Why You Need To Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
For the past few days, I’ve just felt a bit… meh. It’s not been particularly bad, but I’ve not felt great either. “Because you’re boring.” “Because you’re not doing enough.”…
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Is software extensibility a condition of survival for your startup?
Learnings from the near-death experience of Hockey Community
My name is Alex, I just turned 30.
I think I just went through a startup midlife crisis. I can’t believe it took me eight difficult entrepreneurial years to understand what you are about to read.
I was 22, inexperienced, but ready to work hard.
In true startup fashion, we spent eight relentless years designing, coding, and marketing our app.
Today, we are migrating to Vue.js.
On the back-end, we have 89 Rails models, 81 API Controllers, and 10,000+ commits on Github over 17 repos.
That’s a lot of sweat!
To give you an example, here’s our most significant Rails model: User.rb.
They were always new, exciting, and necessary.
We didn’t realize that we needed to specialize and focus. Even if we did realize, I don’t know if we would have stopped ourselves from leaving behind what we needed to. Why?
As my best friend, father of two, and HC’s co-founder, Ryan, would say:
If you find removing features hard, it is because you love your “children.”
How do you know if they aren’t for you?
Our unconditionally-loved features need some rethinking.
This belief is critical to new projects and to long-term success. But we need to learn to constrain our optimism and focus our energy on fewer projects than ever. Why?
The internet has neither borders nor distance. Competition is extreme. You are being compared every day with hundreds of other eager-to-conquer-the-world entrepreneurs.
If you have a recipe for excellence that isn’t:
We haven’t heard it! Please let us know the comments.
For now, we are stuck with those two options. And getting focused is easier than gathering a truckload of money.
You can be excellent at one thing but people won’t pay attention to you. Your users will never get to know you because you solve such a tiny piece of their long list of frustrations.
If you believe your product is truly focused and great but you still aren’t being noticed, keep reading.
Looking back, we should have built ONE small, amazing feature so well that it became impossible for the ecosystem to evolve without us.
But we were too busy focusing on our own success and so many features that we didn’t ever develop the ecosystem around us.
We tried actually! Below a photo of a wonderful 2015 memory with Oxelo and HowToHockey.com during a pond hockey tournament in Invermere, BC.
Software extensibility would have helped us stay focused.
With extensibility, we could have enjoyed being part of other networks and grow much faster without being tempted to explore new features.
It is a must if you want to position yourself within an ecosystem.
Then we kept exploring, and realized it will take a lot more.
Want to test your architecture extensibility ?
— And make sure to share your extensible feature in the comments. —
Your competitor can become your best asset at anytime. You share the same goals and values. Why not inviting for them for a beer?
Help each other grow. Tolerate mistakes. Celebrate the small victories. But let’s keep in mind:
Rule #1 when considering a co-founder: Can you see yourself having a beer with them every month? If not, it is a bad fit.
Rule number #2: They must embrace the ecosystem approach and welcome integrations. Send them this article and get their thoughts on it — do they envision the same future for their product?
You may find what’s missing in their journeys, the role you could play, and who you need to partner with.
I just came back from Vancouver after spending a few days with HC trying to decide how to refocus our company without throwing away too much of the past eight years.
After two days of workshop and a lot of emotions, we are still undecided on what feature(s) we want to focus on. Follow us and we will keep you in the loop.
But we have learned something the hard way…
How about you? Do you have experience in playing a role in an ecosystem. Let us know in the comments below!
🙏🏼 If you enjoy reading this article, please consider giving it a few 👏👏👏.
Very warm thank you to
About Hockey Community and Decathlon
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