From the Trenches: Launch – 10 days!

Gents and ladies,

Not sure how many of you have actually experienced the exhilaration, thrill, fear, anxiety and enjoyment of waiting for the magic door of your product / service / shop to open up publicly and your product fixing all that ails this world! I have – and while the feeling cant be shared here, the experiences can be. This is a first in a chain of posts where I will discuss what I learnt while hunkering down in the trenches with my comrades! Here goes…

Fellow entrepreneurs: There are a few ground rules that you just have to accept. I learnt them the hard way – and here they are, along with how we tackled them :

1. Murphy will strike every single f*!$&ng time: Whatever can go wrong, will definitely go wrong. In our case, the list is quite long! The PRI card that we purchased was the wrong one – and didnt fit our severs in Mumbai (We are in Noida). The PRI line didnt get installed. Once it got installed, it was not activated in the right manner. The technology had bugs in it – which didnt want to go away. Our web guy left us 10 days before the launch. Our clients were breathing fire down our neck for delays that were beyond our immediate control. The invite functionality was not functioning properly etc. etc. All this carried on till 3 days before the launch! I learnt a lot from this:

a) Allow people to set their own deadlines, and you accumulate them to get to a single date in time for launch: Allows people to own their stuff and get things done. You need to give direction – not dictate every thing that has to be done (I say this today – even though I know that I tend to get down and dirty far too many times for my own liking).

b) Allow for a buffer in the deadlines: Things will go wrong. Definitely! So dont get yourself all worked up if you miss your deadline by a day.

c) Look at the big picture: Set 3 – 4 key objectives that you want to get validated / met by X date – and get everyone to focus on delivering them. (We did that – but after the launch)

d) Always be ready for a plan B: When our web guy left, we were left pretty much high and dry. Nothing much that could be done. Noone could join within a couple of days, and we didn’t want to outsource at that crucial juncture. Two things happened: Sandip (a true telecom tech guy) stepped up to take on the web tech as well while Arpit took over the actual product side.  Surprise surprise – they did it. We had to get a design company on board + get some simple coding help from outsiders – but it didn’t hold us back. We didn’t buckle. We adapted. More expensive? Yes. More taxing? Definitely! But done. The great thing about Plan B’s is that if they usually go better than you expect them to! :-p

2. Do yourselves a favor – set yourselves up for a fall: Everyone thinks that the day you launch a service, you will get 10,000 users and by the end of the first month – your service will be at 100,000 users (at least)! Right? Err… not really. My experience shows that there are a lot of things that have to go right for everything to go according to plan. Your PR plan, your social media strategy, your early adopters, your product itself and at least 20 other things. It wont happen on day one. Not saying that it wont happen at all – just never on day one. Its a marathon – not a sprint. Get ready for the long hard ride of customer acquisition. Plan for the best (100,000 users), but be mentally prepared for the worst (1000 users). <– btw these are just examples and not our metrics. We have seen a steady growth happening regularly since the time of launch. It seems much more like a recommended sign up rather than a forced one. A multiplier effect – that’s what we have going right now. Bigger challenges lie ahead: How do we engage everyone to ensure that the multiplier effect grows.

3. Go for the WOW: We did this – but not in a planned manner.  It happened more accidentally really.  This has two elements:

a) Remove as many bugs as possible: Test, test and more tests. We did this – but not in a planned manner. We should have had an excel sheet where we had the test cases etc, but we didnt for the first time. We had ONE sheet, where everyone consolidated all the bugs they saw – and then someone was responsible for fixing them. It should have been – 5 different people testing out 500 use cases, and getting the results across to the guys who have to fix it. There will still be lots of bugs  that will crop up, but its best not to have them in the core process / experience of the product.

b) Decide on the WOW bit: Think consciously about ONE wow factor that can be spoken about. Is it the seamless buying process, the interface, the ajaxing of your site – whatever. But it should be there. Not from a perspective of getting you more customers – but basically covering your ass from the downfall that you will likely have in case you dont have that WOW effect. Fundamentally – as a startup, you need the wow to remain at the same place you are at right now!  In our case – it was the registration and search / connect process. We tested that at least 300 times before saying – yes, that works. We didnt really plan for it to be wow – but when people told us that they really liked the immediate welcome call or the personalized IVR functionality – we had found it.

