startup 6 weeks progress update
6 weeks into the startup. The first customer brought the second customer, and he in return recommended us to someone else. We stopped doing demos and focused on our two pilots.
The pilots went well, and yet we still haven’t seen money. On a reminder to pay, our first client emailed us a simple “I’ll pass”. Cool tech doesn’t equal to value creation. We doubled down on value creation (while still improving the product).
Talking about product, it’s matured a lot. We started with a map to displays billboards and add them to a campaign. We are now much more than that, while still being a simple map. I love simplicity, including the one in building products. It also looks great, and many people complimented me on the UI work. Many thanks, especially that I’m not a interface designer.
What’s next — negotiating with the first customer (again), and potentially negotiating with the second customer (again). We tried raising money — both Antler and YC rejected us. They told us the market of out-of-home advertising is too small. We shall see.
Disappointed, but not discouraged, we decided to bootstrap for now. I have three more months to go before my wallet turns into a pumpkin, so I added a little praise “Dear God, please don’t let a kind man starve” to my morning routine. Works for now.