My first failed hustle: IDEA and FUNDING are critical but don’t even start without a COMMITTED TEAM
My first co-founded start-up failure happened 10 years ago, but the learnings are still valuable for me now.
The hustle was the app to match available manicure professionals with customers who were interested in nail services at home or at their place of work. The launch city was Moscow with a sizable number of involved and busy women open for efficient beauty services complemented by an ample number of qualified beauty professionals interested in widening their client base. We named the service GlamExpress thinking of further expansion into makeup and hair styling. The app was developed, the photo shoot was done, UX validated, and Appstore accepted the app to drive the downloads.
Then less than 3 months after the launch, the project ceased (despite promising downloads dynamics, encouraging customer satisfaction numbers and partnership prospects with an international nail polish brand. The reason for stopping the business was that I, my co-founder and our small tech and commercial team literally couldn’t talk to each other anymore. Here are 3 things which I have learned and trying not to repeat ever again.
Don’t assume that if any of the team members don’t share your business vision you can work it out later
The common vision of what business is about is critically important to drive business success even if you talk about rather junior team members. For GlamExpress the idea was to build a customer-focused beauty service where all manicurists follow consistent proven procedures and technics to break customer dependency on a particular manicurist they trust. This would enable the greater availability of the service timeslots and would generate more orders.
However, the operations manager who used to be a manicurist herself didn’t share the vision and was against “stupid standardisation” searching and recruiting manicure “artists” to the app workforce. Her view was that a manicure was a women’s self-expression and the more freedom you give to a master the better. Needless to mention that her own bold and creative nail designs were causing a lot of pain in my poor eyes.
I could not make any separation moves because she was hired by the co-founder as a personal favour to his friend and I must admit this lost battle cost GlamExpress several unhappy customer reviews on the lack of nude and coral polish options which were not in favour of our manicurists.
The openness to workstreams synchronization and teamwork is not granted.
For me, GalmExpress was a side hustle and after being for more than a decade in a big corporate business I used to take for granted that in general people around me are motivated to reach certain business goals and happy to work as one team. There were only 6 of us in GlamExpress and we couldn’t make it happen. Our Sync meetings were appalling — never start on time, no follow-up updates on the execution points from the previous meeting but tons of finger-pointing. I introduced project management and collaboration tools for better team interaction but it didn’t work.
Reflecting on the root causes I have to say that when you are working on an established business there is a common understanding of success drivers and shaped-up cross-functional processes. While in GlamExpress I didn’t ensure that we are on the same page and didn’t run any type of co-creation workshop to develop workflows with clear role scopes and KPIs. For a young business, the processes could be a bit fluid, but the team would benefit from an aligned interaction framework and would enjoy working with each other and recognise everyone’s contribution.
Don’t expect immediate success and fast recognition.
With my co-founder, we made a call to launch the project over a nice glass of wine being very positive about its business potential. My partner immediately rent an office and invested in an instagramable and very expensive pink couch for the reception area. In his mind, it was the right move to set up a business for hype growth and massive recognition among beauty influences.
Well, it was my mistake not to stop him as well as to manage his expectations on how fast the business could grow. GlamExpress IG reached about 2000 followers, the nail jobs were tagged in big beauty celebrities’ posts, and we had a very fun event with influences making selfies on a pink couch. However, in 3 months GlamExpress didn’t make any sort of self-funding revenues or reached city-level awareness and my partner got very discouraged. I also was not happy being frustrated by the team dynamics and was not ready to solo fund it. Over a cup of coffee, we made a call to stop the enterprise.
I have mixed feelings about the GlamExpress experience, after a while, I concluded that the hustle was worth trying and the business idea had a good market fit yet I would ensure stronger team engagement and gain co-founder commitment for the long run. Nowadays I continue to hustle and do remember that I can’t do it alone and that team engagement and commitment are like 90% of long-term success.
Singapore, August 2022
