We got on fine before this new thing, didn’t we?
Benedict Evans
Ever since I have begun to raise funds for Machine Dalal, I have become of a condescending nature. My condescension is towards people who aim to earn commissions without adding anything of value to this venture. It is also because I am not accustomed to such gentlemen and ladies. I am nested amongst a team of individuals that have worked and toiled together to bring us thus far and aim to take us further still.
I also lack certain tact that is required to raise funds i.e., straight up lying to the investors. There is no fucking way I am lying to a person or institution whose money I will take to grow my business. I am not doing that. Storytelling, I can do. Valuations I can work upon but this bit about predicting the future, that is not my cup of tea.
Building the future however, that is something different. This we do, and this we have been fairly successful at something that
1. People Use
2. People pay for
We are also growing steadily.
Not rapidly. Not growth at all costs.
This way when we make mistakes, we are punished to a lesser degree.
We are frugal but that is because we are core engineering and science team, more on that is provided when asked.
What we did right from the day one was recruit users. We cold called. Cold emailed. Cold messaged.
After that, we listened, made changes as we understood user requirements from the user themselves. Improved the UX as well. Added procedures and features for the users to use it effectively.
In some cases, we handheld them, in some cases we guided and in some extreme cases we performed the functions of the users themselves.
I will elaborate on the point above, and if you ever build products in your career, this will help. Programmers and developers work with empty states i.e., we do not know how the user would interact with the product and it is important to walk in the user shoe, and one way to do that would be to work alongside user.
For platforms and marketplaces, supply side problems are also critical, luckily, we got through that rather quickly.
If you keep moving forward, you keep moving forward.
Guru Cingh
That is how we have built Machine Dalal so far. Honestly, I have not tried to raise funds as much as other start-uppers would have at this stage. I wanted to keep my rejection rate low; by building the product, gaining some traction and have momentum behind me.
Once you are post revenue, you get into the mindset of earning. You target revenue and work around that. This could be counterproductive for the overall growth but in the case of Machine Dalal we are trying to balance it by releasing in phases and earlier what we would offer pro bono, we are able to charge a slight premium.
This, as I have learnt, has added benefits. You get power users, and they help you improve the product but more importantly they try to extract maximum value for themselves and inadvertently help you build a product that is extremely valuable to the users.
‘Always fight for the user’