Learning the hard way

In the past year, I have had the best times, some not so good times, and some really bad times. I’ve hired and let go nearly a dozen people, all of whom I liked, and all of whom left me feeling down and like they had taken advantage of me. I am generally a kind and compassionate person, I almost always try to get the best situation for people on both sides of the table. But as I’ve heard before and was told recently, if you want a friend - get a dog.

I raised a small (by many standards) amount of Angel money in October last year. I took on a partner who invested time and money and committed to working side by side in the business with me.  He’s a smart and great guy, with a long history of managing successful sales teams. I thought it was the perfect partnership. But I learned the hard way that I gave up too much control of the company I had put so much in and our investors had invested in. So we set out to build a killer sales team.

And we took the right steps, we hired 3 new sales people. We purchased a massive license from Salesforce to manage our team, we did all the right things. Or so we thought. We were so psyched to get our feet on the street and bringing in new clients, that we forgot to build the product out to the specs it really needed. Our developer got behind on the new platform and all of a sudden we were 3 months, then 6 months behind schedule with the launch. But we had been training and building this sales team for those 6 months - and paying them. Not paying me, not paying my partner, but building our sales team; a sales team to conquer the world.

Lesson learned the hardway, if you build a killer product, you won’t have to “sell” it. It will sell itself. I knew we needed to focus on the product, from day 1 I knew it. Thats why I raised money, to build out this great product and then build out a great sales team to come and distribute it. We put the cart before the horse and spent all our time, effort and cash on this sales team, which flamed out and probably (in hindsight) wasn’t the right team to be working for us anyway.

So know here I am, a year later, with investors who still somewhat believe in us, a product that is halfway finished (but still great!) and a sales team 1/4 th the size it was 3 months ago. I’m stuck, because I know our idea will work, I know it does work. I have seen it work for 4 years now! But this economy turned a cold shoulder to our mediocre product, and I’m back where I started 14 months ago. Except much, much, dare I say, MUCH wiser for the experience.

I know this idea is going to succeed. Its just a question of when.