A founder's first steps

'“Baby steps”… it’s a thing, right? It’s good to move at a pace that’s not too fast, so you know you have sure footing and a soft place to land if you stumble… Newsflash! If you are a founder and have jumped head first into the vast ocean of pitch decks, MMR, CMS, LTV, CAC, revenue streams, yada yada, then you most certainly were not granted the luxury of baby steps, and for sure were not given that soft place to land when you fell flat on your face 17,643 times.

So let’s start at the beginning: you have this wild idea. For me, it didn’t seem so wild. I just was taking an existing method, organizing it, modernizing it, and monetizing it.

You start asking around. Asking your friends and family what they think about your idea. And if you’re smart, you’ll ask a lot more people before doing anything about it. I asked my husband, parents, friends, probably 5 vendors I was friends with, and 5 clients of mine. I would recommend doing that times 10 at a bare minimum.

Assuming you get raving opinions on your wild idea, you start to set out on it. Lay out your plans, start working on a business plan, decide on a name, organizing the infrastructure. I tried to build my idea on a SquareSpace site and got nowhere. But, it helped me figure out what I wanted in a software. Do that and do more of it, better than me. I wasted money in tech changing my mind 5 times and I am still going through yet another iteration before launch. Best case scenario, you should ask a bunch of people in the industry how they went about building their product. Founders are much more approachable than you think. We like to talk about our babies.

You get invited to your first networking event, score! You think “this is the night I get discovered! Someone is going to hear my story and my idea, call me fekking brilliant and hand me a million dollar check”. That will not happen. You might be brilliant, but you are not that brilliant, and certainly not entirely unique to the people you are meeting at these events. Go into your first networking event humble, with no expectations, and look at the whole experience as practice. If you let your hopes get above a .23 on a 10-scale, you will leave disappointed. And also, don’t leave that event thinking everyone loved you enough to follow up or do something about it. If you were exceptionally well-versed and had your shit together (like I was, not to toot my own horn), you might be able to squeeze out a couple meetings, send them your first version pitch deck that you will later look at as a complete embarrassment, and will undoubtedly get your first rejections (raising my hand).

To be continued…