What We Would Do Differently
Alright, so this is unofficially the
last MouseDriver Insider that you will receive. I will
be sending out two more emails over the next week or so.
One will be an update on what Kyle and I are now doing
(and a thank-you of sorts for following us over the years)
and the other will be my updated contact information.
I'm hoping that I'll be able to get contact
info from each of you as well.
Found an Advisor ASAP: Doesn't matter
how smart you are, how much education you have, who you
know, etc., if you're going to start a company (for the
first time or otherwise), put the effort in and find an
advisor. And don't think that you have to find the Michael
Dell's of the world. You know, the one's who have reached
success beyond anybody's wildest imagination. Just find
somebody who's been through a similar experience, who
understands what you're going through and who is willing
to help out. The time that you spend finding an advisor
to your company early on will pay off tenfold down the
line. We feel that we could have probably decreased expenses
by $100K and increased sales by about $4M had we found
the right advisor.
Kept the Day Job:
This totally depends on your goals, but if you're simply
looking to bring a single product to market, keep your
day job! Looking back on everything, we feel that we probably
could have met our original goals without giving up that
all-too-coveted paycheck. Now, there are a lot of things
that we couldn't have done with a full-time job (i.e.
publish the Insider, share our experiences, write a book,
travel the country speaking, etc.), but from a product
development, product marketing and sales perspective,
we believe we could have taken our passion for MouseDriver
and made things work over some late nights and long weekends.
Use your job to fund your ideas, and, if things are going
really well, make the call as to whether or not you should
be an entrepreneur full-time.
Focused on
Sales: Now this one seems obvious, but we'll be
the first to admit, our product strategy was somewhat flawed
in that is wasn't focused enough on sales. Not that we didn't
succeed in executing our strategy; we went high-end first,
generated tons of awareness, tied a story around the product,
dropped the price and went low-end and arguably, built a
'brand' around MouseDriver…just like we said we were
going to do. But, what we failed to realize is that with
a product that has a limited life cycle (think Pet Rock
or any 'fad' product), TIME IS MONEY! We should have focused
more on blowing this thing out from the get-go, selling
to anyone who wanted to buy it (remember us turning down
the China order in the book!?) and not worrying so much
about how a product that's not going to be around for more
than 30 months is going to be perceived. "Sell to the
masses, hang with the classes. Sell to the classes, hang
with the masses!" That's our new motto.
Licensed the Product:
When you have a single-product, especially one like MouseDriver,
it's all about volume sales. Where you will make your
money is by selling extremely high volumes of your product
in mass channels. Now, if you're goal is to actually have
a sustainable company that will be around for awhile,
then it makes since to build out your own distribution
channels and grow the sales and marketing side of the
company. But if you're goal is to see your idea on shelves
and to make a little bit of coin, you should probably
license your product to somebody who already has existing
distribution channels. We definitely should have done
this. In fact, the best time for us to license MD would
have been just after the PGA Show, once we had proven
demand, had generated sales and had created boatloads
of awareness. Companies spend lots of time (as in years)
and lots of money (as in millions) building out their
distribution channels. Take advantage of what they've
already created…it will make things much easier
and potentially much more profitable.
Given Investors a Percentage
of Gross Sales: Instead of giving equity to our
initial investors, we should have given them a percentage
of our gross sales, on a quarterly basis. This is totally
a personal decision and depends on a number of different
factors. But we would have felt much better about ourselves
and our family/friends investment if we knew were giving
them some sort of return as we moved along. Not only would
it have made us feel better about giving our investors
a return, but it would have also forced us (even more)
to cut expenses and really focus on the bottom line. Plus,
it takes away some of the risk and doesn't make investors
wait for that all-to-allusive equity payout. (Note: This
approach would have required us to generate income from
other sources…as in 'job' sources. See 'Kept the
Day Job' above)
Whew! Almost four years of writing and
we're finally closing the chapter on this adventure. What
a ride! For all of those who are curious, we officially
closed down the company in October, 2002 and are now working
on possibly licensing MouseDriver to an interested party.
Will be interesting to see what happens.
Please look for our update email within
the next few days.
Hope y'all have enjoyed the ride!
John & Kyle
© 2002 Platinum Concepts, Inc.
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