Wow, what a year! Starfish has officially been in business for one year now, and as a co-owner I want to take a moment to reflect on what I’ve learned during our first year of business. This is by no means an exhaustive list, just the top takeaways.
Before I dive in, I want to give a big thank you to my family, friends, Suresh, and everyone who has supported us in this first year. Building something is HARD. I can honestly say this is the hardest I’ve ever worked and yet the happiest I’ve been.
A Year 1 Business Reflection
1) No more good days and bad days, I now have good hours and bad hours
Things move quickly when building a startup. Historically, I’ve had good days at work and bad days at work, and my goal was to stack as many good days in a row as possible. When people say startups are a roller coaster, it’s true. I find my goal has switched from stacking days to stacking hours.
The more good hours I can have in a day, the more successful we are. Shifting the focus from days to hours has forced me to really think about prioritization. Time is finite!
2) EVERYTHING takes longer than you expect
I truly mean everything: sales, expansion, marketing ROI, building a great product, working with partners. You name it, and I promise it’s going to take longer than you originally think.
Today, I find myself entirely focused on building momentum, knowing that the more momentum we have, the greater the results.
Those who know me well know that patience is not one of my strong suits. Building a company is this weird combination of being extremely impatient for short-term wins and extremely patient for long-term vision and success.
3) Stick with your vision, but be willing to pivot on your solution
When I was building my first company, I found myself focused on one thing—the solution. I was completely unwilling to pivot to other solutions, even to solve the same problem. I promised myself this time I would stay focused on the problem because the problem is huge. 82% of small business failures are due to cash flow issues. This is a massive problem that needs solving.
Our original solution was to build a reporting/dashboard tool. We realized quickly that this isn't what people wanted and pivoted. This led to our biggest unlock: people don’t want reports, numbers, or graphs. They want to be told how to improve their business in plain, simple terms.
Is this a different solution than I originally thought? Absolutely. But that’s okay because this time, I’m focused entirely on solving the problem.
4) Listen to your customers and build for them
My favorite part about working with restaurants and small businesses? They tell you EXACTLY what they need to be successful. If you’re willing to listen and ask questions, you can really build a great product.
I’ve found the most success by asking about the “why” behind feature requests. How does that feature actually help them? What is the impact if we build it? Why is this a top priority? Knowing why a customer wants something versus just what they want has made a huge difference in our development process.
5) As the company becomes more successful, it gets more stressful and more fun
This seems a bit counterintuitive because you’d think the most stress would be when you have no customers. But I haven’t found that to be the case so far. Now that we have happy, paying customers, the real pressure is on—to build the best tool for them, save them the most money, and get way more customers like them!
It’s also become more fun. Every week, we hear amazing stories about how Starfish is helping customers save money. How someone turned their first profit in a year because of our software. How another customer saved two days of work because of our reports.
The pressure ratchets up, but so does the enjoyment!
Year 1 has been incredible. So, what’s in store for Year 2?
I’ll write a full post before 2024 ends, but here’s what I’d say:
Continue building a great product.
Work with more customers.
Focus on building processes that scale, knowing they will break as we continue to grow this fast.
What did I miss? Leave a comment with one of your key learnings from your first year of business building and reflection.