“Such is Life” for Entrepreneurs
Navigating Crossroads and Unknowns in their journey.
Everyone might have felt at some point that life is strange. We want something, but we have to live with a totally opposite thing. And then we give a long sigh and say, “Such is life.”. I have heard this phrase so many times from others and many times from myself.
Also, sometimes, we encounter a situation where we are pulled from two sides and cannot choose a side. It is like when you want to select B Path, after putting in all your efforts, at some point, you feel like giving up on Path B and decide to traverse to Path A instead.
The moment you start walking towards Path A and show your back to Path B, a miracle happens: the roadblocks on Path B disappear, and now it is looking at you with a crooked and inviting smile.
These situations prove that you could never get rid of these crossroads anytime, “Such is life”.
“Such is life — a game of dodging. When we dodge one challenge hurled at us, another eventually catches us unaware.” — Yismake Worku
Okay, readers, I get it. You feel confused and frustrated by this blabbering about Path A and B.
So, no more talking in abstract terms. I will share my real-life situation to make it more straightforward.
I have been working on my startup idea for a year now. In this product journey, I learned many new things. Before embarking on the startup journey, I knew how to do a FEW things well, but I did not know how to do MANY other things.
For instance, Sales and Marketing were two completely new things for me. I learned by reading books and online training, and eventually, I learned by doing too. Although the learning was great, the product’s customer base was not increasing despite all these learnings and efforts.
The new users were coming in small numbers. It was just a trickle of 1–2 new users every week. I needed funds to add more features to make my product stickier. I approached a few investors to advance my product, but I got the feedback that I already knew. They advised that I should add more features to the product. I felt like telling them they should hear their advice and invest their money to add more features to this product.
So, I kept on struggling with this chicken-and-egg situation. I need to add more customers for my product to get the investments, but the customers will come after adding more product features, which require investment.
In the last year, many competitors have also emerged in the similar product space. Unlike me, these competitors have succeeded in getting funding for their products.
I evaluated all these situations and decided to put this product on hold. The product is still working and available, but I will stop doing the sales pitch or development of this product.
Connecting the dots with my earlier story, this was Path B for me.
Now, path A was to get some short-term management consultancy assignments. The idea behind this thought was to keep me engaged for a few months, and it would also keep the money flowing.
In the meantime, I would get some other product idea or might join some other founder in their product journey. Again, connecting the dots with my earlier story, I drifted to Path A as I felt that Path B was not leading me to the destination.
Many people I met on Path B kept telling me I was on the wrong path. I heard things like, “The product is already there in the market,” “No one needs such a product,” “People can get this thing for free, so they will not buy your product,” etc.
I decided to change directions not because of all these utterances from people but for other reasons, like the fast growth of competitors in the market, lack of funds, and absence of a technical cofounder.
I moved towards path A. But lo and behold, within a week, two instances happened back-to-back that are pulling me again to path B.
In the first instance, I went to a school for volunteer work. The teacher started chitchatting with me and asked for details about my startup. She wanted to see the website. I shared details about “Speakho” and how it helps to improve spoken English.
Two teachers were listening to my idea, and both looked impressed by the usefulness of this product. According to them, this product would be beneficial for their students. Later, I learned that one of those teachers was an English teacher. It was heartening to see the subject teacher supporting the product. In those moments, you feel like you should listen to your initial instinct again, which led you to Path B in the first place.
In the second instance, I made a cold connection with a pronunciation expert through LinkedIn. We had a couple of productive Zoom meetings, where she told me about the technicalities of the phoneme sounds and how she assesses the improvement areas in her students. She assesses them based on a test she specially curated.
She was looking for a feature that is not currently in my app. I did a feasibility study and found I could fulfill her request for the new feature set. I need to hire some developers to add those features. She showed interest in sharing her subject matter expertise for this feature. But I could not see a serious commitment from her side. Our conversations went very well, and she openly shared her vast knowledge. The discussions slowly weaned off as there were not many action items from both sides after these Zoom calls.
After one month, I received an email from this person. She wanted to restart this conversation as she needed my product’s new feature. I was happily surprised by this because I assumed she already selected a different product in the market for her needs.
Both these instances pull me back to Path B, telling me to return to the earlier path. But this also means that I have to walk solo (I am a solo founder) and invest my time and money to move ahead.This brings me back to my original setting: I am at the crossroads of Paths A and B.
But this does not mean that I am complaining about this situation . I embraced this ambiguity and uncertainty while embarking on my startup journey.
In the startup journey, there are some Known-Unknowns — we know there are some things we do not know. There are some Unknown-Unknowns — the ones we don’t know, we don’t know.
Known-Unknowns like — Will I get my product market fit? When Will I make a profit? Will I become a unicorn?
Also, there are some Unknown-Unknowns, like Which path to choose: Path A, Path B, or some other Path X? Should I decide to walk away from Path B, or should I keep on walking on it?
I do not have answers to any of these things right now. It may take some time, but I am confident in eventually cracking the code to turn all these unknowns into knowns.
Hence, the startup journey continues….
