Briefly, I flew into LA and drove up the stunning west Pacific coast to San Francisco. I took 2 days, and enjoying some market research along the way. Lucky me, market research involves great interior design shops!
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| Visiting a Jonathan Adler showroom in LA |
My first meeting was in Palo Alto at WSGR law firm. WSGR represent some of Silicon Valley's top companies, many of which began as small start-ups like myself.
Instantly, as I sat in this monolith of a building, I understood the genius of Silicon Valley and why it dominates the global entrepreneurial scene - the Big Guys are happy to support the small guys. Meritocracy rules. If you hustle, show initiative, be bold and pitch well, you will be valued. It doesn't seem to matter that you are a nobody - because one day you may be a somebody. They're literally banking on it!
Of course, I met up with the wonderful Victor from Skillsapien, the expert-for-hire company who ran the pitch contest, sponsored my winner's trip and who have been advising me throughout this process. Victor showed me around his cool co-working space, Nest GSV in Redwood City. As expected, it was bursting with Silicon Valley necessities: 'slide not stairs', interactive robots and a communal cafe full of free food. Plus lots of entrepreneurs working in the massive open-spaces. You could feel the buzz of dedication and smell the scent of ambition. Disruption and corporate anarchy never looked so good!
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| Victor and I at NestGSV in Silicon Valley |
The next 18 days were a whirlwind of meetings, informal catch ups, forums, conferences and lots of walking. I mixed business with pleasure and extracted the best from everything I did, everywhere I went and everyone I met. It was truly incredible. If I could, I would love to write a book on the whole experience; Silicon Valley through the eyes of a Mumpreneur!
But I don't have time (school pick up in an hour) and besides which, you're not here to read the minutiae of my adventures. You want to know why I have decided not to become a dot.com millionaire.
To put it bluntly, I just can't be bothered. Becoming a dot.com millionaire takes a lot more than I am willing to give. Don't misunderstand this - it's not because I am lazy. I abhor laziness in myself and others. Simply put, my desires and ambitions in life do not align with the efforts required to grow a multi-million dollar business online.
"But Emma," I hear you cry, "you've put so much effort and time and enthusiasm into this whole Silicon Valley business. You've spent months working towards it; learning, understanding and expanding. Why waste all of it? You've come too far to quit now. Frankly, you're an idiot."
But there is method in my madness. A method that I learnt directly from Silicon Valley. I have made this decision by using the techniques and lessons I have learnt over the past 9 months.
My Top 3 Lessons from Silicon Valley:
1) Product - you don't have to have the perfect product from the get-go. But you must have a compelling reason to build this product. A proper customer desire or problem. But be warned....what you first 'think' is the customers problem, may in fact not be true. But only through building and selling your imperfect product, a Minimum Viable Product, can you test your theories.
2) Data - which is where data comes in. Measure everything. And not just vanity metrics like site visits and time on site. Measure the stuff that makes you money; the conversions and stickiness of your site, the sales funnel path. Measure even if the numbers are small and a bit embarassing. Everyone starts somewhere and what you measure you can improve. What you ignore, stays crap!
3) Money - gawd, this was the one I heard and thought the most about. Everyone in Silicon Valley is chasing other people's $$. It's cut throat and exciting. But a few lone voices stood out in the crowd or on stage, and spoke directly to me, it seemed. "Just build as much as you can on your own. Do you really, truly need other peoples' money to build and grow a successful business?"
Hence, I've realised that I have to improve my product by looking at my data. I realise that investment is not the silver bullet for success either; money in itself is useless. Besides, without a decent product built on solid data and metrics, no-one's going to invest anyway.
So, what's next? In classic Silicon Valley speak, I am pivoting. A tweaking of my original offering to reflect the reality of my business in order for it to flourish and fully solve my clients' problems.
I am keeping my beloved My Bespoke Chair but repackaging my key services on a new website with a new name. (sneak peek here)
I am thinking small and niched - not everyone will be my customer.
I will constantly be talking to my customers and potential customers.
I am focusing on one city - not trying to sell to the whole country (yet).
I will test, iterate, discard, test, iterate, discard in a feedback loop.
I will collect my metrics and data and not be afraid of numbers, no matter how small.
I will set goals and not be afraid of them, no matter how high.
I will keep self funding. Debt, however you package investment funding, scares the life out of me!
And most importantly, I am going back to my zone of genius as a creator of beautiful things.
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| Some of the beautiful things I create - art, fabrics and chairs |
Everything will revolve around creating beauty. This is what makes my soul sing and my heart flutter. If I am in total alignment with my desires and ambitions, I will grow a wonderful lifestyle business built from my authentic self.
And who knows where that will lead, and what wonderful adventures I'll enjoy and fascinating people I'll meet. And the $$ I'll earn by doing what my customers love me doing.
UPDATE June 2016
Since writing this I have launched and successfully grown a very niche design business; Bespoke Backdrops. And mostly I am sticking to the guidelines I set in this blog post.
