How did we make $100k using GoogleSheets after 2 failed products?
Many asked me this. So, in 14 tweets, I cover Flexiple’s 1st year comprising:
- Product 1 & its failure
- Product 2 & its failure
- What went wrong
- Why/how GoogleSheets worked
Our idea was simple: Connecting pre-vetted tech talent with companies.
Like most new entrepreneurs, we wanted to build for scale.
Manual processes just seemed foolish to us, so we decided that building a product was the answer.
2 of 14/ What was Product 1
The product would:
- Manage the entire onboarding flow of freelancers including tests, evaluations, interview scheduling, etc.
- Allow clients to share their requirements in a predictive fashion (just if-else conditions :P)
(contd.)
3 of 14/ What was Product 1 (contd.)
- Recommendations would be made automatically through an algorithm
- Even contracts & invoicing would be handled by the product
Essentially, we were ready for a million projects before we had handled one.
4 of 14/ Product 1's failure
- The entire user flow had become super complex - even I used to get confused!
- Meanwhile, we’d made changes in our evaluation process & many parts of the product had become redundant.
- Of course, this was beyond the bugs of a nascent product
5 of 14/ Product 1 into the bin
We tried correcting this but realised it was too tough to implement changes on the existing product.
Also, we felt the problem was that we hadn’t got a professional UX designer for Product 1.
Product 1 into the bin.
6 of 14/ Product 2 begins
Apart from hiring a designer, we agreed we’d tried to overachieve.
So, some features like the reco. algorithm, interview scheduling, etc. were removed. Many others were included though.
You see, preparing for scale was important 😑. Our revenue => $0.
7 of 14/ Product 2 fails
We made a beautiful product that easy to understand & use.
Aaaand... now, we started reaching out to customers & freelancers.
But, people weren’t using the product at all! Most of our conversations were happening over mail, phone and LinkedIn.
8 of 14/ What went wrong?
We’d done our user research while making it, so what happened?
Turns out, they couldn’t care less about our product. Freelancers wanted projects & companies wanted quality talent.
They wanted us to first deliver on that before using our product.
9 of 14/ Mistake in our thinking
Most “tech-enabled” startups confuse themselves to be “core-tech” startups.
In the former, tech only enables you to scale but isn’t key to start a business - so, it only makes sense to start it first and to infuse tech later to scale.
(contd.)
10 of 14/ Mistake (cond.)
Take the examples of Uber, Airbnb, Swiggy/Deliveroo - all are “tech-enabled”.
Yet, if you ask anyone to build an “Uber for X”, the first step they would suggest is building an app.
It is the mistake of thinking tech-first instead of business-first.
11 of 14/ The Flaw
- You don’t know the bottlenecks a product should solve; you try to predict it
- Building a startup is tough & we divert energy into building a product instead of making money first
- We build for scale when we don’t know what it takes to earn the 1st $
12 of 14/ Google Sheet
- Finally, we just asked freelancers to fill a simple Google Form
- Evaluation process was coordinated over mail
- Selected candidates & their contact details noted in a Google Sheet
(contd.)
13 of 14/ Google Sheet (contd.)
- Leveraged our personal network through LinkedIn & otherwise to get client leads
- Connected freelancers and clients over mail
- Freelancers documented the project hours in a Google Sheet
- We manually prepared the contract & invoices
14 of 14/ Continue till we made $100k
We followed this - just 3 co-founders - & made the first $100k in revenue.
We infused tech only when our bandwidth was stretched in some place & have now made $1mn in revenue.
About that, in a different thread - hope you enjoyed this!
I plan to share more of my startup experiences. If you liked this tweet thread, do like & retweet the first tweet :)