Memoirs of CTO of Europe's leading companies: The lesson of my entrepreneurial failure

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I was the CTO of Sofanatics.com, Sofanatics.com was once considered Europe's most popular start-up, but we haven't been able to grow it, and now Sofanatics.com has closed. I've gained a lot of experience, and I'm here to share my experiences over the years, hoping to help others.

The beginning of the story

I started with the Toni, and he was looking for good developers for startups. It was January 2010, and I remember he sent me an email first, and I decided to give him a call after I read it.

I told Toni on the phone: "I can't find a good and free developer, but I'm willing to join." "Toni seems very happy, then we meet formally."

I met Toni and another company co-founder Sami in my office, and I've known Sami since he showed me a functional application concept. At that time, we exchanged the concept of products, which I had never thought of before, so I was impressed. I told them I had to think about joining the company and I decided to join in a couple of days.

The slogan of our company is "you will never watch alone". Apparently inspired by the Liverpool slogan (and team song) "You will never Walk Alone". The idea was to set up a video chat platform for the fans so that they could talk to each other at the same time while watching the game, making them no longer lonely. Sounds like a pretty good idea, doesn't it?

Then we started to move, and the company got seed money from Tekes, a Finnish investment agency specialising in technology and innovation.

My job was to keep writing code.

Trying to find the right direction (2010)

2010 and depressed, the company's data growth rate is slow, although new users continue to enter, but not far enough! (People just can't get enough). We've been looking for directions, and at least 2 different plans were made that year. First, open the closed video team to allow users to see each other. Then we feel deeply wrong, and began to pay attention to text chat.

Until the game really started, the information constantly updated, the screen will be maxed out. We are faced with a new problem: the most serious is that a large number of users send information to make the chat window a mess, users do not have time to see the content of the chat window. Then we continue to find a way to solve the problem, transfer apps to the Facebook platform, and users must log in to their Facebook account to get our services.

At that time we got the favor of many investors, also ushered in excellent and partners, such as Chelsea FC, and FC Barcelona after. The progress seems to be going well, but the problem is constantly happening.

Inability to get a large investment (2011)

We presented the open UI in 2011 with the user's Facebook image as the avatar. This approach makes the site look more vivid. Through the open interface, users can bounce and cheer for the team in their own way. This UI is quite unique and very cool.

In the summer of 2011, Tuomas to find a better job. We went to Shanghai and we understood his decision, but from then on I began to worry about our future. Tuomas has made a great contribution to the company, and from then on, I have to do those things instead of him. For example, the database table has gone beyond 50, a large number of standardized deployments, and so on, which has become my job. Sui if I can easily do the work through the code base, but so much work needs to be done to make the product innovation speed slow. I often have a new idea on my mind, but I don't have time to make it happen.

After that, we narrowly signed a deal with San Francisco's top VCs, but ended up not getting the big raise. Our people flew to San Francisco to talk to them for at least 2 times and spent a lot of time and energy on that round of financing. We thought that we would definitely get the investment, but God forbid! They suddenly no longer contact us, no explanation, no apologies, no omens! We're in the doghouse.

We have added the game function to the website. Some of the products are quite popular, but some of them look "cottage". I found it a bad decision to increase the game because it made us look like fakes. We are also constantly adding new features to the Web interface, albeit slowly, but in progress.

Although financing failed, we can also maintain the interests of partners to maintain the normal operation of the company. Our investors also help us get out of trouble by giving more time.

Try Hard (2012)

We continued to work as usual and worked with them in the NBA Finals. Although the cooperation time is short, but is quite successful (next season cooperation will continue). Users can use Facebook to watch the NBA live directly through our apps. The surge in the number of users proves that we are making the right decision to embed applications in the Facebook application ecosystem, at least much better than regular websites.

We're still trying to develop mobile apps, and we've actually been able to make a prototype phone application. If I had been given another two months, the mobile app would have been successful.

We did everything we could, but the company closed in early September. Until now I still very uncomfortable, ah ~. Forget it, this is life.

Sentiment

Team problem, excellent person is excellent

In Sofanatics I like to work with smart people. Especially in the beginning, we have 4 people have a strong belief and a wealth of experience. Everyone has a point of view, but we have never been used to figure out who is the real leader. But working with smart people can always end up being solved. Everyone in the team can find their own position, but also understand the strengths and weaknesses of teammates, the direction of development is more and more clear, which clearly determines the quality of the product. If you start out with a clear direction of development, and you're not the core of the team, then things can be easier.

I think the biggest problem with our team is the lack of full-time good designers, we used to have some powerful designers, but failed to give them the ability to play a platform, eventually they left.

Efficiency

At first we were demanding, even exceeding the limit. We develop new features for our products almost every day (except Friday). With productivity metrics, we quickly test new features.

Financial Issues

I like startups to have a clear direction at the beginning. We have many ways to get funding, but not enough. If the final budget is not enough to support the increase in the number of users, we will certainly get more users.

If 10,000 users per minute can bring you 1000 euro earnings, then you can tell the intended investors 100,000 users can bring at least 10,000 euro income. A lot of money flow can make you not be bothered by the financing delay.

No money, no matter how good your product is.

On!

Focus on getting the job done as quickly as possible, and don't half-hearted multiple tasks at the same time, because it will be harder to assess what you've accomplished. Doing a lot of things at the same time can result in a big discount.

It's hard to understand all the new things.

When you work in a completely unknown field, such as social TV, you sometimes don't know the standard of work. So when thinking about innovation and adding new features, try to figure out what you want it to do if you're using the product yourself. Sometimes you can transplant existing features, I'm talking about from a completely different industry! For example, we are porting games to our products.

Listen to yourself.

Many people will tell you what to do and what not to do. Some people are very intelligent and experienced, but you have to remember that they do not have to bear the consequences, and even they may not know exactly what you are doing. Believe in your ideas, create products, forget anything else.

Concluding

Thanks to our great users, to the other members of the team, to the founders, to the investors ...