Recap On C!ub App
Below are some lessons I've learned from my previous C!ub App startup experience.
1. Solve a problem that is more urgent and happens more frequently (if your startup is trying to solve a problem, not filling a market gap or creating a whole new field).
We tried to solve a problem that only happens once or a few times to a normal (incoming) college student. After a year or so in college, no one really takes any clubs that seriously. College students spend most of their time on getting good grades/internships/research opportunities/socializing(aka partying). Most people don't really care about clubs that much except for the club leaders themselves because they want to look good on their overly exaggerated resumes. (Don't get me wrong, there definitely are some great club leaders out there that actually care about the stuff they do. But at least from what I've seen, there's not too many of those.)
2. No one cares about how much time and effort you put into this project.
3. The only thing that matters is whether you solved the 'right problem' for the 'right people' 'efficiently'.
And it takes time and dedication to figure out all three of them.
4. Nobody likes meetings.
As much as we love building our own baby product, none of us like to waste time on meetings. Especially on the weekends (we were/are a team of college students, so we could only meet up on weekends during school).
Everything in the meeting (member updates, weekly goals set up) should be short, clear and concise. Try to make it shorter than 30-60 minutes. Or else people start losing attention.
I later realized that many members were still in bed/having brunch/working out at the gym during some, if not all, of our weekly meetings. Even though we were still able to get a lot of stuff done, I think I failed my role miserably as a team leader for people to find our meetings not worth their time and attention to fully participate in them.
5. Don't believe what people say about your product. Look what they actually do with it.
At the annual Club Fair event, I introduced C!ub App to all 210ish club leaders that were there. All, except for 2 of them, told me that our app seemed very interesting and they would definitely give it a try. Guess what. NONE OF THEM DID.
The only way that we were able to get people to start to use it was through manually on-boarding our own supportive college friends/buddies/"brothers & sisters" from frats & sors. And due to the lack of a killing feature, no one really used it that often.
I am currently working on a new startup project with some new friends from the bay area (introduced by some of my teammates from C!ub App). Launching our first MVP soon... Stay tuned!