5 MISTAKES WE MADE WITH
OUR STARTUP (AND HOW YOU CAN AVOID THEM) ROOKIE

1.

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat.

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download.

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download. Enthusiastically he began editing, locking himself away in his room for a couple of days…

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download. Enthusiastically he began editing, locking himself away in his room for a couple of days… Everyone loved the final result.

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download. Enthusiastically he began editing, locking himself away in his room for a couple of days… Everyone loved the final result. With a big smile on his face he uploaded the video to the company’s YouTube Channel, and then shared the link on Slack. HAPPILY he even shared it in our company and investor newsletters.

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download. Enthusiastically he began editing, locking himself away in his room for a couple of days… Everyone loved the final result. With a big smile on his face he uploaded the video to the company’s YouTube Channel, and then shared the link on Slack. HAPPILY he even shared it in our company and investor newsletters. His colleague grabbed his phone, tapped the link so hard he almost broke his screen, only to be greeted by:

THAT’S NOT YOURS… We shot
some rock star footage at Web Summit. We literally had over a dozen GB’s worth of video ready to be cut into little pieces and glued back together again accompanied by a thumping beat. Yours truly found a great remix of a Vic Mensah song. Free to download. Enthusiastically he began editing, locking himself away in his room for a couple of days… THIS VIDEO IS NOT AVAILABLE Everyone loved the final result. With a big smile on his face he uploaded the video to the company’s YouTube Channel, and then shared the link on Slack. HAPPILY he even shared it in our company and investor newsletters. His colleague grabbed his phone, tapped the link so hard he almost broke his screen, only to be greeted by:

WELL, **** ME… It may
seem like the most logical thing in the world. And that’s probably because it is. Copyrighted music (that stuff artists worked really hard on) is usually not okay to be used for whatever you see fit.

WELL, **** ME… It may
seem like the most logical thing in the world. And that’s probably because it is. Copyrighted music (that stuff artists worked really hard on) is usually not okay to be used for whatever you see fit. YouTube blocked our video on mobile devices, and in Germany. Oops.

WELL, **** ME… THIS IS
HOW YOU AVOID OUR MISTAKE: ๏ Create your own music (not easy though…) ๏ Use one from the standard sound libraries (boring!) ๏ Find (free) remixes on Soundcloud, YouTube, etc. ๏ But… always test first! How? upload a video just containing the sound. Youtube will tell you soon enough if it’s okay. It may seem like the most logical thing in the world. And that’s probably because it is. Copyrighted music (that stuff artists worked really hard on) is usually not okay to be used for whatever you see fit. YouTube blocked our video on mobile devices, and in Germany. Oops.

2.

CALL-TO-NOTHING So we have this
little SlideShare called 7 ways to ROCK a TECH CONFERENCE

CALL-TO-NOTHING So we have this
little SlideShare called 7 ways to ROCK a TECH CONFERENCE Thanks to the lovely people at SlideShare we managed to get thousands of views

CALL-TO-NOTHING So we have this
little SlideShare called 7 ways to ROCK a TECH CONFERENCE Thanks to the lovely people at SlideShare we managed to get thousands of views Naturally we were running around trying to buy a few extra servers to handle the gigantic boost in traffic we were about to receive

CALL-TO-NOTHING So we have this
little SlideShare called 7 ways to ROCK a TECH CONFERENCE Thanks to the lovely people at SlideShare we managed to get thousands of views Naturally we were running around trying to buy a few extra servers to handle the gigantic boost in traffic we were about to receive And then….

#SMH “HMM, AT LEAST THEY
SAW OUR USERNAME RIGHT?” “I THINK A COUPLE PEOPLE STARTED FOLLOWING US ON SLIDESHARE..”

#SMH “HMM, AT LEAST THEY
SAW OUR USERNAME RIGHT?” “I THINK A COUPLE PEOPLE STARTED FOLLOWING US ON SLIDESHARE..” So yeah, our SlideShare got a little traction. But what we forgot was to tell the people what they should do if they liked it. And why they should do that.

#SMH “HMM, AT LEAST THEY
SAW OUR USERNAME RIGHT?” “I THINK A COUPLE PEOPLE STARTED FOLLOWING US ON SLIDESHARE..” So yeah, our SlideShare got a little traction. But what we forgot was to tell the people what they should do if they liked it. And why they should do that. While we’re still very happy that we got featured, it feels like we missed a good opportunity to build an audience.

#SMH THIS IS HOW YOU
AVOID OUR MISTAKE: ๏ Ask yourself: What is the goal of creating this piece of content? What do I want out of it? No really? ๏ If you’re clear on that… Think of how you can attain that goal best. If you want people’s email, ask for it! ๏ But not just ask though, seduce them. Why would they want to give it away? Put as much time into that sheet as all the rest of your sheets put together. “HMM, AT LEAST THEY SAW OUR USERNAME RIGHT?” “I THINK A COUPLE PEOPLE STARTED FOLLOWING US ON SLIDESHARE..” So yeah, our SlideShare got a little traction. But what we forgot was to tell the people what they should do if they liked it. And why they should do that. While we’re still very happy that we got featured, it feels like we missed a good opportunity to build an audience.

