Sheriff has experiences spanning years and he worked with the industry leaders. It's so unfortunate that he's closing down showroom.ng
12 Years a hustler, time to go home
I’m exhausted; it’s been roller coaster for the past 12
years having started my first startup then and ever since, it’s been from one
to the other.
I really felt I could succeed, I have read the right
books, the right blogs, draft right business plan and but in execution I have
fallen short. Maybe it’s time to change things a little, something is quite
wrong I think.
The height of it was last year end, business was doing
fairly well then everything started crashing. Somehow I survived the robbery at
gun point in the middle and rally round to try to make things work, but getting
worse and every now and then the thought will always come around, what if it
all ends here? What if I just have an accident right now (while driving home at
11pm on third mainland bridge)? Maybe it was law of attraction but somehow I
had an accident but in the daytime when I didn’t think about it.
I launched showroom.ng almost 2yrs now and within months
with all the permutation (maybe strategy) we were on a super roll, the dream
roll. I think personally I wasn’t introspective enough as I was just riding
with the tide. That’s super wrong for a CEO, “you don’t just work in your company
you work on it”, so they say. I only read it, I didn’t live it.
I personally won’t attribute the failure to wrong
market, or wrong product. It was a wrong execution.
Maybe this will help
1. Weak domain
expertise: we don’t have that in our team, inasmuch as I tried to learn on the
fly, this will fucking take years of learning, practice before charging people.
I had personally underwrote mistakes from partner or staff 100%, just so you
could make customers happy, but resources are limited we do not have that much
and our products are heavy items.
2. Speed: the
edge a startup has over bigger company is suppose to be speed, yeah for a
couple of our products we were fast but for so many we were terribly late.
Building features, making user experience superb is not my strength, I’m ninja
but in the team we didn’t have either or could afford one.
3. Team setup;
success of any endeavor have a lot of tie to the people behind it. Looking
back, I’d selected those with; domain expertise, better work ethic (than
myself) and complimentary strength.
4. Raise enough
money, don’t raise at all or don’t start. I personally think or being
conditioned over the years that startups need to raise fund. It’s not so. I
worked with a couple partners that didn’t raise a dime for their companies and
they are doing pretty fine (offline). Sells a piece here and there. When we
started doing fine, I somehow felt entitled to be funded. Somewhere along the
line I asked myself, why really must these guys give me money? Did I work the
money in their pockets? I felt really bad and awkward sometimes with the
process.
5. You don’t
know everything. Fuck it, I have read the entire article, the manifestos, I
have worked with a team that built massive stuff. Looking back, I think…our
strengths are magnified when we work in a strong team, and diminished when we
work alone or in a weaker team. Listening to advice, following your instincts is
as good as knowing what to do right per time. If at a particular you make wrong
decision and another then another, the damage may be bigger than you can
reverse.
6. Be true to
your core values even at tough times. I believe, customers reign supreme in
every business and as such whenever we fall short, I felt personally
responsible for them. And at many occasions avoided facing the customer. Cause
I thought, if I was in their shoes, I had done worse. I really think as at this
time, it’s harder to keep to the ethos, its better I just pause, see what’s
wrong and find a way out.
On a personal level, my journey so far has been onerous.
It’s either tech or nothing. I don’t have any community I belong to other than
tech. I just felt every other thing is time wasting. If not for my wife that
drags me to church every now and then, I’d be okay just watching online. When
the time became really tough, maybe church community could have been of great
help had I been fully integrated like I was 8yrs ago.
Somehow I felt sorry when people mock those who
committed suicide; it’s not every pain or failure one can withstand. As someone
who has been pushed to that limit at many times, it’s just a thing line between
life and death. Like receiving a call just before the act or your car refusing
to start.
I don’t know maybe I shouldn’t write this, maybe I
should go get a job. Maybe I should go look for help, but the only family I
have is the tech. Maybe I’ll think this through more. But writing this could be
the salvation I need to do better next time.
By month end I’m shutting down showroom.ng. I’ll
probably just take a month off. Not doing nothing. I have not stopped working
on one idea or another since January 2004. When I decided, I wanted do startup,
to build a site like Google for Nigeria.
I feel responsible for upcoming tech entrepreneur that
if they have more of what we didn’t have then, their failure would be our
responsibility. Maybe I’m getting ahead of myself as I really haven’t
succeeded.
Did I get support, absolutely. From those who’d chat me
up at night to connect me with customers, to those who invited me for a chat
just to help straighten out a strategy and review products. I have been
luckiest person in this community.
I was talking with my mechanic about how much my car
could be worth, he gave me a low figure. I was like, fuck it…I want to sell
this stuff, pay all our outstanding debt and start on a clean slate. If
possible.
I have cried, even in the presence of those who think I
got all figured out. I felt embarrassed but I couldn’t help it. I don’t know
what may come out of this, but being alive and scorned is better than being
dead and hopeless.
