9 major mistakes made in the first year of our startup

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    To make it clear what is at stake, I’ll say right away that our service is ContentMonster.ru copywriting exchange . At the moment, it runs more than 300 orders a day and constantly employs more than 400 authors. We have been working on its creation for more than a year and a half, and during this time we got a certain number of "cones", most of which could have been avoided. Most likely, if there were no perfect mistakes, we would grow faster, there would be more users, and the psyche would be more stable. So, let's begin.

    1. Update launch on Friday.

    In order for the project to please with its constant growth, it is necessary to work tirelessly on it. Users are waiting for new functionality, asking to make features necessary for them, hinting that a little more and they will be offended and leave for competitors. We constantly write down the wishes of users in a separate list, do the most urgent tasks at the moment and upload updates to the working server.

    It has been experimentally established that it is best to upload updates on Tuesday morning. On Tuesday, the system uses the largest number of people in comparison with other days of the week and the probability that an error will appear is maximum. Wednesday and Thursday are a little worse, but also suitable - there are almost as many users, but the probability of catching errors before the weekend is less. The worst time to fill is the second half of Friday. In this case, a “boring weekend” is practically guaranteed.

    For ourselves, we have developed a strict rule: if we did not manage to fill it before Thursday afternoon, we postpone the launch until next week.

    2. The domain was not renewed in time.

    Our system uses several different domains. One of them has a system for checking the uniqueness of texts (all texts written by the authors are checked for uniqueness before being sent to the customer).

    One evening, due to an un renewed domain, the uniqueness check stopped, and behind it the whole system - the texts simply were not sent to customers. This mistake is worthy of a noob, but it has taken place and nothing can be done about this fact.

    The conclusion is obvious: carefully monitor the status of payment for domains, hosting and other online services using special software in the form of calendars or schedulers. Renew domains at your earliest convenience, rather than delay everything at the last minute.

    3. Test new features live on a working system.

    Once, at the time of testing the new exchange API system, a significant part of the working database was deleted. Everything ended well (hourly backup helped), but the unpleasant residue remained for life - a very unpleasant feeling when you press the button and a huge piece of the base is removed. This situation arose because non-tested functions were uploaded to the production server.
    In addition, everything happened at one in the morning, when our programmer, of course, was not at the workplace ... without the programmer, everything was restored, but it cost a lot of time and nerves.

    A simple and very important rule has been imprinted all my life: to test, test, and test again before pouring! And make important technical changes at a time when all team members are in working mode.

    4. Be careful with mass operations.

    At the beginning of the service, during the operation to pay royalties to the authors, payment was made twice. As a result, I had to ask the authors to return the money in private messages. Feels like - not very nice. All but one of the copywriters returned the money.

    As a result, the rule was born: always do a selective reconciliation of the data before clicking on the "Pay" button.

    5. Mass spam.

    The real epic fail happened with an email newsletter about a month ago: the first 500 customers received 500 (five hundred) emails with system news. As expected, we did not receive so much mat in our address for the entire time the service existed. It turned out that the script worked in the debugging system, and without doing a test mailing, we did not notice this.

    Conclusion: before any mailing, you must first do a test on 10 emails, including several of your mailboxes.

    6. Many projects at work at the same time.

    Probably, every creator of their own service once comes up with a “brilliant” idea about a new super-megaproject, which “will certainly shoot” and therefore “it must be urgently done before the same one appears”. And so we rush to register a domain, design a system and create a new brainchild. As a result, at best tomorrow, we wake up with the thought that yesterday we came up with some kind of nonsense and have in our hands the domain we don’t need, at worst - we spend n people-days on creating the system, scoring on the main project.

    Now I’ll say a commonplace thing: it’s impossible to develop several serious projects at once. The dispersal of forces inevitably led to a decrease in the growth rate of all projects. Now we have several unnecessary domains and two large projects that we are trying to develop at the same time.

    We try to deal with this impulsiveness and, at least, not to start new projects in the first few days after the idea. We write down ideas for new services in a separate list - let them stand for it.

    7. Development of complex functions and options that are not really needed.

    Each of us has many illusions in our head - delusions about reality. Some of these misconceptions relate to the product we make. It is the illusions that force us to develop and implement functions that are ultimately not in demand. This is very disappointing and leads to loss of time and missed opportunities. We have repeatedly introduced functions that are not used or are used very poorly. For example, direct transfers in the system.

    Therefore, before creating new functionality, it is necessary to question users whether they really need an innovation. The following model has proven itself very well - to do only what many people ask at once and not pay attention to single requests (especially if their implementation is associated with high labor costs). If you want to introduce something “revolutionary” - something that users are not yet aware of, it is advisable to consult with experts.

    8. Delaying the release.

    We could save several months if we immediately launched the beta version of the free version of the exchange without perfecting unnecessary features.

    Conclusion: show the public (a limited circle of people) a new development as early as possible after the start of coding. Let it be still raw, but we will learn about the right vector of development already at the very beginning.

    9. Purchase of advertising excluding conversion prices.

    Some advertising was quite effective, but most of the money invested in it was wasted. Here are the mistakes in this area that led to significant monetary losses:

    - money was lost on contextual advertising that did not give a conversion (at first we just did not bother to set up a conversion accounting system).
    - Buying blog posts with a focus on the number of feedburner subscribers (this rating can be cheated).
    - buying posts from bloggers who did not use our service (such posts were not interesting and advertising, the posts of real users give a completely different effect)
    - the attached topic on the Searchengines.ru forum gave very little traffic and also did not pay off.

    As a result, a few months ago, for a while, we decided to abandon the purchased advertising, and this did not affect the growth that occurs, mainly due to viral factors.

    A lot of mistakes have been made, there will be new ones, because work on the project continues. It remains only to learn at least from your mistakes (and it is better to study the similar experience of other people) and prevent them from repeating in the future, as well as trying to predict new ones. After all, only those who do nothing make mistakes.

    UPDATE:And what mistakes were made while working on your startup? I invite you to share your experience in the comments!

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