I want to level with you guys on this video. Most of the time, you guys see me on this
channel- I'm telling you someone else's y- or something we did right so that you can
learn from it. But not today.
Most of the motivational content for entrepreneurs focuses on 'not giving up.' "The entrepreneurs
that make it are the ones that don't give up on their dreams." And I think that's a
very dangerous statement.
I don't have a lot of answers or insights on this one; I'm telling you something we
are going through right now- which means I probably have more questions than answers.
Anyway- today's video is about learning to give up. How we've had to give up a couple
of times with Slidebean- and how maybe, hopefully, that will carve out a path for us to succeed.
A ‘not giving up mindset is dangerous because most startups fail. Most startups should fail,
as a matter of fact. Failure teaches us about problems with our product or our thesis about
the market. Many ideas, most ideas are not meant to be unicorns- that's just how it is.
Failing my first company taught me hard lessons that, in time, have saved Slidebean.
It's primarily dangerous because we have to learn to give up, realize that we're wrong,
and choose whether to pivot or persevere.
In essence, a startup is a thesis made up
of three variables: Audience, Pain Point, and Product. (Other people call this Customer,
Problem, or Solution Hypothesis- but it's essentially the same thing): you 'assume'
that this group of people have this problem and that the solution to that problem is that
product.
If you get all of those three right, you have Product-Market Fit.
So the word pivot is used a lot in these early stages of the company. The guys from the Lean
Validation Board (who designed this little chart) essentially tell you to come up with
a group of assumptions, test them as fast as you can, and if one of your assumptions
is wrong, you have to pivot.
The 'Lean Startup' (a truly essential book for entrepreneurs, BTW) also touches on this:
it 'says, "A STARTUP'S RUNWAY IS THE NUMBER OF PIVOTS IT CAN STILL MAKE."
Anyway, when you are starting a company, building your first product, and hacking with your
co-founders- it's this creative, fast-iteration moment. Pivoting is cool.
For example, at the early stage, our Problem thesis was that making presentations was complex
and inefficient. Our solution hypothesis was a user experience that would limit the user,
protect them from their own temptation to overcrowd the slides, and give them perfect
slides every single time.
But that didn't work. We were wrong about the product: people felt limited. We were
also wrong about the audience, 'anyone who makes presentations' is not really willing
to pay money for a product when they have so many free alternatives out there.
So in retrospect, these pivots were fun and easy. We question our product, but changing
direction is fast. The feedback loop happens regularly.
We found ourselves in front of a different pivot: a company that had raised some money
from investors, had 30 employees, had a product that makes a few million dollars a year- but
that wasn't growing.
And things are very, very different the bigger the company gets. Pivoting isn't cool anymore;
it's painful.
Some signs of problems with your hypotheses
are very evident: low conversion, customer complaints, low NPS scores.
Others take longer to surface, like churn. If you have a high-churn product, that's probably
a sign that one of your assumptions is flawed.
Our presentation product struggled with churn since the get-go. We struggled with this for
years; people who came paid for our product but left after only a few months.
We found a better product-market fit with startups: and the numbers agreed. Lower churn,
better conversion- and that's why Slidebean went from 'presentation builder' to 'pitch-deck
builder.' And that combination was good, except for a market problem.
You see, if we think of TAM, or the Total Addressable Market, - it's not that big.
In a nutshell, TAM for our pitch deck builder is founders looking to raise venture capital
who are not comfortable using PowerPoint, who don't have a graphic designer on the team-
and that's just too small of a group.
This was probably the most challenging decision process we've been through at Slidebean: accepting
that our pitch deck builder was not going to get us to where we wanted to be as a company.
Looking back, the keyword I remember is 'denial' For years. For years we kept pushing, adding new
features, trying to outdo ourselves on the product, coming up with new marketing hacks
and campaigns. Failing to see growth was very frustrating, but I think that deep down, we
had understood for a while that we were a bit stuck.
The problem was that doing something about it meant 'giving up' on the pitch deck product.
