. It's not easy, but we're working. One of our colleagues had to call an ambulance for working too hard. We spent 500 dollars to buy a second-hand car to save the time on the road.

Close

Unfortunately, a strong will does not equal success, and we abandoned the project in early 2014. We found that our estimates were inconsistent with the user's needs, and after a few months of groping, we thought it was time to move forward. Developing wisdomly is a great time and I am lucky to be able to work with so many good people who will be my lifelong friends.

In these months, I have learned the most important lessons in my life, both personal and at work. Here, I would like to share with you what I think is the most important seven experience, I hope to be able to help you:

Entrepreneurial experience

1. Your company is made up of individuals

It's easy to see the company more important than the people who work together every day, but the company is just an abstract concept and your co-workers are real. It is easy for the interests of the company to ignore everyone who makes up the company.

Summary: In order to retain talent, they need to feel that they are valuable, if they do not think so, it is easy to go wrong.

2. Successful entrepreneurs are not necessarily good advisers

We initially have clear goals and strategies. Then we met a potential investor who had financed more than 100 million dollars, valued our passion and strongly encouraged us to transform the online education platform into an online platform.

"The opportunity is huge, imagine what it would be like to have a big client." I can help you. "We were very excited to hear that. But then one day, he stopped ignoring us, and we found ourselves in a completely unfamiliar market and didn't know how to make a profit on our plan.

Summary: Don't let consultants mess up your company. They are called "advisers" for a reason.

3. Breaking the gap and exchanging ideas openly

When we first discussed the product, we decided to hold an open feedback session every two weeks, when the atmosphere we discussed was friendly. After a while, we didn't stick to the system until we finally failed.

As a leader I assume full responsibility, I also realize that smooth communication for the company's success and the healthy development of the team is of great significance.

Summary: Must implement the feedback system and the regular summary system.

4. Keep team morale at all costs, even if it's fake

I believe morale means everything to a young entrepreneurial team. In the first month or two, we received good news from all sides. However, there was not much good news at the subsequent stage of peaceful development. At this time need to inspire morale, the specific means can be set clear goals, holding effective activities, and so on.

Note: If you spend too much effort on this, there may be some other problems that the company needs to address. In the short term, morale has a good effect, but in the long run it can lead to disillusionment and distrust, especially when the company is not progressing well.

Summary: Need to balance the employee's spontaneous morale and the morale of the artificial motivation.

5. Do not assign energy evenly to each job and apply the 80/20 rule to everything.

We worked long hours but still didn't finish our goal, we stayed in the office every week, slept in front of the computer, and felt a lot of pressure. We have invested all our time and energy, but we have not been rewarded in the same proportion. No matter how much you manage your time, you only have 24 hours a day. Learning to prioritize is the most effective way to achieve your goals.

Summary: Choose two of the most important things to accomplish today and start doing it now.

6. Be truly in love with the work you do

We identified the company's vision from the outset: "Create a platform where users can learn, discover, and be enthusiastic about sharing with others." "We want to build an educational platform, but eventually become a virtual platform."

Once we are less excited about the product, the job is no longer full of fun and challenges. We didn't care about the living conditions at first, but then we didn't want to continue to bathe in the cleaners ' locker room.

Summary: This sounds like a cliché, but ask yourself if you really love what you're doing, if the answer is yes, congratulations, or start making changes.

7. Failure is also a harvest

Entrepreneurship is fraught with the risk of failure, and people often lose courage in the face of risk. If you have the expertise, passion and desire to succeed, then I can assure you that whatever the end result, you will be better than you were.

It's hard to quantify what you've learned from a registered company to the process of releasing a product, and I can assure you that no course, Ted Video, or an article can teach you these things in your startup process.

Summary: What is the worst result of creating a company? Failed。 As a "person who has encountered the worst situation," I would like to say that entrepreneurship will not waste your time and youth.