I wrote this for the Matygo blog, but it’s probably worth posting here too.
Ok, I know I’m about 2 weeks late for the “2009 retrospective” blog posts. I wrote this up around New Years but wanted to work on it some more and have it vetted it by the guys before releasing it on the world. Here you are:
“Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”
—CONFUCIUS. (551 BC - 479 BC)
Matygo was founded in 2009. This New Year is significant to us in that respect; it marks the second calendar year of operation. I thought I might take advantage of the holiday to write a quick history of our business in 2009, point out our accomplishments, and reflect a bit on what Iʼve learnt. This is what resulted.
A Brief History
In early April 2009, Cam and I went for brunch at a Chinese diner on Denman street. He wanted to speak with me about a planned reincarnation of his previous business, a tutor service called “Matygo”. Those early talks blend together in my mind, but what signals clear as his key, motivating insight was that the old business plan - a company that hired tutors directly - didn’t scale very well. Cost grew linearly with revenue. He wanted to revisit the tutor market using a different business model, like franchising, - or software - one better poised to explode.
He wanted an online component in his new business, so that’s what our original talk was about. As for me, since my aborted startup in China three years prior I had been preparing myself, by taking computer science and business courses at UBC, to try my hand at being a founder once again. It didnʼt take me long to suggest partnering on the new venture. After a few more plates and bills, we had pieced together an idea for a facebook-cum-craigslist marketplace for tutors to be developed as “Matygo”. By June we had a logo, splash page, and an embryonic business plan; the gears were in turn.
Enter Joe. August Long Weekend 2009, Cam, Joe, and I were having a hell of a time on a houseboat at the Bachelor Party of a friend. Joe was moving to Vancouver in the Fall, so we pitched him our project and he offered to help out with development. Originally working under a comically complicated hours-for-special-covertible-debt compensation scheme, by late October we ditched that idea and he joined Cam and I in an even three way split of the equity.
We spent the Fall working towards a prototype and experimenting. We’ve made, and destroyed, quite a bit of code. In late November I learnt about a federal grant to hire university students that seemed perfect for us. Cam and I quickly put together two applications in December and both were accepted. As a result of this, we also found our first external financing in the form of a short term loan to be able to administer our side of the grant.
Currently, we are finishing up a prototype modeled on our early business plan, our ‘alpha’. We have great looking tutor profile pages, a discussion board, the foundations of the app - a flexible authentication system, one-command deploys, production server and database configurations - all in place. We’re working through the last 10% (that last 10% that takes 90% of the time), and are all pretty happy with how things are looking so far.
Accomplishments
I think we can take a moment to pat ourselves on the back. We came a long way in 2009 - consider that Matygo was only a dormant defunct business plan a year ago. In no particular order, here are some accomplishments we should be proud of:
- Having the courage and motivation to start this company.
- Getting incorporated.
- The market research, surveys, and tutor engagement we did early on. - Establishing our name, logo, brand and identity.
- All the development accomplishments mentioned above, from the first splash page to the our latest build with tutor pages and a feedback board.
- Being accepted into the Small Business Internship Program and receiving our first financing.
- Developing a strong business plan and product vision; uncovering real market opportunities.
- Working together, meeting every week, and having fun while doing it.
- Doing all this while spending substantially less than $50/month.
Things Learnt
In the spirit of the opening Confucius quote, lʼll reflect a bit on what Iʼve gleaned and groked from working on Matygo in 2009. Iʼll save the technical “I learnt technology X” stuff and focus on the higher-level issues. We learn from mistakes (or should at least), so a discussion of things learnt also benefits from some discussion of problems encountered.
Most of the problems we had werenʼt financial or technical, they were organizational & interpersonal. The closest problem we had to anything youʼd be able to solve with a hard skill trained in school was scheduling.
We donʼt have any debts, or revenues, or any sizable expenses so itʼs hard to have financial problems (though I suppose having zero revenue is, in a sense, a big financial problem, just not unexpected). Similarly, we have a pretty small codebase, no users, and no mission-critical servers, so itʼs hard to have technical problems.
We are, however, establishing ourselves as a group of people working together. That can be hard. We are still discovering and defining our roles, relationships, and identities. Starting a company can be stressful - especially if you expect it should be.
Speaking of expectations, “Managing Expectations” is the most salient, catch-all lesson Iʼve taken away from our first year. But a phrase with so much breadth has nearly no depth, so allow me to illustrate. Iʼll give some points as advice e.g. ʻyou should do X, but really what Iʼm saying is ʻI messed this up and I should have done Xʼ.
- Part-time is not full-time. I was extremely over-optimistic about our development schedule. At the end of August I thought we would easily be done our alpha by mid-November. By mid-November I was sure weʼd be done by Christmas. Weʼre still working on it and now I think weʼll be done within a month, but thatʼs probably wrong too. I had unreasonable expectations regarding our productivity. And that had a waterfall of negative consequences.
- Before you get frustrated, examine very closely the assumptions you have about your own work and that of the people youʼre working with. Youʼre likely to find they arenʼt entirely reasonable and are a result of short-term thinking (like “this can be done in 2 months not 6!”), which is really just a synonym for stupid.
- Short-term and long-term thinking are almost always in opposition. Think long term. Be smart, not stupid. For example, rushing a project to finish a few months earlier at the cost of damaging significant long term assets (like the relationships that hold your organization together) is very stupid.
- Challenge the expectations of your culture and media. Donʼt try to fit a mold. I think some of my impatience was really fanned by reading blogs and articles about how startups are so fast paced, bios of workaholic entrepreneurs, things like this. It made me think that we had to be fast paced workaholics - and since we werenʼt it freaked me out. Bullshit. This is the same type of thinking that makes most startups web apps look the same. Itʼs a desire to be ʻnormalʼ (with a healthy mix of low confidence) that leads to exactly that - being average. Follow all the trends, read all the blogs, take the mean and youʼll find yourself wonderfully average, unexceptional, unmemorable run- of-the-mill. By swimming the current you wonʼt even make a ripple. Have confidence in yourself and nurture - donʼt fight - that which makes you different.
Manage your expectations. Have patience and confidence. And trust. Patience, confidence, and trust in the people you work with - I think that sums it up quite nicely.
With that in mind, Iʼm very much looking forward to the year ahead. :)
- Paul