It meant moving our engineers from working on this idea to working on something different,
which is very dangerous from a motivation standpoint. This company, this product that
they were hired for, is suddenly giving up on it and working on something else.
We started doing it with little experiments-
experiments that didn't mean a huge time commitment from anyone but that could give us ideas of
other paths to follow.
We tested this product called advocado- which put our AI presentation engine to a different
use. Following the Lean Startup approach, we made a little video to see how people would
react, but nobody got too excited about it, so we scratched it.
We also made this platform called FounderHub- which was a kind of startup checklist/guide
on the steps you have to follow if you want to raise capital. That was a 2-3 month development
project that actually did decently well: we still have hundreds of monthly active users,
but we just never found a way to monetize it.
In the end, our willingness to carve out resources from our pitch deck builder to build something
new was us accepting that there was more potential on these other projects. That helped us cope
with it a bit.
That's how we ended up on Youtube, BTW.
Beyond the views, and the credibility and the plaque- this Youtube channel was a motivation
for me and for the rest of the team to believe in ourselves again: to believe that we had
the talent to build things.
It was only after two years of doing these little experiments that we were finally prepared
to let go, to accept that we needed a new focus as a company and to cope with it.
So we essentially 'paused' our builder to
work on three new axes. First, our consulting branch, Agency. That
part came from user demand, really. After seeing our videos on pitch decks and fundraising,
Second, it's what we are launching today. Our first, genuinely new product since we
started Slidebean- it's called Recurring-
This product sprung from a problem we discovered ourselves as a startup. We weren't keeping
good track of our stack, and we found no software for a company our size. It's on ProductHunt
today- so if you can spare 2 minutes, go and drop us a comment.
We've been kind of secretly working on this for over a year- and in the process, we've
seen competitors spring out. They've made us question our value propositions: can we
still beat them even though they were first to market.
This is a self-assessment process I think you should do every time. Every time a new
competitor came out, we asked ourselves, do we pivot or do we persevere? Do we still have
a better position on the market than this company?
For Recurring, after looking at all the competitors- we still believe we do. For our pitch deck
builder, maybe not. We have some solid competitors now, with more funding, more connections,
and perhaps it's time to pivot.
So the third axis, I can't really talk about (yet)- but it's where Slidebean is headed.
No longer a pitch deck builder but a suite of tools. What's happening next year.
Before we wrap up, I want to talk about dealing with failure.
I've had this couple of very curious experiences
in the last few weeks: I found myself in conversations with CEOs of startups much larger than Slidebean.
(I owe a lot of that to you guys, by the way: having such a large channel and audience of
people does end up opening doors for you. It's like dating outside of my league, quite
literally! We're on the $2-$10MM ARR bracket but get to hang out with CEOs in the $10-$100M
ARR league).
Anyway, as I sit down with these fellow founders, the conversations have quickly evolved into
very personal stuff. It's like, when you see another startup CEO in front of you, you can
let down your guard, you can cut the bullshit. It's not about selling or pitching your company
or fundraising, which is the mode we usually have to be in.
There is a bit of a facade we have to keep: it's the truth. Fake it 'till you make it,
you know? You can't pitch your startup to investors saying that you are not sure about
whether this experiment will work or not; you can't pitch saying you're tired.
When your company is struggling, you can’t really tell anyone, can you? If you are planning
to make up your burn rate with revenue or by raising more money, you have to continue
selling your company either way- and it’s very tiring.
So the person in front of you understands you. They know the struggle, and they've been
through the same amount of all-nighters and stress. And it's pretty cool to be able to
get into those conversations sometimes. Make sure you find fellow founders in your same
role, and take time to have those conversations- we are sometimes desperate to have them.
and finally, learn to give up. Give yourself a deadline on anything you do, and if things
haven’t worked out by then, quit. Or pivot. Life is too short to be stuck on a company
that’s not what you want it to be.
It’s painful. Depending on where you are in the world, failed startups in the past
will boost or affect your reputation, but remember, what you learn from failing can
absolutely be applied to anything you do in the future.
Guys, thanks a lot for watching today. If you think Recurring is useful for you- by
all means test it out. See you next time.