As anyone who has ever run a startup (or actually, any business) knows, you periodically hit strategic crossroads that require a big leap of faith.
We hit one about six months ago – around the time we raised some pre-seed investment.
At the time, we were getting lots of advice to focus on enterprise clients. And by ‘lots’, I mean a resounding chorus singing in perfect unison.
“It’s where the money is”.
“That market doesn’t need any educating”.
"Get the big brands on board and everyone else will follow".
“IT’S WHERE THE MONEY IS”.
We disagree. Obviously, they had a point. But our goal isn’t limited to building a widget and selling it for heaps. We want to make an impact. We want to change the world. We’re business hippies.
And we believe we would have most impact by focusing on middle-size businesses, the ones who have between 15 and 150 staff.
We revised and rebuilt our product roadmap around these guys. We amended our pricing structure to work for these businesses.
Basically, we put all our eggs in one basket and now the time has come to prove our focus was correct.
See, the key difference between running a tech startup and any other kind of business is that you don’t have the luxury of spreading your risk.
There’s no, 70:20:10 rule. There’s the 100% rule. Pick a direction, throw everything you’ve got behind it, then run as fast as you possibly can.
We used to play touch rugby as kids. I was never very good, but the kids that were, man, they were magic to watch. Running hard at an opposing horde they’d spot an opportunity and change gear – picking up legs and speed, flying toward a gap only they could see. Sometimes they’d get through. Sometimes the gap would close and they’d pivot. Fast. Without ever losing stride or slowing at all, they’d spin and plant a foot and fly again toward another, equally invisible gap.
To win in this tech startup game, you’ve got to be like those kids. Committed. Fast. Agile. Prepared to put everything you’ve got into one path, trusting your own sense of direction implicitly and time after time, finding new gears you didn’t know you had.
This is our time to find that next gear and start flying now.
We’ve re-structured our model and product for scalability, we’ve tweaked and redesigned to squeeze out the maximum value for our users. More importantly, we’ve spent the last six months listening to businesses – understanding what their challenges are, working out how our solution can be a better one for them.
Through a series of product sprints, we believe we’ve created a solution that will not only help those businesses recruit better, but also begin to help people look at the concept of work in a different light. So this next sprint is going to be different - it's not just the devs this time, the whole business is sprinting. It's a #growthsprint that's been months in the making.
We’re at D-day. All our eggs are packed in that basket. We’ve got our rugby shorts on and we’re throwing metaphors around like there’s nothing to lose.
We’re giving ourselves six weeks to make it work, this way.
We need to sign two new subscriptions every day for the next six weeks in order to hit the goal posts. It’s ambitious. Crazy even.
What happens after that six weeks?
Well, we take investment and level up. We start building the next stage of what we believe is a tool that could change the way people think about employment forever.
So here we are. Ready to run, months of prep leading up to this chance, staring down the opposition.
Ready for the whistle.
Interested to see if Weirdly could help streamline your recruitment? Click the button below for a demo today.
