Startup struggle is real & true.
Today, I sat in front of my computer at work but couldnât work. I was reviewing how we have been doing as a company, the first quarter of the year is few days to be gone and looking at my self as a person and a team leader.
Things started bothering me, they were all nitty-gritty, from the internet service providers at the office delivering poor service to electricity not stable and our burn rate, the pile of projects and new intake applications on the todo etc.
It got really into me and I felt it is a good thing really to share with the Startup community, especially aspiring founders.
Reality will shock you, the struggle is real and true.
I have a lot of friends on the employee side of life but Iâm on the entrepreneur side. They usually tell me things like I wish to be like you, running my own business or company. Iâd only laugh and save the argument. But today is not an ordinary day, Iâm going to voice that argument at least to vomit the dirty side.
To begin with, I was once an employee my self. In fact, for a number of years, I worked as a regular staff of a company, grew to lead a department for a few years before starting GigaLayer. So, believe me, I know the 9-5.
Now Iâm doing even more work hours than when I was employed. In some days I work 13hrs stretch, non-stop. Work hours didnât get any easier but tougher as time goes by in my quest.
If you are considering being a Startup founder, then read carefully.
There is a shadow, no one is talking about.
Iâm not here to make it any rosy for you. You better be ready for sleepless nights. There will be days when you will be confused, afraid and worried. There is no insurance for failure. You have to keep moving to bring food to the table, pay salaries and see the light of the next day at the least.
You will watch your passion turn to hard labor. You will be held accountable, what use to be a hubby will become your day job. If you have a team, they will all look up to you for guidance and motivation even on your gloomy days.
Things will break, many plans will not go your way, staff will show up late, work will snail. You can shout or motivate your team, but you cannot give up.
While that is ongoing, you will hear that things are broken. To give you a gist, last week during election weekend, petty thieves came to our office, they couldnât enter but managed to slip out a laptop through the window, this wasnât part of anybodyâs business plan just so you know how odd things can happen in your startup.
No, you are not alone in the market you are pursuing either. Competitors will come after you. You have to deliver competitive service or get buried under. You have to stay cash positive, profitable or be in deep shit loan called funding (PSS: Iâm not a pro-funding, Iâm pro bootstrap).
If you are like me, married with a child, you will be dealing with even more challenges. You will be trying so hard to meet up with the basic requirements to be a father or husband. Sometimes, I would love to stay back at work to deliver more work, but my child wants me home to play. That kind of a thing.
Keeping a to-do list works, I think they do really. I am beginning to acquaint my self with yet another service to help me get on top of to-dos, it will be like the 8th one Iâve used so far. But they also add to the sorrow when you look at a heap of work every day because you will not only manage your own to-do, you will manage the entire companyâs to-do and it will get overwhelming.
So the next time you want to think of having a Startup as an exist to stress or easy route away from a 9-5 job, just know that you will be jumping into yet more stress and more work hours.
Iâm not here to discourage anyone, Iâm here only to give you brotherly eyebrow of caution. Generally Iâm a friendly, welcoming and motivating kind of ;guy, only that today is not that day. Thank you and I hope your blood is wormed up, donât be cold, follow your passion it will guide you!
The Current FX-Challenge in Nigeria.
I am about to digest what I understood about the current FX Transaction limit in Nigeria for me, you and everyone else that is inside or from Nigeria with money in the country or earning money from it.
If youâve read my earlier post, just 2 days ago (I was still trying to understand the situation at the time), youâd notice that Iâve come a long way getting the head of the thread and finding a solution to the challenge, for my business.
I call all this drama âthe FX Challengeâ. Please relax and read my head.
The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) controls all the inflow and outflow of the Nationâs money; as a regulatory body theyâre in charge of almost all the money in the country and are the head of all commercial banks. This includes managing all foreign exchange in the country too.
Although Naira is owned by Nigeria, US Dollar (USD), Pound or Euro, etc are not. Nigeria has to earn them in order to use them. Currently the biggest source of foreign currency in Nigeria is the sales of Crude Oil (Nigeriaâs biggest source of income) and a few exports such as Cocoa and Rubber. The country is however majorly an importer and this is where the whole story gets more interesting. Keep reading.
Most of the countryâs Businesses are hugely relying on imports, buying goods from China, Germany, United States, Japan etc and doing this with the US Dollar (USD) which is the biggest commercially accepted currency around the world anyway (because at least, itâs stable).
A company that imports furniture from China will need US Dollar (USD) from their bank to pay the Chinese manufactures. They then sell these goods in Nigeria (in Naira), return back to their bank to change their earned Naira to USD again for more imports. The circle continues, taking the countryâs earned USD from Crude Oil and Cocoa straight to China through a leakage we can now agree to call huge importation.
