-
August 3: I Failed. Do, Learn, Adapt and Repeat Differently.
I am mothballing my ServiceChat startup experiment. After six months, I have to admit to myself that ServiceChat has no legs. People who I thought should be interested are not and actually trying to find people interested is proven too difficult for my abilities. The lack of interest is itself great feedback – if […]
-
July 23: A Change to Regular Programming
When I set out to build my startup in January, we moved to Spain to immerse in the culture, learn the language and extend my startup runway by 4 month. I knew I would have to revisit how I would fund our continued stay in Spain and how I might continue to explore my startup. […]
-
July 18: A Mixed Bag
Not sure what to make of this week. It’s a bit like being in the Tom Hanks movie ‘The Terminal’. I’m stuck but actually while I’m in this state of suspension there are really interesting things happening, but mostly I’m still stuck. Unlike Tom Hanks, my becoming unstuck is in my hands, I just don’t […]
-
July 9 – Back away from the code, slowly.
Every passing day re-affirms my fear. I have to back away from the code, close the IDE – quit doing what I love doing and start doing the other thing. You know – the other thing, the hitting-the-phone, sell-your-vision, learn-the-problems, discover-your-customers, dine-with-rejection-and-unreturned-emails thing, you know Customer Development! Now, I have a world of love […]
-
July 8 – Working hard, differently
My last post was about 2 weeks ago and you might have wondered where I disappeared to. Well, I’ll tell you. I was feeling very disheartened about the lack of traction with ServiceChat. So I took some time away from ServiceChat – maintaining focus when you are down is hard, but it is […]
-
June 26 – Disheartened
I’m sitting here not really wanting to do anything else but code. I know it’s wrong – I’ve built something I passionately believe is valuable but not getting to even talk to the people I believe it is valuable for is deeply disheartening. It doesn’t mean ServiceChat isn’t valuable (I honestly don’t have enough data […]
-
June 20 – Mikey's back!
The last 13 days Q: Does a daily blog have to be done every day? A: Not when it’s @mhsutton’s blog – obviously. So much has happened in the last 13 days, I don’t really know where to start. I’ve been away because I’ve been a little discouraged with the progress of ServiceChat (no, I […]
-
June 7 – Dizzy with pivots.
Yesterday(and the previous 2 days) The last few days have been like driving in a tunnel, with occasional pauses to check the map. Sometimes where you want to is actually a bloody long way away! All this grind has yielded a bunch of exciting potential pivots – bizbuzz as a data visualisation tool for businesses […]
-
May 31 – Talking to Customers is Hard
Yesterday So I’m trying really hard to chat with some people about the problem I’m trying to solve. My approach is to talk to my prospective customers’ customers – the ones that have the enquiry/frustration/need they want addressing. It should be easy, right? It would appear not so. What could be easier – I know […]
-
May 30 – It's Been Emotional
Yesterday Watching the data stream in and seeing the emotions and needs that generated it has itself been really emotional. On one hand, frustration that so many people who use certain businesses are dissatisfied and go unheard. On the other, I am also glad that they choose to express that need (albeit with some angry […]