How 9 months of building without success, 2 pivots, and 100s of rejections resulted in Loom:
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
In reflecting back on the last 7 years, I've become convinced that most founders place too much emphasis on finding the 'perfect' startup idea.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
This thread covers the story of Loom—and why you'll probably have to start with an imperfect idea before landing on your winner:
Loom didn’t begin as Loom.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
It started around a whiteboard with Vinay, Joe, and myself. We wrote down six ideas, and went with the solution that had the lowest risk & barrier to entry:
A user testing marketplace.
We began building.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
7 months in, we only made $600 and learned an important lesson:
Companies generally cared less about advice from experts (what we were selling). Instead, they wanted to hear directly from their own users.
We pivoted. The new idea?
Build a SaaS offering that’d let companies get direct feedback from *their own users*.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
As Vinay started to rebuild the product, Joe and I spent weeks cold emailing 300 different companies offering a free trial...
Soon after, we heard back from a research team at Harvard.
They used our product (called OpenTest at the time) to gather insights from 7 students for a campaign.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
As a result—they received 7 different videos with various insights.
Instead of sharing these videos back with the entire research team...
Someone at Harvard used the same Chrome extension (built originally for the user testers themselves)
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
to record a 1-minute summary of the 7 videos.
That 1-minute video is what they shared back with their team.
This wasn’t how our product was supposed to be used.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
Yet it was a valuable insight: We realized that people were more interested in using Loom as a communication tool.
When we were able to realize that...
We took the screen and video recording extension, launched it on Product Hunt in June 2016, and had 3k people sign up in the same day.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
Which was 2,990 more users than we’d had in the 9 months prior.
A couple things one can take away from our experience:
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
First, de-stress yourself from “finding the perfect idea”.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
It’s impossible to predict how things will go once you start—and it’s better to start and adapt than never launch because you’re worried something won’t work.
Just like cooking, playing guitar, or learning a sport, coming up with the perfect startup idea is something you likely won't get right the first time you try it.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
Second, the three traits that got us to Loom were:
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
1) Intense focus
2) Timing of the market
3) Pure luck
You might build a beautiful product—and it could be good in theory—but without those three things, you'll need to pivot to something that works.
That’s the story of how we came up with Loom: An idea that worked, after a couple that didn’t.
— Shahed Khan (@_shahedk) September 14, 2022
As you build your ideas, you'll hear a lot of advice from outsiders giving you good and bad advice.
My next piece will cover how to 'manage' that advice.
— Paramendra Kumar Bhagat (@paramendra) September 15, 2022
cheap meal pro-tip: eggs and fried rice!
— Mo 🇨🇦 (@The_MoBiz) September 14, 2022
