Your first product is like your first relationship.
It’s love but they’re probably not the one.
This is a story about pivoting a startup, knowing when to change direction and finding product/market fit.
For the past year and a half, Siri and I have taken great pride in building a workspace that helps remote workers find an inspiring place to work and find community in the process with Reset. What started as a solution for isolated remote workers turned into something even greater — a thriving community, the sharing economy of spaces and immersion into the Austin restaurant scene like nothing we could have imagined.
But even with all that — it’s been a challenging road to build a coworking solution that scales and grows in the environment we are in. The business of coworking is a tough one, especially so in an increasingly saturated market like Austin. Over the last 6 months, the Reset team has tested and re-tested many different variations coworking in order to better serve our customers and continue moving upwards. And, we found one that really stuck and was solving a substantial pain point.
Hosting offsite meetings for corporate teams.
Companies big and small are looking for inspiring, productive places to host their team meetings, quarterly offsites and other meetings — but they want to stay local. Our team and network of spaces is uniquely positioned to tackle this problem — and it allows us to give back even more to our local, restaurant and bar partners — one of the reasons we got in this business.
We’re stoked for this new direction, and what it will mean to teams and employees — and especially remote employees! But this means that after this after December 19th — coworking will be coming to an end.
It was a tough decision, and not one we made lightly — but sometimes knowing when to change direction is half the battle.
In that vein, I want to share some important lessons we learned in the last year:
Product/market fit is everything (ok not everything, but a lot of it)
How badly do your customers want what you’re selling? Are they coming to you organically or is marketing spend directly tied to how many people are giving you money for a product?
Unfortunately for us — the second one was more accurate for coworking.
We had a core group of dedicated users, but we weren’t able to get past this to the momentum we needed to grow and scale. Our product simply never became a habit for a big enough set of users, because it wasn’t absolutely necessary. It was a nice-to-have, a convenient option for sometimes. But, if it went away — our users would have found an alternate without too much heartache.
How do you know if you’re on track to product/market fit?
- If you’re finding yourself selling product faster than you can make it, and have a high percentage of repeat customers — you’re getting there. A good way of measuring this is Net Promoter Score (NPS) surveys — which quantify how likely a customer is to recommend your product or even how disappointed they would be if it went away entirely.
- Your customers are coming through word of mouth, repeat visits and other organic ways. Your sales are directly correlated to a higher marketing spend, and you have momentum in word of mouth. This means it’s filling a real customer needs, your customers are finding value in it and they want to share the joy (see NPS above).
More reading from Andreesen Horowitz here on product/market fit >>
With coworking, we never saw the momentum needed in the above that says we had product/market fit. Our customers liked us and there were a moderate level of referrals — but you know it when you see it. And we knew it wasn’t it.
Taking care of yourself and your mental health is part of your job
There has been more conversation around entrepreneurship and mental health recently, and I am here for it. I’m glad to see the “stake it all, live out of your car” view of entrepreneurship slowly giving way to building something while still maintaining a healthier lifestyle, relationships and mindset.
As a founder, it’s easy to forget your own needs (sleep, exercise, relationships, alone time) as you put everything into building the business — but this is not sustainable. Our fuses run out, our mental energy suffers and it all pretty much goes downhill from there.
For the first year of Reset, I definitely didn’t take my own founder energy bar very seriously — leading to burn-out and a generally tired attitude. I knew I was nearing burn-out because I was feeling constantly tired and my brain was in a fog regardless of what task I was tackling. I was always thinking about Reset, even if I was resting — which isn’t rest at all.
I’m lucky because I have a co-founder — one that not only knows when I’m burned out but addresses it. We can tell when the other is nearing that cliff, and are able to help shoulder some work to pull them out of it. Find that person (whoever they are!), talk to them and give them a thank you hug.
Tips to prioritize mental health -
- Schedule time weekly just for yourself in a way that relaxes, energizes or otherwise makes you feel like a whole human
- Recognize and call out any guilty feelings that come from not always “being productive” — life isn’t always about productivity
All that’s to say — it’s an exciting path forward and I wanted to share some of these learning moments with you.
As we end 2019, a big thanks to everyone for being a part of the journey with us and forging that path ahead.
