While KIMOJI tells a compelling story about how its million-dollar minute crashed the Apple App Store and has Kanye West as its voluntary product ambassador, running a startup almost seems like a piece of cake.
A novel (well, maybe with a little copy-and-paste) idea with a viral marketing push and we’re all set for massive funding. It almost feels like whatever’s needed to catapult a startup lies in marketing. My colleague once told me, if Fiji can convince people to purchase water that doesn’t taste any different at a premium price, if Starbucks can sell a $7 concoction of milk, sugar and coffee, imagine the possibilities when we have a product that is really a cut above what’s on the market.
Joining a startup straight out of school
Having just graduated from a Social Science faculty in university last year, I have never been well-acquainted with anything that is business-related. Even after attending a few classes in business school, I left university thinking one unit of marketing and advertising → hundreds of units in sales.
You are taking a huge risk here, are you sure it’s worth it?
When I was referred to a tech startup a year ago, I eventually joined only because I was completely sold by the founders’ vision, and their version of a better society with less rent-seeking behaviour and more equal opportunity. Thinking in business terms has never come naturally to me. After sitting through countless conference calls, I still cringe at business lingo like ‘core competencies’ and ‘best practices’.
Ever since I got baptized by my family as a ‘working adult’, supposedly with energy to spare and an eagerness to share and receive new information, I’ve taken work way out of the office. I talk to lots of people about my tech startup over drinks, if they aren’t already curious. Some of them marvel at the creative space I get at work, while most of them ask questions I don’t have ready-made answers to. You didn’t study tech, you don’t know business, why the fuck are you even working there? You know startups fail all the time, don’t you? You are taking a huge risk here, are you sure it’s worth it?
When they have a look at the product, they are quick to compare and spot ‘inadequacies’. I’ve been told multiple times that the product is bull. And in between comments like “This other app has this, why don’t you have it?” and “Maybe you should consider changing this,” there is an omnipresent checkbox for advertising: “How many people know about your app? How come I haven’t seen any ads?”
To which I reply: “Well, for now, we’re just keeping at it.”
Keeping at it
Our mobile-dependent daily lives, to which businesses have incredible accessibility, have us wired to oversimplify innovative success. We are annoyed every time we receive a push notification from a photo-editing app or an email from Skyscanner, yet we’re so quick to suggest ads as a surefire prop for driving avant-garde ideas.
In relatively new industries with low barriers, especially in the tech startup space, people have also become quick to pick new products apart. The entire idea about design thinking and UX can be quickly grasped, and the concept of user perspective is amazing, but at some point in time, we have to realize an unequivocal truth — there is no way we can please everyone. Staying true to a vision may sound like corny cult talk, but having a vision will keep people around.
From the outside, a startup will always feel like an irrational idea, and what goes on behind the scenes is either oversimplified, misunderstood or both. We tend to think about the success of any startup as a result of a coin flip that is askew — heads and it loses, tails and it loses more. To an extent, this is true. Startups are in it for a very controlled shot at success. We have a very small window of opportunity to overshadow the international conglomerates running the show. We’re small-time gym trainers from a godforsaken town challenging Floyd Mayweather to a fight.
We’re small-time gym trainers from a godforsaken town challenging Floyd Mayweather to a fight.
Yet the people in startups stay in them for a reason. I’ve never studied business, I spent four years in university annotating completely biased media trying to understand international politics, I read Murakami and dream of writing my own book, and now, I’m working in a tech startup.
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