Lessons I learnt from my 16-month BRUTAL startup job.

In this post, I want to share my journey and lesson, working in an early-stage funded startup, as a core member responsible for building five different iterations of Dayzero.

Context:

I joined Dayzero, previously known as Briefly last year in March. When I joined the team, Briefly Idea was a platform for business owners to create to-do documents using AI and then provide people to do those tasks. The product was made but not launched, yet. The team consist of two seniors and two juniors including me.

One co-founder and CTO live in the US, was pursuing a master’s degree and now working in another startup.

After Joining:

In the first week, While studying the platform, I noticed the product was over-engineered but the core of the idea was not built. I mentioned this in the team meeting and later founder, insisted that we should build another app to create documents and connect that app to Briefly, that app’s name was Dayzero.

The first version of Dayzero was built within a month and then launched on product hunt. After the launch, we got 3000+ visitors and 300+ signups but no revenue and retention was low too. So, the whole team decided to conduct a feedback interview. After a month, we had lots of good feedback and the team had momentum.

We started building the second version of Dayzero. In the designing phase, our team and founder had a different future for Dayzero, so the founder fired our lead designer (senior). We ended up building the product but it was not built according to feedback. After the launch, we got similar results, no revenue and low retention.

This time, we did not conduct feedback interviews because the founder told us that he had already gotten feedback from his connection. Ask us to build the third version of Dayzero, while he conducts more interviews himself.

The third version was being built, the designer was a college student who had no experience. I was leading the project initially, but the founder hired a tech lead in the middle of the project. Building this version was chaotic and slow, nobody knew what we were building. We spent six months building the app until one day, the founder came up with the feedback that this version was useless. We ended up cancelling the third version without launching it.

This was December, My and team’s motivation was dried up. For the last nine months, I have been waking up, eating, working and sleeping. I schedule every other aspect of my life, going on trips with friends, attending weddings etc.

In the last nine months, Nobody was working on Briefly, the founder also declared it dead and told us to focus on the fourth version. And also divided Dayzero into 3 parts.

The founder was very invested in the fourth version, most designs were made by him and designs were changing very frequently. Nobody had any idea of the product. In the middle of the project, the Founder asked me to work on a different part of Dayzero. I built it within a month After I rejoined the team, the founder fired the tech lead and decided to revive Briefly.

The reviving task was given to me, not to the guy who built it. The reason was given that every member should know about every product. I refused to do the task and then got insulted by the CTO who never coded and fired.

When I was getting fired on the call, I was happy and relieved.

Lessons:

• Never work in a startup older than 6 months.
• Talk less, and don’t share opinions until asked.
• The founder should not talk too much to investors and advisors.
• Never work in a startup that is unable to make money within a year.
• Never work in a startup that is working on multiple projects.
• Share every progress with potential users and celebrate wins.
• Focus on improving product and team only.
• Only build features if the user pays.
• Never take feedback from the same user.
• Never work in a startup that has a cool idea, but no problem statement.
• Never work in a startup in which CTO doesn’t code.