Nigeria imports almost every kind of junk from overseas. I once read that businesses in Nigeria import silly things as Toothpick, Slippers, Butter etc from around the world. These are few of the things Nigerians can easily manufacture to fill the needs and save the economy.
Itâs not just the importers that take Nigeriaâs hard earned Dollars out, but so do the rich men who go for vacations, take their kids along and carry their Naira debit cards to spend their locally earned Naira in UK, Dubai, etc and then the CBN has to remit the countries they visit and in exchange take away Naira from these peopleâs account locally (usually done by the banks and switching companies).
The bottom line is, we spend most of the US Dollars CBN has and demand more everyday people travel abroad and businesses choose to import everything (instead of export something).
The CBN is becoming short of US Dollars now, because Crude Oil has lost almost 50% of its selling price within a few years and we have only few other ways for the country to earn the US Dollar it needs for its foreign exchange (FX).
Few months back, the CBN could not fund the commercial banks with Dollars (because it has very little of it) and thus the banks had to limit most accountâs daily dollar spending to $300 per day and in some banks as low as $100 per day with a cap of $1000 or $3000 per month.
That didnât stop the demand, because people wanted the US Dollars more to fill their lifestyle and business needs. In fact, it awakened more hoarders of the Dollar and the company is ruined!
Now the CBN is running out of USD that they might not be able to cover the demand soon. Theyâre deciding to stop all Debit Cards from spending money outside the country (any currency, except Naira) and all other Foreign Exchange (FX) transactions including online shopping (in USD).
This is a revolution and in my honest opinion it will wake up many Entrepreneurs like me and possibly you from their slumber. We will now have to think of exporting, so we can earn the US Dollars we need.
Even though I am hopeful that CBN will recover soon, by supporting diversification of exports to other tangible sources of income for the nation, we needed this call of duty years ago.
Nigeria is a rich country, rich in resources; 170 Million brains, 356k square miles of land, loads of livestock animals etc.
We can fall back to exporting what we have, earn the US Dollars we need for the lifestyle we want to live and business we want to do outside the country.
This will regain the value of the Nigerian Naira in the world economy. Foreign countries in need of our products will demand Naira or bring US Dollars to us and our economy will reshape itself again.
I hope this little pieces helps someone understand the situation and also put someone towards thinking of local production and export. Let me know where I misstepped the fact about this situation, I personally code-named it âThe FX Challenge!â
PSS: You can comment below and I was inspired to write this by a staff of GigaLayer, Joshua after explaining all of this to him. ;)
Going back to Stone Age.
The 300 USD daily and 1,000 USD monthly limit set on our Debit Cards in Nigeria was not enough to put things in shape for the countryâs drooling economy. A complete halt is the next move by the Central Bank.
The news says, after 1st January 2016 itâs game over for FX Transactions with Nigerian bank cards as CBN might put a halt on our funds outside the Country. Weâd just go back to stone age for a while. As much as this hurts, I actually canât wait for all the aftermath of this situation.
This kept me thinking and speaking with a bunch of our vendors that are all outside the country, companies we can only pay through FX transactions. Iâm talking about Domain Registrars, DataCenters, Offsite Backup companies, Application vendors among others.
When I started GigaLayer.comâ (formerly Aimtech), there was no Mastercard or VISA in Nigeria yet we still did Business. We grew to about 100 customers without ever needing Mastercard or VISA. We will do it again, except this time weâre bigger and it will be more challenging.
Itâs a U-turn back to where we came from, carrying 1,800+ customers of ours along. It will be very difficult and tough, but we have to survive it and we will.
Back then I used digital currency (e-gold), but that wonât work for us today although I think Bitcoin will or other cryptocurrency. If not we will craft a new channel to get money out. We will also work out strategies to allow us survive even future situations like this.
Nigeria is a joke I swear, but the joke is funny and I enjoy it. A few minutes ago, I was tweeting this, it was my feeling few days back. But now Iâm all grin!
Every time I think of the online services that I need to pay for (outside Nigeria). I just want to go to sleep and snoor!
â Ahmad Mukoshy (@mukoshy) December 26, 2015This post was suppose to be on my facebook profile, I figured itâs been a while since I wrote on my blog and channeled it here. So, be free to comment if this affects your business and plans you have to survive it.
Cheap is not a business weapon
This post was inspired by someone who asked me why GigaLayerâs prices are higher than XYZ and ABC hosts in Nigeria. So, I thought I should digest this here beyond the case of GigaLayer a lone.
