2016: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
#34 - 2016: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
This series is about what we’re learning, observing and experiencing while building our startup Saent (pronounce “Saint”). The good, the bad and especially the ugly, each time in under 5 minutes reading time.
A Saent in a bag in good company.
Christmas tunes on an endless loop, non-stop book recommendations and “best of 2016…” lists, outrageous dinners and embarrassing office parties: the end of the year is near.
Clichés aside, the end of the year is a good moment to reflect on days passed. Here’s how Saent fared in 2016.
The Bad
*Shipped too late…* We kicked off 2016 with a not so pleasant announcement: our first hardware production ran into a delay. Then in April we had another holdup. As many hardware crowdfunding campaigns have found: it’s called hardware for a reason and we were too optimistic in our initial estimates.
*Shipped too early* While we shipped later than our original estimate, in hindsight we might also say we shipped too early. Had we not faced the (rightful!) pressure from our initial crowdfunding backers, we might have taken more time to test the product. Especially on Windows, the experience was far from great, and we lost quite a few users after shipping (see red arrow in below graph).
Weekly Active User overview for the Saent app in 2016.
*Y Combinator* This year we also flew to Silicon Valley for one of those infamous Y Combinator interviews. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it past that ten minute Q&A session. From the feedback we received, it was clear we didn’t pitch our larger vision well, otherwise we might have gotten in. This was without doubt the biggest disappointment of the year.
Russell and Tim at YC.
*Wavered* Especially after the failed Y Combinator interview, we started zig zagging in Q2 and Q3. Low on cash, we went through a bunch of different fundraising strategies and altered our product proposition just as often, from work-life balance to mindful productivity back to focus. This also meant everyone on the team wore too many different hats throughout the year, and we didn’t all work in the areas we are naturally strongest.
The renewed Saent blog.
No blog posts
While content (writing articles) had been a great source of traffic for us in 2015, we published relatively little articles in Q2 and Q3 of this year. This was partially due to Josh being occupied with other things (see previous point), and partially because of continuous design problems with our old blog. I never stopped writing, though, which is why we now have a steady stream of content on our blog.
*Missed Christmas* This might rival the failed Y Combinator interview for the crown. We sold out of almost all of our first button inventory by September, but we never had a massive surge in sales after the initial crowdfunding campaign. So I was reluctant to give the go ahead on the production of the next 5,000 buttons (a significant upfront investment) until we had stronger “proof” of the salability of the button. This indecision led us to miss having inventory during the holidays and greatly affected our sales numbers in Q4, as well as pushed several distribution opportunities to 2017.
The Good
Ok, with that out of the way, now time for some good stuff.
*We shipped!* It might have been late, it might have been too early, but the fact is: we shipped our hardware product! Many startups don’t ever make it to this important milestone. We certainly learned a lot, and it was a struggle most of the way, but we got it out there to our first 1,250 customers in more than 60 countries.
Lots of Saent buttons getting ready for shipping!
*Y Combinator* Not making it past that final Y Combinator interview was a big disappointment, yet it was also an incredibly valuable lesson. It showed us our pitch failed to get across the huge potential we see for Saent, and we did a lot of soul searching over the spring and summer because of this. This directly helped us improve our articulation of our vision, and our overall pitch to other investors.
*User interviews* Over the course of August and September, our in-house librarian Maggie (who temporarily took on customer support and research as well) did a series of in-depth interviews with many of our early users. She talked to a wide variety of people, some who were using Saent daily, others who had completely stopped using it. It was extremely valuable and amazing to read through these extensive interviews to learn how people actually use our product.
*The Team* Being completely distributed, most of Saent’s team had never met in person. In November, we finally made this happen when we attended The Next Web conference in New York. We also brought two new members on board around this time: Dusten as our new Product Test Manager and Kyle to head up our Sales & Marketing efforts.
The team together for the first time in New York.
*Guest posts* While our own blog lay dormant for a good part of the year, we had quite a few guest posts on other sites. My favorite was probably for InVision, on the need for a new set of digital tools and approach to product design. We also had a nice post on Remotive about the importance of breaks. In addition, we shared learnings about our crowdfunding campaign on the Indiegogo blog, and wrote about productivity for Knowmail.
On to 2017!
That about sums up the year for us here at Saent. It was at times exciting, at others terrifying, but we’re enjoying the ride and hope to see you with us in 2017 and beyond!
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