

My First Exit - hakkasan
http://kzhu.net/my-first-exit.html

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cinbun8
_" No "hockey stick" growth, just small victories we fought for and earned
each day. Somedays, we messed up. We couldn't always give 100%. I probably
beat myself up too much for it."_

This is important. Sometimes founders question themselves when they do not see
hockey stick growth. Your product may not be in the kind of business that sees
such growth or you may be growing slowly and steadily. The OP's persistence
paid in the end.

Congratulations.

~~~
hakkasan
Yes, I think we pulled out hair out a lot waiting for that moment. "If we just
get that blog to cover us or if only had that big partnership". We'd get
spikes every now but no silver bullets. Steady compounding growth won it for
us in the end.

~~~
esusatyo
Hey! I am also in this position, where I am eagerly doing so much marketing
everyday hoping for a hockey stick growth.

I've always thought startups has to have this hockey stick growth, because if
we're going to fail, it's better to fail fast than spend another year not
growing rapidly.

But where would you draw the line? Would having a growth that generates enough
revenue to cover operation cost enough?

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hakkasan
I think it depends on the type of business. Our model was retail so didn't
require a critical mass of users or a repeat behaviour. We knew customers
loved our product so the challenge was to finding ways of reaching more IG
users. If you have a risky and expensive to test hypothesis, I imagine big
growth will be something you'll look for to validate whether it's a worthwhile
pursuit.

That said, most startups experience plateaus and dips. These are the moments
that truly test the fortitude and resolve of the team.

~~~
gfodor
Can you give some points on how you reached these customers? I have a product
right now that my target audience (new mothers) love and could use some tips
on accessing this audience that I'm probably not thinking of.

~~~
hakkasan
Sure. Drop me an email.

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pdevr
_" My employers, Mint Digital, were willing to take a gamble and allowed me to
start it from within the agency. I am tremendously grateful to have been given
the resources, mentoring and autonomy to follow my instincts."_

Always good to hear about employers encouraging employees' start-ups.
Congratulations to you and your team.

~~~
hakkasan
Thank you. I think the key was getting the autonomy coupled with the support
network. All too often with agency projects too many chefs early on can easily
spoil things. This is especially true when you have more rigid hierarchies to
deal with.

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antitrust
> I remember 3am on our first Christmas eve, staring down an inbox full of
> customers who hadn't received their orders, knowing each one was a gift that
> would go unfulfilled.

How did this error come about? I'd love to see the management debugging trail
on this frequently repeated problem with smaller companies.

~~~
hakkasan
It was mostly down to the various postal services around the world messing up.
Every year lots of mail gets misplaced during the xmas rush. There were a few
tweaks we learnt to combat this in the future but largely it was out of our
hands. That said we still took full responsibility for the situation. It felt
crummy that they wouldn't get their presents and we made sure to compensate
everyone that contacted us.

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therandomguy
Congrats. I'm happy that your persistence paid off. I'm very interested in
knowing how you did it under your employer. Did they fund you? Did you work it
during office hours (like Google's 20% project)? etc.

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Cherian
Congrats!! Hakkasan, did this exit get you enough cash for a Yacht? :-)

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benjaminwootton
Cant say much to that apart from congratulations. Seems like a nice product,
well executed.

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timruffles
Congrats! Can't wait to see what you do next, London's loss is SF's gain :)

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jbrooksuk
Congratulations! I'm excited to see what you choose to do next, enjoy San
Francisco!

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joshdance
Glad you said thanks to all who helped you. Shows class. Congrats.

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sanderversluys
Nice read! Congratz!

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hakkasan
Thanks mate

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iusable
Kudos!

~~~
hakkasan
Cheers