First, the goal of every business is to be profitable enough to sustain itself for decades or even forever as the case may be, to be able to serve itâs customer effectively and efficiently with the best service. Needless to say, no business wants to run broke in the end.
If you were to open a new shopping mall next to an existing one with a huge market position, how do you break into the market?
If your answer to the above question is âcheaper productsâ, then thatâs where you are wrong. Being cheap is not a business weapon, I once wrote about this before âWhat happens when you are cheaper than your competitorsâ.
I, on the other hand, will look into more possibilities, more options, and flexibility for the customers; like parking space, easier catalogs, more products and possibly additional services like home delivery etc but I will not go for being cheaper alone.
You see, if we go back to the agrarian age; business was carried out by that thing called âtrade by barterâ which simply means people trading things based on perceived value. Well, the same thing still happens even with money, in this information age.
Do you know what differences are there between that Burberry wristwatch and the Tiacichinko wristwatch (made in you know where). Oh yes, the material used in it, the efforts put to the product design, the social status of the product etc. But still they are both wrist watches, and you will choose by value!
The truth about being cheap is that, sooner or later someone is gonna find out how to be even cheaper than you!
You should not base your business on the war of pricing, instead, you should look into the odds of providing a premium service with a fair pricing. Sure, nobody wants to be ripped off, so ensuring you deliver beyond what you are being paid for solves the puzzle.
So far we are not the cheapest in the industry interns of hosting but I am glad we deliver the best services. From our recent study (which we will publish soon) over 70% of our customers are fully satisfied with our services, giving us a rating of 9/10.
So, I will just iterate some key 5 reasons why we are not cheaper than XYZ and ABC and why we will not match the cheap band.
- We do not buy servers from just any data-center, we handpick the best of data-centers in the world with the best cooling systems, location, and innovative technologies.
- We monitor and maintain a great stability and network balance on our servers. We do not overload or oversell any machine on our network.
- We register domain names directly with ICANN Accredited registrar and maintain the same level of status with local CcTLDS.
- We operate the most friendly, always ready to help customer support services. Happiness is part of our products bundle!
- We are building a business you can trust for the next 100 years!
Now, that is why we are not cheap and we do not compete with cheaper providers around the block. I hope you learn something out of this, so I can arrogantly conclude with one of my tweets:
Competition is a distraction, my attention is for customers!
â Ahmad Mukoshy (@mukoshy)November 20, 2013
Your Ideas are some oâl bull Sshh*t.
Back in May 2011, I registered a domain name flippii.com right inside Lagos Resource Centre in Victoria Island during the first Garage48 event in Africa where I and a team of 6 other great guys built a service on top that domain, enabling people share their Ideas. The aim was to get the notion off the heads of people that âan idea is everythingâ (well, it isnât).
An interesting part in the Social Network movie; when Winklevoss issue of Mark Zuckerberg stealing their idea of Facebook was addressed by the lawyers, Mark said this:
I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but thereâs no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.
Thatâs what I call execution and trust me, it is everything!
Basically, your Idea is some oâl bull shit without execution. So, stop dancing around your ideas. No matter how fantastic you think your idea is, the idea is more likely to change over time. What you should worry about is execution!
Most importantly, you need to stop worrying about people stealing your ideas, there is no obvious way anyone can implement well any idea that you truly gave birth to, even if they do; they will never be able to build as good as you would. They donât have the blueprints and they canât have that much passion as you.
Just keep calm and share your ideas; iterate and improve.
Overtime, I grew to understand that sharing my idea is helping me validate my hypothesis and the more of it I do, the more results I gather that will help me in the long run.
If your prototype is 50% done and you decided not to show it to anyone until itâs 80% done, then you will only get the benefit of feedback for the remaining 20%.
Donât get me wrong; a bad idea with good execution may as well fail. But I am certain a good idea with a bad execution will easily fail and the best way to ensure your idea is not a bad one is by sharing and validating.
Let me know what you think.
PhotoCredit: Fentino
What Is The Secret To Success?
It really hurts me to see entrepreneurs seeking for an easy way to success, searching up and down for a secret key that doesn't even exist.
A lot of Nigerian tech entrepreneurs reading TechCrunch and hearing of the likes of Iroko Partners(Nigerian Startup) raising $8million makes them want to start something today and raise a million dollar tomorrow.
Reading TechCrunch youâd think that every company under the sun has just raised millions in series A and is about to âchange the worldâ. Reality is that most companies donât fit the VCâs profile to begin with, let alone raise capital.
