Ricky Yean is a Co-Founder and CEO of Crowdbooster.com. Crowdbooster is an angel-backed startup from the Y Combinator Summer 2010 batch. Crowdbooster provides Twitter analytics and insights
Ricky shares lessons learned before and after the launch of Crowdbooster.
What are the lessons you learned as an entrepreneur before the launch of Crowdbooster
Persistence is required to find product-market fit. We were working together for almost 2 years before we found funding, and we built 4-5 different solutions until we found one that resonated with what users were looking for.
Lessons learned after the launch of Crowdbooster
Get your product out of the door right away to see if it could withstand the test of the market. Put it in front of your intended audience and focus on their feedback. It’ll take more iterations and even after you have users you might realize that you have no company because the business aspect doesn’t work out. Apply the same lesson from before the launch and persist through more iterations and be brutally honest about feedback. Make the hard decisions and stay focused.
What are the biggest challenges you have faced and how did you solve them
The biggest challenges for the company so far is finding the product-market fit during our time in Y Combinator. With the pressure forming around us and counting down days to Demo Day, we couldn’t build a product that resonated with users. We tried a couple different things like building a Q&A service on Twitter, another service to run campaigns on Twitter, and while we had some positive feedback, we didn’t feel like it was working out. That definitely was the lowest period in our company’s short history.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs chasing the startup dream
Keep on chasing and never let up. If you feel like this is your dream, the world is your oyster. If you find yourself feeling excited to get out of bed everyday and never want to go to sleep because of it, then you will probably feel happy chasing this dream.
