My first tech business (Web 2.0 era) didn't make it through the last recession
11 lessons I learned through that period that setup my future success
I originally posted this on Twitter on June 21st 2022. You may see the embedded tweet above, otherwise the thread has also been unrolled.
My first tech business didn't make it through the last recession
Here's 11 lessons I learned through that period that setup my future successes:
UberNote was a Web2.0 tech startup that began in 2005. ("Uber" before it was cool)
2 developers living in a townhouse (not a garage), with a dream and a low cost of living.
*Flickr and Delicious sold for $10s of millions, why not us?
1/ Don't Build Something For Everyone
We were "Online notes for everyone, accessible from anywhere" (Notion before Notion)
What could go wrong with building a notes app with no real target market?
*Trying to build something for everyone is building for no one
2/ Have A Realistic Monetization Plan in Mind
All we cared about was DAUs (Daily active users) and signups.
We could figure out a monetization strategy later, if we just built a good product.
*If we did some price testing early, we could have saved ourselves years of pain
3/ Don't Build For Yourself For Too Long
Dogfooding in the early days can get you initial traction.
If we talked to users as we got scale, we would have seen their needs were different vs our vision.
*We wasted valuable time building for our vision vs listening to users
4/ Don't Fall In Love With Your Tech
We thought our note syncing was innovative
You could open a browser at work and one at home... make an edit... then within seconds the notes would MAGICALLY sync.
*Building that was fun, but didn't make our product a business
For context: Web tech was different back in 2005
Google Docs did not yet exist.
AJAX was the thing but frameworks like jQuery, React, and Rails didn't exist.
AWS and Azure weren't a thing either, we had a servers running in our bedrooms and hard drives that died.
5/ Press Isn't A Marketing Strategy
After quitting our jobs we're just building away waiting to be discovered (living off of savings 2007-2009)
Getting PR and tech news coverage was our strategy then waiting to go viral soon after
*Unfortunately for us we did get some press
6/ External Validation Doesn't Mean You Made It (only paying customers do)
In 2009 BOOM it happened featured in Lifehacker (kinda a big deal back in the day)
10k new accounts in a 24 hours.
Surge of usage and personal energy.
Momentum and buzz led to us getting into an accelerator in DC and raising some money.
We met Tim O'Reilly, played poker with the DC tech elite, had real mentors.
*None of this resulted in paying customers cause we weren't charging yet
7/ Focus On Making It A Business
All the press, funding, and users created external validation that we thought we needed at that time.
But our users weren't any happier, our product wasn't any better...
*We weren't any closer to being a sustainable business
8/ Don't Try to Raise During a Recession (kinda joking)
2009 was not great for raising capital.
It didn't help us that we were an east coast company and didn't want to move west.
*Honestly, there many more reasons we weren't fundable but we didn't see it that way
9/ Keep An Eye On Rising Trends
Did I fail to mention we ignored the "Mobile Trend"?
We were tech forward developers in 2007-2009
We believed the 100% web was the way forward.
*Mobile turned out to be a generational opportunity that we missed
10/ Understand What Customers Will Actually Pay For
We decided to charge users 4 years in (2009)
Quickly realized that in consumers didn't like to pay, especially a web app that stored your notes.
*While people used the app every day, our app wasn't as valuable as we thought
11/ Don't Hang On Too Long (Zombie Startup)
UberNote suffered a slow death for years to come (closed in 2012 ish)
The team disbanded and we kept the servers on, while supporting existing users.
Even though we weren't actively working on it, it still took up valuable headspace
** What were the key lessons? **
- Have a specific target market
- Have a monetization strategy
- Don't just wait to go viral
- External validation means nothing
- Talk to customers
- Watch trends
- Know when to quit
It took me a few years to realize how the experience affected me (good and bad)
These lessons made me a better entrepreneur and led to my current successful business.