3.

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG!

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website.

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website. It looked great, we were happy, and more than ready to hail in visitors.

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website. It looked great, we were happy, and more than ready to hail in visitors. A couple of days later…

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website. It looked great, we were happy, and more than ready to hail in visitors. A couple of days later… “Maybe it’s just me… It’s probably me… But the website. It doesn’t show up in Google. At all.”

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website. It looked great, we were happy, and more than ready to hail in visitors. A couple of days later… “Maybe it’s just me… It’s probably me… But the website. It doesn’t show up in Google. At all.” Webmaster Tools was consulted. Robots.txt was framed as the suspect.

PLEASE DON’T FOLLOW US, ROBOT
BANG! Online it was. Our completely revamped website. It looked great, we were happy, and more than ready to hail in visitors. A couple of days later… “Maybe it’s just me… It’s probably me… But the website. It doesn’t show up in Google. At all.” Webmaster Tools was consulted. Robots.txt was framed as the suspect. “DAMN ROBOTS.”

WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT GOOGLE
What happened was: we moved our new website from the development folder to the root. That’s fine. But what wasn’t fine, was not changing the robots.txt to reflect the new reality.

WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT GOOGLE
What happened was: we moved our new website from the development folder to the root. That’s fine. But what wasn’t fine, was not changing the robots.txt to reflect the new reality. The robots.txt in the development folder told Google to ignore everything after ‘/‘. Which makes sense, because you don’t want Google to index anything that’s still in development.

WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT GOOGLE
What happened was: we moved our new website from the development folder to the root. That’s fine. But what wasn’t fine, was not changing the robots.txt to reflect the new reality. When you’re going LIVE however, it’s not so smart to tell Google to ignore everything after ‘/‘. Because that means it will literally ignore everything on your server. Including our fancy page. The robots.txt in the development folder told Google to ignore everything after ‘/‘. Which makes sense, because you don’t want Google to index anything that’s still in development.

WE DIDN’T MEAN THAT GOOGLE
THIS IS HOW YOU AVOID OUR MISTAKE: ๏ Just don’t be stupid. ๏ No, please always check, check, double check. ๏ Webmaster Tools. They’re your friend. ๏ Again, don’t be stupid… ๏ Just don’t! What happened was: we moved our new website from the development folder to the root. That’s fine. But what wasn’t fine, was not changing the robots.txt to reflect the new reality. When you’re going LIVE however, it’s not so smart to tell Google to ignore everything after ‘/‘. Because that means it will literally ignore everything on your server. Including our fancy page. The robots.txt in the development folder told Google to ignore everything after ‘/‘. Which makes sense, because you don’t want Google to index anything that’s still in development.

4.

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though.

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on.

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims.

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims. It would be a shame to let a good blog post go to waste right?

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims. It would be a shame to let a good blog post go to waste right? You log in to Twitter Ads. Well, the blog is in English so you pick the USA & the UK as countries to target.

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims. It would be a shame to let a good blog post go to waste right? You log in to Twitter Ads. Well, the blog is in English so you pick the USA & the UK as countries to target. Interests? Tech I guess?

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims. It would be a shame to let a good blog post go to waste right? You log in to Twitter Ads. Well, the blog is in English so you pick the USA & the UK as countries to target. Interests? Tech I guess? You select a Tweet. But after so many settings and choices…

TAKE OUR MONEY, IT’S FINE
You wrote a blog post. You’re happy with it. No one’s reading it though. You share your blog post on social media. Looks nice, but it’s still not catching on. “Let’s promote it!” Someone exclaims. It would be a shame to let a good blog post go to waste right? You log in to Twitter Ads. Well, the blog is in English so you pick the USA & the UK as countries to target. Interests? Tech I guess? You select a Tweet. But after so many settings and choices… You half*ss it.

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? “THAT’S
IT?”

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? “THAT’S
IT?” “HMM, AT LEAST THOUSANDS SAW THE TWEET”

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? “THAT’S
IT?” “HMM, AT LEAST THOUSANDS SAW THE TWEET” So what happened is that we spent a couple of hard earned dollars on basically a few clicks.

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? “THAT’S
IT?” “HMM, AT LEAST THOUSANDS SAW THE TWEET” So what happened is that we spent a couple of hard earned dollars on basically a few clicks. Sure, thousands saw our Tweet, but what does that do? It surely didn’t get us followers…

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? “THAT’S
IT?” “HMM, AT LEAST THOUSANDS SAW THE TWEET” So what happened is that we spent a couple of hard earned dollars on basically a few clicks. Sure, thousands saw our Tweet, but what does that do? It surely didn’t get us followers… And those clicks? They might have read our blog post, but so what? The post had no CTA whatsoever. No clear commercial goal. Nothing.

