You’re not building something new if you have enough time.

This time’s post is going to be a little different. It’s short, concise and on point.

Picture this, you get a great idea for a project, that can become a product. You feel this is your chance of making it big, and that the idea you just had is not something anyone else has tackled.

If you have had an experience like the above, you might know that the above is followed by a feeling that someone might already be working on it and you need to get started quickly, not waste a single moment and get it done as quickly as possible.

Every minute spent post that point not working on that idea feels like a minute that is given to a potential competitor that might have had a similar idea. And in all fairness, that’s true. There are dozens of companies that work on a similar breakthrough idea only to compete against one another, and in the end, only one prevails. The first to market is the first to rake in that sweet sweet cash.

Now, I have no problems with companies competing on similar ideas, I kind of like that. It gives companies the incentive to release products quickly, and if they can’t, then at least the incentive to release much better products than each other.

When a new idea clicks and that sector isn’t dominated or has virtually no competitors, then it’s ripe for monopolizing. The one who gets there first is the winner.

Having a great product counts, but being the first to market counts for more, I prefer Google Cloud Platform, but I constantly have to work with companies that rely on Amazon Web Services, just because they have been a long-established brand in the market and were the first to enter. They are not necessarily better than any of their competitors, it’s their long-standing infrastructure and range of services that are offered that make them stand out over everyone else.

“Let’s get it done this month.”

When I joined the first startup I worked with during my college days, I was constantly bombarded with lots of work because the customers were constantly using it, and the features I was building with them was not something that the customers had seen before.

There were times when I used to get a call from the sales guys, and they would ask me if something new their customers wanted was possible to be built or not. And if the feature was possible, you can be sure I and the team worked and got it done as soon as possible.

There was an awe in the eyes of every person in the team when a feature was shipped before the deadline and in the eyes of the salespeople because they had either beaten their competitors into building a feature or they were the first ones to build something like it.

I spent a good chunk of my early college days with the team and then progressed to another startup. The landscape was for some reason the exact opposite.

By this time I had been accustomed to getting whatever was asked of me done as soon as possible, usually on the same day of the request. In this startup, the usual things I heard were “I will look at it and get back to you tomorrow.” which was very strange to me. The smallest of decisions that would have taken minutes to confirm, which are crucial in startup environments were pushed for discussion to the next day or next week.

As a result of the above, features that I was accustomed to getting done in a day usually took a week to get done or even never got done. It felt like no one was truly interested in what the startup was interested in doing, or was busy with something else much more important.

Now, I don’t judge people based on their priorities. But here was a startup that was behaving like a bureaucratic mess because the people probably didn’t believe in the startup’s mission.

This usually happens when a startup has a purpose that either is very convoluted for its people to understand, or just not interesting or new enough for people to care about or resonate with.

Imagine this, if I came up to you and asked you to work with me on an idea that just doesn’t sound interesting to you, or something that has been done about a hundred times before, by others, chances are, you are not going to be on board.

It is why I am never truly interested in working with Social Network startups, the idea is so overdone that now it is either impossible for new entrants to make a mark or that there are thousands of competitors already in the space for them to have any effect, the more the competition, the harder it is to succeed. Anyone that has a startup idea of a social network is fooling themselves around. Don’t try it, you’ll thank me later.

Back to the above startup, the startup was already acting like a billion-dollar company, because it took the entire week to decide on and get one thing done.

Realization

With a lot of work, and a lot of waiting and anticipation, the startup finally launched its beta release. To the dismay of many, the app was bug-ridden, and the website hardly gained any traction and users.

One or two months in, with the efforts of the entire marketing team, trying to boost their campaigns on LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, the startup still had only 4 actual signups. All this time, the management was talking about how valuable the startup is going to be and how it would solve a big problem. Guess what? Those words turned out to be just words.

It was evident post the third week of the launch that they had built something that the users either didn’t need or already had a better alternative for.

Workarounds

The startup post the third week of launch started making plans for overhauling the user interface of the site and add many more features and third-party integrations into the website.

To my surprise, the product we had been working on for the past four or five months was literally thrown out of the window and we were told to do something completely new, and still build on what we had built so far.

It was clear at this moment to me, that the management was just desperately wanting to get customers and sign-ups so they could get their first real transaction. There were many workarounds on the existing processes to facilitate transactions but Analytics data showed us that a staggering ninety per cent or more users never even read to the last section of the home page.

Acceptance

After desperately trying to build new versions of the product for the next two to three months with people having just an “I’ll look into it this week” as an answer to any problem, blasting marketing emails, phone calls and even presentations at different startup events, and unbelievably, hiring board of advisors for their guidance on “Scaling” the startup (Even though there was no need to) and bringing business to the site. The site was still at the four users mark at the end of it all.

The startup and its employees started to accept the fact that maybe the startup had built something that no one wanted. The CEO was still in denial and still insisted that in the long run the company would still be valued at over a billion dollars.

Comforting words coming from a person who switches the meaning of “Long Term” from one year to fifteen years based on convenience or requirement of the situation.

Leaving Thoughts

Don’t work for a startup, that acts like a billion-dollar company before it has reached even worth of a thousand dollars.

Don’t work for a company that hasn’t had a single customer say they love the idea but claims they are changing the world.

Don’t work with people who are disinterested in building something with you.

Don’t work with companies that don’t accept the fact that their product is not something themselves they will use.

That’s all I have to tell you guys.