Starting a business is hard

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Starting a business is hard. Like, really hard. No. More than that. Still more. Almost enough. Ok, perfect. Now double that.

I don't want to discourage anyone. But damn, it is tougher than I expected.

Let me tell you a story (with some comments):

Way back in 2017, one guy had an idea. He will remain unnamed, to protect the guilty.
I'm standing in Oneguy's office, waiting for coffee to brew, talking about things we would like to do someday, but likely won't bother, as one does. Oneguy says "I used to have a website that listed local dayhomes and information about them. It was old and eventually I stopped running it. But I think that dayhomes could use some software."
I says (No I'm not from Boston) "You knows whats? I've been looking for a project. That sounds interesting."
Some time later, we come to the (completely incorrect) conclusion that this sounds like a neat project. It has several redeeming qualities (no it didn't):
  • It's only for dayhomes, they won't need or want many features. (Yeah...)
  • We know a couple people well that run dayhomes, they can help test! (Ok, this is a redeeming quality, and worked great. Deal with it.)
  • Nobody else seems to be targeting this demographic of small dayhomes (Turns out there is a reason for that.)
  • Nobody else is making software for dayhomes and daycares, the couple we can find online look like trash and are expensive. (So, it turns out that we are blind. There are dozens of examples online that we would find much later on. But anything good seemed rather expensive.)
Lets start writing this thing!
The date is June 8th, 2020. Three years have passed. Let me present: MyDaycareOnline - The bestest cheapest cloud solution for running a dayhome, daycare, or early childhood learning center!
See the page! https://mydaycareonline.com/ Try the demo! https://demo.mydaycareonline.com/ Sign up free for a month!

The customers are pouring in! All the way up to 3 places using our beta for free! And paying customers? Zero!

End of story time.

Well, we built it, and nobody came. Turns out that the whole business part is difficult. Does this mean it's time to give up? No. If it is easy, it is probably not worth doing.

Things are getting better. We have one very happy, large, influential customer in our beta. The beta is free, and she is helping us make good progress. She is spreading the word. And we got paid anyway, for helping her build a site for her childcare center: http://princealbertchildcare.ca/

We have a plan. We are not in a hurry.

Thanks Oneguy, you started this.

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