I just finished Zero to Sold by @arvidkahl

👉 Product to Business
I'm somewhere between Survival and Stability stage. I should (and do) focus on building a business around the product. Pumping out features alone will not make T1 sustainable. There is much more around it and I feel the pain of not focusing on it earlier.

👉 2020 went well
I think I did an OK job last year to build, validate and grow the project. It was validated when the first customer entered their credit card details, and it continued from there.
From 42€ payout, to >8000€ in 9 months.

👉 Process Docs
Documenting Standard Operating Procedures so my current and future team and helpers can onboard quickly and support me. It uncovers automation possibilities and it clears up my head by not having all of this manual stuff in there.

Getting on this soon 💪

👉 Value Proposition
I have to do a better job of defining and communicating it. It's hard though. >10k users are on T1 and I'm still struggling with clearly defining why... which makes me feel really stupid.

👉 Separate Private & Business
I thought I'm already quite good on this one but especially on SaaS accounts I still use my personal github login a lot. Will separate to a service-account soon so I can share it with a team, etc. It makes onboarding much easier.

👉 Retention
I have to take a close look at retention vs acquisition. Both numbers aren't great on T1 but it's more important to reduce churn (=> increase retention) than acquire more users. We will start to reach out to churned customers soon to learn more.

👉 P&L Statements
Not for outsiders, but for me. I had something similar but I have not followed standard practices - which I do now.
Will update my P&L statements once a month get a quick and true overview of the financials of the business.

👉 Build to Sell
I don't want to sell T1. Nonetheless, building a business as if you would want to sell will make it so much more maintainable.
It's like building a codebase as if you want to open source it. The docs, processes & tests will be better and automated, I promise you.

👉 Never say never
While I have rejected all outside investment-opportunities, it's still valuable to talk. Especially since there are many nice alternatives to classic VCs now, like @earnestcapital or @tinyseedfund. I've closed my eyes too much in 2020.

I got most excited about building the "well oiled machine" of a business that just runs and grows, provides a great product for customers and enables employees to do work they enjoy everyday while living an awesome life.
That's the dream.

Thanks @arvidkahl 💞

My next book will be "Build to Sell". Just ordered.

I just finished Zero to Sold by @arvidkahl - here's what I got out of it for me personally, to apply on my efforts to build https://t.co/wRlOaEKfD2 👇

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