20lines: lessons learned
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Here's a sum of what are my learnings from the founding and sale of my first business, 20lines. It is also a brief history of 20lines: what we did, how we did it, and who were the people behind this project.
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20lines: lessons learned
- 1. Lessons Learned Pietro Pollichieni, Cofounder 20lines
- 2. The Story 20lines is the best place to write, read and share short stories. Our goal is to connect readers with thousands of free stories, written by talented emerging authors who want to build and improve their reputation.
- 3. The Story June ‘13 Seed Round Dec ‘13 BigJump ExpandingTesting and Fundraising Apr ‘14 iOS App June ‘14 Android App Dec ‘14 Android + iOS 2.0 Oct ‘12 Pre-Seed May ‘12 Beta Launch Web 1.0 Web 2.0 Multilanguage Feb ‘16 Sale to Harper- Collins Publishers
- 4. The Story The launch: Turin bookfair, May 2012 (MVP) 3k early users 200 collaborative stories Validated interest f ro m q u a l i fi e d audience
- 5. The Story v1.0, October 2012 Developed full product from mvp 15k users by fall ‘12 1st investment achieved
- 6. The Story v2.0, June 2013 Launched English version Developed product’s v2 2nd investment achieved
- 7. The Story BigJump! December 2013
- 8. The Story v3.0, June 2014 Web iOS Android
- 9. Lessons Learned People Matter Product Matters Time Matters
- 10. Lessons Learned Before the product, start building a great team… Alessandro Pietro Marco Francesco Paolo MarinoMartina Nicolò Federico Gualtiero
- 11. Lessons Learned Of talented professionals with the right mix CEO COO / Product CTO Design iOS AndroidDesign Community Back-end Front-end
- 12. Lessons Learned Because: 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 = 12! DNA match between founders and the mission of their business is crucial. There’s now way out. Cofounding is like getting married. Cofounders must know each other, share their passions, ideas, and enjoy every moment spent together.
- 13. Veronica Belmont Massimiliano Magrini TV host and writer; Advisor at Goodreads.com, About.me Riccardo Donadon Founding partner H-Farm Founding partner United Ventures; former Google Italy CEO Engage yourself with the best advisors and investors Lessons Learned If your business requires external funding, aim at the best professionals to help you. Cash is not a commodity! If you have funders with you (Angels, VCs) always b e t r a n s p a re n t a n d develop the right empathy with them.
- 14. Focus on your users! Lessons Learned Your users are everything. Your are their servant and your ultimate goal is to make them happy and satisfied with your product. Caveat: pursuing users’ request is dangerous. Only you can really understand what should be done, and what not. Invest in creating a sense of community, and a feeling of identification with your brand and product.
- 15. Starting from a single, specific target of people who’d love your product Lessons Learned Mobile users 15-20 years old Female readers Make scientific use of analytics, coupled with continuous, transparent and direct contact with your users.
- 16. Test with MVPs, be fast in deploying improvements Lessons Learned An MVP is the perfect tool to test your ideas and validate your assumptions. However, this is to be thought as the first step of a long-term development strategy l e a d i n g t o a n outstanding product.
- 17. Keep a multi-platform approach Lessons Learned Web iOS Android In 24 months, we delivered 20lines as a website, iOS, and Android App. Always with a native approach.
- 18. As well as multi-language Lessons Learned Different languages and Countries mean different trends, and different tastes. But also, different customer acquisition dynamics (and costs). If you can test your product in different geographies, you’ll be able to find out where your best customers are. The earlier, the better.
- 19. Be the best-in-class for most-advanced users Lessons Learned iOS App is featured by Apple as Best New App, Best Social Networking App, and Best Books App in 96 countries Early adopters are a hard category, but they’ll teach you lots of things, and they’ll be eager to pay premium prices. Build a product that is ahead of competition on most-advanced platforms and devices.
- 20. Don’t copy, study Lessons Learned You’ll always be tempted by copying from competitors or from companies that have achieved outstanding results. But that won’t help you building your own success. Indeed, by studying and learning from the same why they undertook their key decisions, and how they plan and act, would turn to be very helpful to yourself and to your team.
- 21. Book contest in partnership with Amazon & RCS Publishing Group 550+ books enrolled 4 winners: 20lines authors won a contract with Rizzoli Publishing Lessons Learned Create success cases
- 22. Lessons Learned Two ideas of time Time is your scarcest asset, so making good use of it is fundamental to achieve your goals. At 20lines, we learned, at our own costs, that the best way to use this asset properly was through accurate planning. Time, as ‘timing’, relies on understanding if and when to act. This must happen accordingly to what you’ve planned and to the business environment. Under this point of view, timing is part of the ability of execution.
- 23. Lessons Learned Time as an asset, the importance of planning Time’s scarcity, though difficult to perceive can hit your projects as hard as funding scarcity. A detailed planning of product releases and growth goals should be performed and shared at team level. You’ll have to consider both Endogenous and Exogenous factors, among which I learned the following as being the most relevant: Endogenous: Team, production capacity, location Exogenous: Market dynamics, technological evolution, investors landscape
- 24. Lessons Learned Time as ‘timing’, the importance of execution Right timing can be harder than planning. It is a mixture of intuition and preparation that allows you to identify when to act and when to stand still. Nevertheless, the same endogenous and exogenous factors affecting your planning process, will also affect your timing and execution. While there are many ways in which you can set and track your execution process, we learned to use Google’s OKRs methodology, and manage timing on a monthly base.
- 25. Lessons Learned Last but not least…
- 26. HAVE FUN!!!