Page 18 - The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch - PDFDrive.com

My 7 Day Success

With two weeks left I had one last crack. This would be my final startup attempt.

I learned a lot from my first and second businesses and wanted to try to apply
this knowledge to my new idea. This time, I didn’t have seven years or eleven
months. At the end of the week, I needed traction on the idea or I would have to
shut everything down and start job hunting.

Running mainly on adrenaline, I ignored a lot of the activities I would typically
spend time on when planning a business. Instead, I focused only on things that
would lead to paying customers.

I avoided steps including:

Sexy ideas. I wanted to solve a problem and sell a service. Fast.
My failure. I had failed a lot in fourteen years, but I didn’t have time to
worry about my shortcomings.
Permission. I used to ask for opinions on my ideas, but not this time.
Assumptions. There was no time to make them or to test them. I had to
launch.
The small stuff. I didn’t have months to agonize over a logo, business name
or design—I put the site up in one day.
Pricing strategy. I set a price and would let my customers tell me whether it
was worth it.
The perfect payment gateway. Informly’s payment gateway took six
months to set up. This time, I used a PayPal button that I set up in 30
minutes.

On Saturday, I decided to launch WP Live Ninja (now WP Curve), a WordPress
support service that offered unlimited small WordPress jobs 24/7 for $69 per
month. By Saturday afternoon the domain was registered; on Tuesday the site
was live; and by Wednesday I sent out an email launching the service. I landed