4. Enjoy the moment: We didn’t have a launch party, and I personally regret it. Everyone worked bloody hard to have the product up – and we all got extremely engrossed in the stats post that to realize that we had all come a long way, and in a very short time with very very limited resources.

- Here was something that large companies wanted (We have ~30 corporate clients now).

- Here was a product that was appreciated by almost everyone who interacted with it (We have been used by ~3000 individuals till date).

- Here was a concept that wasnt there anywhere else.

- Here is something that could solve all the ills of the world! (Or so we believe – and you will too (for your product / service)).

Dont lose that moment. No one knows whats really in store – but at that moment, the world was ours. Come to think of it – it still is! So with that – I am going to sign off, and actually organize a party tonight.  To celebrate the experience of creating something of value (to some people) from abso-f*&!ing-lutely nothing. To celebrate the fact that we are all here in the trenches together… and loving every minute of it!

M

Launch and then perfect it..

Its been a week since we launched our product in ‘open BETA’ for people to try out and boy am I glad that we did that. This post is a short note to share WHY entrepreneurs should get their business into ‘Running mode’, rather than ‘Planning mode’ … quickly.

1. Build the system for your clients – but test it on the final users: We did the right things – went to our customers, got sign ups, listened to them, tweaked our product, were nimble about it, added features, streamlined requirements, got the product upto scratch as per what we ‘thought’ were the key things, and I thank god for that today. However, the one thing we realize now is that they were as much in the same ‘thinking and planning’ mode as we were. They didnt know how the system would react, and more importantly – how their customers would react. VERY important learning – build it for your clients, but test it on the final users. Here is what happened:

Day 1: We sent out about 4K SMSes to targeted users who we believed would use the service. Good. People called our service – in the %ages we thought they would. Great. And then they dropped off the radar. No connections.We scratched our heads.

Day 2: We sent out about 20K SMSes, and the same thing happened. 20 connections. More scratching.

Day 3: We outcalled some users and put in a voice based tracking (like the web logs) – and watched where they were dropping off, and we realized that the people dialling in really didnt care about the options that we were providing. They wanted simple connections. Nothing else. Wow – we (or our clients) hadn’t thought about that one.

Day 4: Changes done – 20 K more SMSes. Expected response, and higher conversations. Getting there.

Day 5: No SMSes. Just pure tech play.

Day 6: 20 K SMSes. Great response. Still the IVR menu, and still some drop offs. Repeat users. Many repeat users. Nice

The point of sharing all this with you is that we had built a system that common sense said would work. The common man thought so too – but with limitations. We need to change somethings. Add more features, delete some. Perfect – ‘Mission BETA’ accomplished. However, we should have done this before. You definitely should!

2. Tie the pieces together: When we were ready to launch – Murphy’s law kicked in (It inevitably does). The system was cobbled together. On a staging server. Web was not working properly. Our key web guy had disappeared. The system was acting up. Some calls getting recorded – others not. To put it mildly – we basically didn’t really have too much going in our favour. We launched never the less. 10 days post that – I am sitting here writing a blog post about the process. Not because I think we have cracked everything – but because the pieces now stick together and I have the time to do so. The Customer Care rep can take the calls and the system works when he redirects. The calls land. The SMS scrubbing is happening alright. The little details that matter are now sticking together. We know where the problems really are, and the ones that are now solved. Trust me when I say – this will not happen till the time you face real users.

3. Allows you to see things with more clarity: Till the time we had launched, there was only one focus for me personally. Make sure that the calls happen – and the conversations are meaningful. The calls are happening and the conversations are more meaningful than what I had anticipated them to be! Its like a clog has been removed from my brain. Now – I am able to look at the system from afar and say. Hmm.. nice. What else can we do with it. And there are a lot of things that can be done! I am thankful that it went this way – it could have gone completely the other way. Either ways – this is what was needed, as I now know exactly where my focus should be over the next few months.

Thats my $0.02. Think of it as a story – but take it seriously. Dont try to perfect a system and then launch. Launch and then perfect everything around it – not just the technology. You will realize that most probably tech is the easy part. Its the other things that will rattle you.

M