- Ashkan K. (CEO of WatchMojo)
I also came across a short Facebook post by Jason Njoku (CEO of Iroko Partners) answering to this same topic, whatâs the secret to iROKO success?
âRight opportunity? Right time? Right skills? In all honestyâ â Jason Njoku
He also added: âBefore iROKO I had at least 10 failed startups / ventures / âprojectsâ over a 6-year period. In fact iROKO for the first 9 months was one of those failed projects.â
So, to be specific on this⌠my best advice is STOP wasting your time looking for easy ways to success. There has never been an easy way. Nobody will give you a million dollar because you have an idea that you think is killer. Wake up from your dreams!
If you want to be successful, you have to stay FOCUSED; build what you have to build, experiment, study, improve and pivot. Then you will be successful, it doesn't happen overnight.
Establishing An Exceptional Web Design Business.
Few months ago, I was having a discussion with a web designer friend of mine who was having difficulties keeping clients. His cry was that, after delivery, everything ends and most at times even the website wonât be renewed and thus killing his portfolio.
It was a long discussion that we had, but then I gave him some advices and today he returned a call telling me that things are getting better now. So, I thought I should share with you these advices I gave to my friend.
- Design To Standards.
Nobody wants an amateur service, if you are not good at it, donât do it. Every client that you build a website for has seen websites, plenty of them and they will always compare to the best that they have seen. (Keep in mind they will almost want it for free as well.) So, when clients contact you for web design, always give them the best and charge for it. If you canât deliver what they want, donât go around it, refer them to somewhere else who can.
Stop building website that are uncool, check around for similar services, see how professional their websites look and make sure your work is as awesome as possible too. If you donât, your client will and you know the rest ( they will have no satisfaction in your service). - Ensure Clients Understand The Power Of Their Website.
Sometimes, you do lots of amazing things on the behind for the clientâs website, like SEO and Image optimization etc.
Let the client know all these things. Introduce them to how their website could improve their business, teach them the benefits of having their website. Most times clients ask for website because a competitor has one or a friendâs business has one, they barely have no idea what impact the website has on their business, its your job to show them. It is all your responsibility to ensure they fully understand what they are about to have. - Configure Email Service.
Never build a clientâs website without setting up emails for them. Let them know the power of using their emails @theirdomain.com.
Teach them to use their emails and make sure they do. Having your clients using their domain name emails will make them keep their website and also drive lots of traffic to it through contacts without any advertisement or marketing. You know how it works, needless to say more. - Configure Analytics.
Make sure you configure analytic services for your clients, like Google Analytics or even real time analytic like Mixpanel to allow them login and check how their website is doing at any time.That will make them interested in gaining more traffic, thus they will market their website more, they will get lots of feedback from visitors and they will wan to improve their website. (more business for you) - Provide Timely Checkup.
This is the biggest problem! Most designers deliver and move ahead for another client, thinking that clients wont need upgrades and changes on their website. You need to take charge and ensure that your work has positive impact on the clientâs business and if at all its useful.
You should always keep contact with your clients, if possible set aside timely checkups (like a doctor) to see how all your clients are doing. Ask them how the website is affecting their business and whether or not they are having any difficulty using their website. When you do that, you create loyalty and trust between you and your clients.
Setup a personal log (online/offiline) with a list of your clients and the last time you checked on them, the problems they are having with their websites and how you could help them. Not only will you keep a good relationship with your client, they will also bring more business to you because they will trust you and be comfortable doing business with you.
Do I Really Need A Business Plan?
According to Wikipedia: âA business plan is a formal statement of a set of business goals, the reasons why they are believed attainable, and the plan for reaching those goals. It may also contain background information about the organization or team attempting to reach those goals.â
But I think, this is only important to a certain degree with the little experience I have in business.
Did I start with a business plan â Yes.
Did I continue with writing one â No.
I switched form writing a formal document to writing just tips & notes that guide me through the journey and that alone for me has worked fine for the past few years.
It is obvious how business plan is over emphasized, leading you and most fledgling entrepreneurs to the quest; Whether or not it is so IMPORTANT to constantly have a clean and clear formal written business plan at all times!
So, I asked this question on my Facebook wall⌠âIs writing a business plan document so necessary before starting a business?â and I got a number of responses.
RESPONSES:
Ajibola Aiyedogbon: I really am a noob on business dealings, so I come from âcommon senseâ, a plan is needed, regardless of how many times it changes. If not, you are dealing in chaos. It also does not need to be physically written down, as far as one exists that can be recalled on request.
Thatâs what I thought, it doesn't really have to be physical or formal. So that mean you can just write your plans on a jotter or a diary or even sticky notes.
