Yipit's "One-night fame" and the persistence behind it

Editor's note: Original author Vinicius Vacanti is the co-founder of Yipit, the United States group buying navigation website. He and another founder Jim in the plight of struggling to stick to 2.5, finally ushered in the outbreak of yipit, making it the United States currently the most successful group buying navigation site. At the same time, he shared this entrepreneurial story is also highly praised. Hope that their stories will give those who struggle in the plight of the entrepreneurs to carry on the faith.

"What do you do for a job?" "Well, I hate this kind of problem. We're really trying to do something new, and although we haven't made any progress yet, we're not just talking about it, but we're pushing the idea that we're struggling with. Although people nodded their heads, they could not conceal their doubts on their faces.

What strikes me most is that they may sometimes ask: "Are you doing this full-time?" It's like saying, "Are you trying to tell me that you spend all your time on this ridiculous idea?" ”

In the summer of 2007 we resigned from our previous financial work, and we did work very, very hard. By February 2010, more than 2.5 had no income, but we did not have any results to show. We don't have half a dime, and all the investors we've contacted have refused. We can't find anyone else to join our team because no one is interested in our ideas.

Two years have passed, although we have done a variety of yipit, but the monthly number of independent visits still failed to pass million. We are always wandering in the trough:

Personally, I ran out of all my savings and was punished for not paying my credit card. But it's not that I don't have cash to pay, but I don't want to face it. It's frustrating to see that the savings that you earn in your hard work are gradually depleted. And remember how I felt when I was ready to take out all my money from my retirement account. Because I know very well that this will bring me serious consequences.

Frankly, I may have wanted to give up early, and the only thing that didn't make me do it was that I didn't want to betray my co-founder Jim. He also resigned from the previous financial work, in order to work with me and gave up a lot of good job opportunities, so I can not leave.

By February 2010, we had more than 2.5 startups, and we had a new idea: to make a navigation site for the fast-growing group buying industry. Doing content aggregation is what we're good at, because for the past nine months, we've been doing local promotions. Then in just three days, everything changed.

After three days of struggle we have launched this new idea, and immediately received media attention and the user's favorite. After four months we got an amazing 1 million dollar investment, and a year later we've raised 6 million dollars. Not only do we get real revenue, we have tens of thousands of users, but we also hire very talented people. Most importantly, we are just getting started.

What happened in three days? I believe that even if we do group buying navigation from the very beginning, we may not have the results now, because we may still screw it up. But after 2.5 of accumulated experience, we know what to do:

Product Strategy: We use action to practice the essence of Entrepreneurship (lean Startup movement). When I went to a solid business party in New York, I learned about the four steps of epiphany and realized we only needed to create a product that was the least viable.

Develop prototypes: I've learned web development in the past few years, and Jim has taught himself about front-end development. So we do not need to seek outside assistance, we can quickly make product prototypes.

Design User interface: We designed a lot of prototypes. So we know how to make a registration page, and on this page let's collect users ' mailboxes and preferences and know how to get users to help us spread.

Getting early exposure: we know how to conceive our stories to arouse the interest of journalists. The exposure of TechCrunch and Wired has given us a powerful impetus for our initial growth.

Interest to investors: in the past few years we have been in contact with many New York investors, so they are familiar to us. So we can quickly find interested investors.

Build Word-of-mouth Marketing: We have joined the tech community in New York, and friends of the community have been instrumental in Yipit's early publicity.

Now looking back, we have not been fruitless in the last 2.5 years. While we were not showing any signs of success, we learned something important: The art and Science of New adventures, and it took us nearly three years to know what we needed to do in three days.

So, you think you have no results and want to give up halfway to the entrepreneur, I hope you read this article can continue to go on. You learn new things every day, and you have enough power to catch them one day when you flash.

Source: http://www.36kr.com/p/71592.html