2 years after my debut on Fetch I want to share the lessons learned during the first 6 months of this adventure, it corresponds to the phase from the idea to the private beta launch of our delivery service.
During these 6 months I learnt a lot, I was at that time 23 years old (2015), almost no business experience and startup. So of course I made mistakes that I will never make again. (but you had to do them well to know it...)
This article can be used by anyone interested in startups, as an entrepreneur we all go through the same phases, talking to other entrepreneurs and CEOs I quickly realized that we often make the same mistakes in this first phase of a startup's life.
Before I begin, I would like to make it clear that I am thinking of doing a more detailed article on each of the points I have raised. If some of you would like me to go further on a particular point or several just ask me in the comments!
Lessons learned during these 6 months:
No developer/technical partner needed to start a startup
I know it's a very strong belief in the business profiles I'm part of, the need to have almost a developer with me from day one. On Fetch we did exactly the same thing as 90% of the startups I see: looking for a developer too early.
Startup weekend, pitch in dev schools, aperitif entrepreneurs...
I was convinced that having this profile with you was mandatory to start a startup.
In fact this is not the case at all!
I always recommend the same thing to people who ask me what to do in this phase: build their first product/service themselves.
If you are a real entrepreneur, you must be able to build your own MVP, it is "enough" that your product or service brings your value proposition to your customers. You don't need a war machine to get started.
At Fetch our value proposition is to allow the inhabitants of a city to have their favourite restaurants delivered to their homes or offices. To do this, you don't need to have the great site with all the features we've been dreaming of.
We had made ourselves a small showcase site on strikingly as well as a private group on facebook to exchange as much as possible with the first customers.
Lessons to be learned:
don't spend 10K€ in an MVP that you will most certainly have to do again once this one confronted with the reality of the market.
you'll find your developer later on, you can do it yourself at startup (there are plenty of sites to build your own V1)
Be more selective in the choice of partners
Any startup at the beginning of its existence is worth nothing and has little or no funds. This sometimes leads to short-term decisions that are not good for the company if it is going to succeed in the future (we never know this then)
Concretely on Fetch I let some people join the team for bad reasons.
My senior partner, who was a 100% choice on my part, turns out to be a very good decision over time, as I think he has become one of the best CFOs I can have by my side. I wanted to work with him as soon as I had the idea and I am very satisfied with this choice on all aspects (human, technical, progression...).
On the other hand, there were other people who joined the team that I had to part with prematurely, these people always had one thing in common: I didn't choose them by believing 100% in myself.
The reasons for these choices were:
a need for a developer (we come back to this!) which resulted in 2 unsuccessful collaborations
A graphic/visual need that has led to an association with a person who is a true friend, but is not at all the same vision and expectations/aspirations as the rest of the team.
Lessons to be learned:
not to take lightly a choice at the beginning of your entrepreneurial adventure, at the beginning we don't realize the medium/long term consequences of it.
Take with you only people in whom you believe 100% that they can become excellent partners and with whom you have a very good understanding both on the vision of the box, but also in life.
Don't make partnerships with anyone
The first few months of Fetch we considered working with a company that would have managed all of our deliveries.
Having no experience in this field, it seemed like a good idea to start with. This allowed us to focus on marketing and the commercial side.
oh man this hits pretty deep too tbh @travelmate good luck I hope you succeed because it's really hard and support is hard to come by I know how it feels