Do you have to make it a clean and clear formal document?
Abubakar Gambo: I think business plans are only important at a certain stage in business, for example when looking for people to invest.
Kayode Muyibi: My business plan is designed to illustrate a few things but not limited to my marketing plan, my business strategy, my cost metrics etc.. It is a guide to remind me on what I plan to do, how I plan to do it, and reminds me of my goal and vision. I use it for my own use.
Churchill Nanje Mambe: BUSINESS PLANS are mostly not for you the entrepreneur but for your investors, partners and team.
In a video I watched on TechCrunchTV, âWhy Business Plans Are A Big Waste of Timeâ by Ryan Blair:
Ryan Blair: âI donât like to see entrepreneurs spending a lot of time on theoretical market place position of a company. I think thatâs a lot garbage⌠I think you should just go to work and start building that company!â
Do you write a formal business plan? And how useful has it been to your business? Iâd love to hear your thoughts on this.
How Being Cheap Will Hurt Your Business.
When you want to start a business, you want immediate traction and you try all that is possible to break into the market with an attractive pricing to gain attention, but in the long run; you are actually hurting your business from its infancy.
Of course cheap pricing can fetch you crowd, but the question is⌠Is it crowd you want or long term customers?
⢠What happens when youâre too cheap?
When you appear cheap, you gather customers whoâs sub-concious minds are towards discounts, sales, give-aways and freebies.
These kind of customers wonât mind leaving you any time a better deal is out there and if you cannot slash further, your business is doomed!
Thatâs what you taught them from day one (go for the cheap.)
⢠Why you should not be too cheap?
Because you will have a bunch of low-end customers, who would rather quit business if you ever think about adding a penny to adjust your pricing in the course of running your business.Because you will lose the high-end customers, those who care more about the quality of the serivce delivered, ever ready to pay what it takes to get the best service⌠theyâre looking for value, while you offer what seems to be too cheap to be true.
Because being cheap will put you to a niche you donât want to be among. A niche where low pricing is all that matters⌠Thatâs where it is more difficult to excel.
⢠What you should do then?
Take a deep breath and look past the immediate cash. Look long-term. Know the kind of customers you want, what you want them to think of you, and the kind of relationship you want to establish with them.
It is good for startups to charge less⌠yes; you should consider a little fair pricing. But donât be so freaking cheap, unless you want to gather some cheap customers too.
Build your business on the niche of quality, reliability and affordability⌠set your pricing fair enough for what you deliver.
PSS: I would like to hear your thought on this.
Please STOP Asking Web Developers How Much It Cost To Build Websites.
Unless you can walk to a construction engineer and an interior decorator and ask them how much will they build a house for you, stop asking web developers and graphic designers how much will it cost to build a website!
It really irks me when I get asked, âhow much will you build a website for me?â. Did you hear that? Often I get this weired feeling and this evil voice in my head, âDude, its not polishing your shoe for yah, its a website for Godâs sake!â.
But, softly I will answer; it depends, tell me about the website.
Guess what, most answers return as âI am not sure yet, but its a normal website; can you give me a rough estimate?â . Thatâs when I get on my nerves. What the hell is a normal website?
Of course I build websites and its my day job (what I do for a living) but I cannot tell you how much a website will cost you without understanding what the website is all about, knowing the duration of the work and amount of tech related to it.
Okay, I understand that people not familiar with how websites are built may not understand that building websites is best described as building houses!
Just like a construction engineer cannot tell you how much it will cost to build a house (a normal house) unless you tell him all the details of the house. (How many rooms, which location, what type of materials, the kind of interior, even the kind of roofing for the house), a developer cannot tell you how much it will cost to build a website.
Imaging this conversion:
Client: Hi Mukoshy, I want you to build a web site for me, how much will it cost?
Me: Well, it depends. What is the website about and what do you want from its functionalities?
Client: I am not sure about that yet, can you give me rough estimate?
Now thatâs my frustration⌠I wish i could just reply, your entire family fortune!
So, what if I say youâd pay N60,000 (~$400) and you endup giving me a load-some of work, I could barely even wink at for N160,000 ($1,000)? What happens? We part and the project is lost, leaving you with a hole in your heart that it was suppose to be $400.
Please stop asking web developers how much to build a website and start given details first, then allow us to digest it. With that I can tell you how much it will cost to build that your online store, with a shopping cart , bank deposit or cash payment option at your office. An admin area with a simple check-list, option to add stocks and pricing with a contact form.
Unless you give me details, Iâd forever keep telling you it DEPENDS!