SO NO REFUNDS, RIGHT? THIS
IS HOW YOU AVOID OUR MISTAKE: ๏ What is my end goal, and how much is that worth to me? REALLY ask yourself that. ๏ Depending on your situation you might be paying 30 cents per click/follow/reply (is that really worth it?) ๏ SO think of what you earn from a successful CONVERSION ๏ And then calculate if the COSTS are worth it. “THAT’S IT?” “HMM, AT LEAST THOUSANDS SAW THE TWEET” So what happened is that we spent a couple of hard earned dollars on basically a few clicks. Sure, thousands saw our Tweet, but what does that do? It surely didn’t get us followers… And those clicks? They might have read our blog post, but so what? The post had no CTA whatsoever. No clear commercial goal. Nothing.

5.

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS.

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though?

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual.

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual. The food was great. As it’s supposed to in Hong Kong.

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual. The food was great. As it’s supposed to in Hong Kong. “I saw Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.”

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual. The food was great. As it’s supposed to in Hong Kong. “I saw Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.” “You mean the Dutch CTO of Amazon. The guy we can talk to in Dutch?”

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual. The food was great. As it’s supposed to in Hong Kong. “I saw Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.” “You mean the Dutch CTO of Amazon. The guy we can talk to in Dutch?” “So what did you say to him?”

[QUIETNESS] 07-2015 - Hong Kong
RISE Conf, the largest tech conference in Asia, was in full effect. People were pitching like crazy. Us included. We were literally ROCKING a TECH CONFERENCE. In all SEVEN WAYS. But were we though? During our evening catchup with the team we exchanged stories about who we met, what we saw, how we felt. The usual. The food was great. As it’s supposed to in Hong Kong. “I saw Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon.” “You mean the Dutch CTO of Amazon. The guy we can talk to in Dutch?” “So what did you say to him?” “Nothing, we were just taking a leak…”

AT LEAST WE SAW HIM

AT LEAST WE SAW HIM
Yes, we had a major player within arm’s reach. But we missed our window by not being sharp enough.

AT LEAST WE SAW HIM
Yes, we had a major player within arm’s reach. But we missed our window by not being sharp enough. THIS IS HOW YOU AVOID OUR MISTAKE: ๏ Don’t jump any celebrity/vip/cool person you see just because ๏ But do politely ask them how their day is going ๏ Got em? ๏ Now quickly explain what you’re doing and how you can be valuable to them, and they to you. ๏ And don’t overthink it. Or the bird has flown!

ALRIGHT, SO ALL IS PERFECT
NOW?

We wish…

IT’S FINE TO MAKE MISTAKES
EVERY NOW AND THEN. DON’T BE SCARED TO FAIL. OR EVEN TO MAKE A ROOKIE MISTAKE. We wish…

IT’S FINE TO MAKE MISTAKES
EVERY NOW AND THEN. DON’T BE SCARED TO FAIL. OR EVEN TO MAKE A ROOKIE MISTAKE. WE’LL PROBABLY MAKE A DOZEN MORE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? AT LEAST NOT THE ONES WE MADE BEFORE. We wish…

IT’S FINE TO MAKE MISTAKES
EVERY NOW AND THEN. DON’T BE SCARED TO FAIL. OR EVEN TO MAKE A ROOKIE MISTAKE. WE’LL PROBABLY MAKE A DOZEN MORE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? AT LEAST NOT THE ONES WE MADE BEFORE. AND EVEN IF WE DID… We wish…

IT’S FINE TO MAKE MISTAKES
EVERY NOW AND THEN. DON’T BE SCARED TO FAIL. OR EVEN TO MAKE A ROOKIE MISTAKE. JUST KEEP CALM, LEARN FROM IT, AND MOVE ON. WORKING IN A STARTUP IS TOO CHAOTIC TO CRY ABOUT EVERY SMALL MISTAKE. We wish… WE’LL PROBABLY MAKE A DOZEN MORE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT? AT LEAST NOT THE ONES WE MADE BEFORE. AND EVEN IF WE DID…

BUT WAIT.

OUR BIGGEST
MISTAKE THOUGH?

OUR BIGGEST MISTAKE THOUGH?WELL, WE
WROTE A LITTLE PIECE ABOUT THAT ONE

OUR BIGGEST MISTAKE THOUGH?WELL, WE
WROTE A LITTLE PIECE ABOUT THAT ONE WE MADE A HUGE MISTAKE

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yet?

FOLLOW US!

FOLLOW US! IT’S SO WORTH
IT