Thread by @FreakShreek

This is going to be a long thread, but bear with me. As our product of love and labor—our #startup—comes out of stealth mode today, I want to take you on a short journey on how it came to be.

Buckle up. This is @SketchnoteCo 🧵 1/n

As some of you may know, I co-founded Diabeto, which was one of the few early hardware startups from India that saw success. Early success.

Because of this, I was invited by several accelerators in India to share my learnings with early-stage entrepreneurs. 2/n

One accelerator I was involved with—Zone startups—were investing in very early hardware startups by women.

Over the 3 yrs of my association, I noticed the quality of women entrepreneurs was increasing at a great pace.

Here's me at one of those meetings. ⬇️ 3/n

Designers, coders—the women were killing it. But a common issue that seemed to be plaguing many was that they lacked business knowledge. One entrepreneur sent me a 3k worder business plan, explaining her product tech when I asked her for an investor deck.

I'd see blank faces4/n

I'd quickly draw sketchnotes (like this one about landing page elements, attached to this tweet) for them. When I'd circulate my sketchbook with similar business concepts visualized, it'd help the women entrepreneurs with the concepts much better than lengthy lectures did. 📸 5/n

Initially, I thought this was a cultural problem with the Indian entrepreneur. In the meantime I started working on customer profiles as sketchnotes. Check the progression from Jan 23 to Feb 6 2019 here! 👇🏻 6/n

The cultural question still bugged me. I flew to Munich and attended a pitch session as an angel at Volkswagen's internal accelerator. I saw most startups couldn't answer basic business questions.

A kind lady from Berlin there told me to come with her to the capital instead 7/n

I spoke to Julio—my lead investor, board member, and a dear friend—who invited me to Madrid. He said, "Let's interview startups from the biggest accelerator in Europe, Telefonica."
Now, Berlin may be the Mecca of EU startups, but Julio too is a massive force in Europe! 📸 8/n

Julio's invested in more than 40 startups, and is also an LP in a Madrid-based VC fund.

While on my way to him, I realized the problem of literacy isn't just cultural. These early-stage, first-time entrepreneurs had an idea to change the world but didn't know how to. 9/n

At Telefonica, we interviewed 5 startups and was only mildly shocked to see our hypothesis turning concrete before our eyes.

Something had to be done!

Back in India, I spoke to a friend from the Valley and was hooked to one of the best design teams from Berlin, Germany. 10/n

And thus began our 5-day sprint! Here's some snippets from it (And a pic of Dickmann's Candy I treated myself to after the successful sprint!) 11/n

Gleanings from the sprint:

- Learning is hard, business learning exponentially so.
- We needed to find a way to take boring business concepts and help entrepreneurs learn them in short, effective ways.

12/n

Back in India, I did 3 months of behavioral learning patterns. I was now ready to test it!

I flew my dear friend @sumgupdesign down to Mumbai, booked a WeWork room, and started my second sprint! 13/n

I drew sketchnotes on a piece of paper, scanned and put them on @figmadesign to make clickable prototypes

We even gave the participants a sweet 500 bucks for helping with the questions! 😅👇🏻 14/n

I was a bit overwhelmed from a million insights from the second sprint. So I build myself a Gameboy for fun (Tutorials some other time!) 🕹️ 15/n

I wanted to collate and make sense of all my thoughts and behavioral research, plus interview data; we'd interviewed about 25 early-stage entrepreneurs. I flew back to Berlin for a bigger sprint and to start nailing the UX.

Check the earlyyyy pics out! 16/n

But things weren't quite smooth!

I couldn't crack this UX issue for six whole months. I spoke with 50 entrepreneurs, but my brain was stuck. I needed a co-founder.

Julio to the rescue! He was working in Japan at the time, and asked me (and the wife) to visit him in Tokyo. 17/n

I took his offer to speak to entrepreneurs in Tokyo; the wife was pleased too! Julio and his wife treated us to dinner at the restaurant where the climax of Kill Bill was shot. What a night! 18/n

This business+pleasure trip was 🔥

I explained all the info I had gathered over the past year to Julio, and we shook hands at 10:30 pm in a Tokyo coffee shop. We agreed to be co-founders, and raised a toast with espresso and green tea (Where my acid reflux and IBS fam at?) 19/n

In Jan 2020, Julio suggested I try working with this awesome design team in Madrid. Yet another flight in February, and I worked with this amazing team that Julio had so highly recommended and had worked with his top startups. Best. Decision. Ever

The startup was shaping up 20/n

I reached India just a day before all international flights were stopped, as the COVID pandemic struck.

But I couldn't stop! Julio & I worked on the product, recruiting content writers from Spain, India, and the US.

They were all either VCs, angels, CFOs or startuppers. 21/n

Since the platform predominantly has sketches and illustrations, it was a mammoth task to find the right guys for the job. We recruited freelancers from NID—the country's premium design institute.

Say hello to the product of their labor: Our @SketchnoteCo mentors! 22/n

To give you an idea of the work that's gone into building the platform, we have over 3,500 illustrations and 250,000 words on @SketchnoteCo. And counting! 23/n

Now, we had the task of getting the Avengers—our core team for tech, design, and content—in place by August 2020. Say hello to the first guys on board (more about them in another thread, soon!)

Here we are from the first party we had! 🥳 24/n

I could write a book about how to work remotely on a startup you've just begun working on, in the COVID era. But that's for another day (or a TED talk, are you guys listening?)

The grind continued till the end of 2020 with things going as smooth as it could at this point. 25/n

Our grand plan for Feb 2021 was to test our massive platform in India, Indonesia, and Spain.

Our cool MVP and detailed UI/UX study with 25 entrepreneurs was on track. We were confident about the robustness of the platform. Till we found a major flaw in our UX. 26/n

We were back to square one! A bit of a setback, I'd say.

The team, however, maintained their sense of humor and sanity and didn't leave a chance to embarrass me on my birthday! 27/n

So... our beta launch plans were severely hampered, and COVID's second wave in April 2021 meant we were screwed! But this also showed us the importance of being in touch with our end user constantly.

Drawing board! we started implementing changes from alpha feedback. 28/n

We started doing remote monthly demos to potential B2B clients. Their encouraging response fueled the team on.

Twitter was great at this time, and I started getting demo requests purely through word of mouth—or should I say word of tweet! 29/n

You know, when I first started the idea of Sketchnote, it was because I wanted a tool like this for my own startup.

Above all, I wanted to give back to the community by helping them with:

- Mentorship
- Guidance
- Even financial support

This paved the way for grants! 30/n

The amazing response we were getting from early-stage entrepreneurs in SE Asia, EU, Latin America and India, made this a no-brainer. We wanted to give them fuel for their growth.

Naturally, we wanted to start a micro-VC fund to nitro their dreams. 31/n

Thus was born Sketchnote Partners fund!

This would give us access to amazing startup, and make it easy to monitor their journey and help them grow.

I'll do a separate thread on the grants and the micro-VC fund sometime else!

32/n

So, what's Sketchnote, you ask me?

It's an all-in-one SaaS tool that helps first-time, early-stage entrepreneurs with their education, mentorship, team collab, doc management, legal help, and—finally—financial support! 33/n

This is just the beginning of the first step; we have a LONG way to go and many bugs to resolve.

But hey, this is the MVP, our baby step in the SaaS world. We need YOUR help to help YOU! 34/n

If you're an early-stage startupper too, trying to move through the startup jungle, we're looking for you—and you're DEFINITELY looking for us!

Join Sketchnoteverse. Join the waitlist for EXCLUSIVE private beta access! Psst, it's free right now! ➡️ sketchnote.co 35/35