How getting in the flow turned my ailing startup around

This was my daily routine for the past few months.

I wake up at 9am. Eat something. Watch a few YouTube videos. Nap at 11am. Wake up again with a headache at 1pm. Read TechCrunch, Tech in Asia, e27 and feel that my startup’s a failure. For the next few hours, I constantly think of how to make my startup work but it usually ends the way it started, all thoughts and no actions. At 7pm, I patiently wait for my mum to buy me dinner and I watch YouTube again till 12am before going to sleep feeling sorry for myself.

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“A startup’s not easy,” they said. “There’s only a 1% chance you’ll succeed, just take it as a learning experience if it fails.”

This is what I’ve heard, what I told myself, and what I believed in. I never told anyone else how I truly felt. It was bad enough to think myself a loser. I didn’t need others to think that I was a loser too.

Then came the day that we realised that our startup was running out of cash. Venture capital firms had no interest in funding us, unless we provided working proof of our concept in the most fundamental way — generating revenue.

Without cash, we weren’t able to market our product and acquire users. Without users, we could not provide leads to our customers. Without leads, our customers would soon abandon us. Without customers, there’s no startup.

It was bad enough to think myself a loser. I didn’t need others to think that I was a loser too.

As a team, we decided to approach potential customers we spoke to in the past few months to get them to pay for a 3-month trial, when we initially promised them a 6-month free trial. To add to the ridiculousness of this, we haven’t been able to generate many leads for our potential customers since we last spoke.

I went into the office of our first customer with dread. How can convince them to pay us? Even I wouldn’t pay if I were them.

The meeting lasted for an hour and a half. It started from “I thought you said free for 6 months?!” to “I’m not really sure this will work out.” to “Fine, I’ll try you out but this will be the last shot I’m gonna give you.”

With that, we made our first revenue.

Holding on to our first cheque, I felt as if Fixir was given a new lease of life.

It wasn’t the amount that was going to sustain us. It was the fact that we had customers that valued the service we could potentially offer them, and were willing to pay it, that made all the difference.