A true Start-up story: day three - a little history, this year.

Posted on May 21, 2007

A true Start-up story: Day three

For the ones that don’t know this is day three from a true story of a small business start-up. I managed to compress the first 2 years in the first 2 articles (and yes, this is a shortened story, to answer some questions that I received), which kind of leaves us to the current year, and very close to write about my plans and the steps I’m taking, to show how things are working in a small business.

Before getting in the third day, I must add something that I forgot in day two, and that is that by the end of the year we found another business niche. Sometimes during October we’ve got two long term customers from UK for whom we did (and still do) some kind of outsourcing work, for which we got a freelancer working.

In December, Simona decided that it should make Energybyte her full time job, and develop (mostly on her own) a media agency called in progress which targets only the Romanian market. By focusing only on the Romanian market we avoided what I think was a mistake in the main company case, and that is targeting a too wide market.

Now, as the company already existed from 2 years and as we already had some good profit at the end of year two, it was quite easy to start the new thing. We had all the legal aspects in place, a current customer database and all the necessary logistic. Together with our savings and the company money in the bank, switching to a full time Energybyte experience was probably easier for Simona.

We actually started very strong and by the end of February we hired our first employee - you can check to see how we decided and chose. In the same time, we realized we need to get out from our home office and get some space; as a temporary solution, we’ve got a room at my mom’s office (and that’s the part where I should say that family support was really important all the way here).

And surprise, in March, Tina (our third owner) decided to switch to a full time job at the company (which true, kind of leaves me the only one left as a part time entrepreneur). Also, some very important decisions have been taken, like hiring another graphical designer and moving to an office space of our own.

With this very fast developments we got also some downsides as well, mainly stress and risks. Stress comes from many sources now, including impossible delivery times, non-paying customers, few mistakes here and there and what’s probably the hardest part the need to keep up the speed. I mean once you grow you will get commitments you can’t refuse, costs that add up and you have to cover each months. Moreover, if you have employees, you have an extra responsibility, and that is, keeping them happy, keeping them doing productive things and keep all the processes at a level to be able to pay them by the end of the month.

I believe you can imagine the momentum that “in progress” got by this time - this made me to get a secondary role with my Web Design and site building activities. This gets me to the day four of our story which sets us in the future - I will be sharing my thoughts, actions and decisions as they happen in what I hope it will be growing Energybyte further.

This is where the things will really get interesting. Continued day 4.

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