hedgehoglab

It was exactly 2 years ago to tomorrow that we moved some basic furniture including broken garden chairs into our first office. If someone had said to me then that we would still be here 2 years on, sailing above the most difficult recession to hit the country in my time, I would definitely have had a good laugh on their account. Yet, I am absolutely delighted to say that hedgehog lab is officially 2 years old now.

In these past 2 years, we have been through some very difficult times and some absolutely delightful moments but the following were the lows and highs that have shaped our company and the team, as they are today.

Lows

Running out of savings and credit cards

When we founded hedgehog lab, Mark (my co-founder) and I were probably the most ill-suited for entrepreneurship. We both had big mortgages, very well paid jobs and very little savings.

Yet, our passion and conviction about the business and what we wanted to do was so strong that we decided to drop everything, risking a lot of money to pursue what was closest to our hearts. We used up every penny of our cash savings and went through a torrential first few months without generating much revenue. We even had to resort to borrowing from credit cards to fund our work with no real guaranteed revenue. It was simply dogged persistence and hard work that pulled us through this.

Letting go of staff

The most painful moment in our short history had to be the moment we had to let go of our first 3 employees in 2008. Facing delays in the release of our first product fixx, little cash in the bank, and the loss of a large consultancy project we were banking on, we reluctantly had to let go of 3 wonderful employees. I am sure every entrepreneur will tell you this but the morning of the day we broke the news to them felt like the gloomiest day we ever had.

I remember how terrible Mark and I felt the rest of the week, and just turning up for work every day was an uphill climb. Yet, we knew that we took the right decision for the business and thanks to quick but painful decision making, the company is far stronger in the long run.

Market Research

We always knew that we were going to build, fixx, our bug tracking system, as our first product. The advice we got from Business Link (a Government-funded start-up support organisation) was to conduct market research and talk to prospective customers about the product. Since market research was a relatively new field to us, and since everybody else seemed to be doing it, we took the bait and set about doing market research.

If you know the bug tracking market, you will find that what we found in our market research was nothing less than a prediction of total doom. However, it always seemed to me that market research was good at comparing features, predicting figures and stats but could never capture the essence of building a "usable" and "simpler" product. We dug our heels in and 2 years later, the evidence points to the fact that we were onto something.

Highs

The highs far outweigh the lows, and this in essence is why we are still passionate about turning up for work every day and have a blast doing what we do. So what were the highs?

Exponential revenue growth

Although it is fairly early to say this, as it stands, we are looking at least 3 digit growth year on year for the first 3 years. We have already made more revenue in the first 3 months of our current financial year than in the entire last financial year, and are looking to triple our revenues in the next 10 months.

Exceptional people

We have had the chance to work with some brilliant people, both in our current team and previous team. It is an absolute pleasure to go to work every day knowing that everyone there comes into work rearing to go and with a lot of passion for what they do. It also helps that they have a great sense of humour.

I wanted to do a longer post on the specific lessons we have learned in business as a young company, but I remember a talk I gave a couple of months ago at a local event that sums up our lessons in business.

blog comments powered by Disqus