Well, you must be thinking what the hell does this even mean, to begin with, “Hello World” is the first thing we type when we(IT folks) start anything in general.
Delta Four Labs LLP is the new thing that is happening here, yes, I am starting a new company again, more on that later.
Note: This post has been 3 months in the making, a lot has changed, the events are ordered.
End Of Frontuser
Yes, Frontuser was just here some time back and you had just realized, “hmmm, Abhinav started a new company”, but I am sorry to break it to you that we had to shut down Frontuser, or at least I am no longer a part of it, we had a difference in ideologies and the business model looked difficult to make money from, at least without investing a shit ton of money into it. Frontuser taught me a lot, and will always be close to me.
Start of something
(Disclaimer: it is not magical) Coming back to delta4, starting a company sounded like the only option, we had a team at Frontuser, which took a lot of effort to build and skill, and we had just had a trip together, letting them go wouldn’t have been the best thing to do, I was eager to apply my skills and theirs to a wider array of products and applications, and we wanted to do quality work, the kind of work that speaks, the kind of work that commands respect.
With delta4, we wanted to build experiences, improve and optimize them enough for users to never be able to go back to default.
The real problem we tried solving
We realized the skill gap and the supply gap for these skills that existed for Product Management, good product people are difficult to find, even more difficult to retain and extremely difficult to build a stable product org inside the org, let alone being able to afford one.
Yes, the skill gap was huge, but so was the awareness for what “product” meant.
Problems we have faced while solving this problem
It takes either extreme amounts of stupidity or extreme amount of stupidity to sell “Product Management as a Service”, Product Management is widely intangible on a micro level, it is very easy to assume the product team does nothing but calls, when you look at things in a month on month basis, while most services work on tangible outcomes, convincing someone to pay you money for intangibles is a crazy ride, until one day, they actually see the compounding effect of things getting together.
There are no clear boundaries in product, which makes it difficult to define what you do and even more difficult to define what you don’t, and at times product intersects the business to such extent that you end up managing the business rather than the product.
But doing Product Management as a Service (PMAAS) taught us a lot, it’s a weird cocktail fusion between product and a service. Keeping the stakeholder happy and still making sure they get the right things done without hurting any other stakeholder’s emotions or ego is crazy difficult, all of this without worrying about the next invoice getting paid, because it is a service after all.
What we realized is most companies will not comfortable handing us the baton, what we had to do was to enter their product and company picking up a very small tangible problem to solve, show the capabilities and then convince them to bet on us for a bigger project.
Splitting Services
Since selling a huge service with upwards of $5000 ticket size doesn’t give a lot of success, we are splitting up the services in Product functions – Product Consulting, Product Audits, Product Analytics, Product Marketing, Product Optimization, Product Research and Feature Development.
We are here now, we will start working deeply onto this, we know how to execute all of it, just that packaging all of these into tangible services is a difficult task we will get better at in the following months.
Creating a “Profit” Center
Things that need very high amount of customer education always have a slow growth rate, but then where does the money for growth and sustenance comes from? Answer: Profit Center
Money is important, more so when you start a company at 23 with no backing and only savings.
In the three months we have been operational, money was good for 2 months, dwindled high time this month adjusting to current market situation, but that money was so hard to earn with the problems mentioned above that it was impossible to do anything else other than getting on and working hard enough on tangibles to prove the worth.
And so we have decided to create a suite of executive services, waaaay far from our original goal, that will help us generate stable revenue and cashflow to sustain the product division for the next few years it will need to grow.
Am I printing money?
Only some fake one from LaserJet printers, real one, not really.
Founding something is very difficult, finding a problem worth solving is very difficult, expecting someone to buy it is difficult, getting some money for yourself after paying your employees is even more difficult and so is the case here.
I make half the money I used to make last year, easily 5x less than what a company would pay me if I was an employee. Yes the company makes money and has reserves, but they will definitely not be come to me for the next few years, that is, if this becomes into something.
So why the hell am I doing it?
I was 23 when I started it, I am 24 now, I have zero liabilities other than myself (I do have a girlfriend, whose dad I need to convince, will figure it out), my parents are okay with me taking the risk and well, I am learning.
I would like to dedicate my 20s to learning, later ones probably optimising for money and reputation, but we will see.
If I hadn’t started this, I would have never learnt a lot of these things, mind you, I have worked with a huge number of startups, but you never see things that a founder has to do beyond building a product or a service, being responsible for giving salaries is probably one of the biggest responsibilities I have held in my life, tbh, it is very humbling, I am learning, I am growing, now I don’t invalidate things other founders say or do, I get it.
So, as long as I can learn, earn some, pay my team what they deserve and make sure they grow faster than anywhere else, very few things in life matter in this moment, if nothing else, we will gain some learnings and love from the people I work with.
If you actually read through all of this, Shukraan!! Just hope another post is not a new company, kidding, chill !!
