Hey /r/Entrepreneur,
I co-founded Trade Trendy, which is an online marketplace where people can trade used clothing, shoes, or accessories!
I've been lurking here for quite some time and around 8 months ago, I decided to start up a business. A good friend of mine pitched this wonderful idea to me and we decided to get working on it! However, we thought it was so unique that we should keep it a secret, which was not a good idea since we should have validated it at first.
So, Lesson 1: Don't be afraid to tell people or ask for feedback on your idea! It's probably not that unique anyway.
We didn't really have much money, so in order to start this up, we saved up some money from previous part time jobs, used credits for server management and domain names, and asked for a lot of help from good friends in the beginning. Luckily I have web development experience so I was able to set everything up with minimal cost. We had to bootstrap everything, finding open source tools and what not to create our MVP. Because I wasn't good at Backend development, I hired some freelance developers on Upwork to help set up the server and start making the web app. I hired with an hourly rate for my first developer, and it was the worst decision ever. He himself was lost sometimes, didn't understand what I wanted, and just spent too long on things that were unnecessary.
Thus, Lesson 2: Becareful who you hire as a freelance developer, and never hire with an hourly rate. Always use a fixed budget.
I decided that it was for the best to start reading up on Ruby on Rails development (which was the language I used for the web app). I hired another developer, this time with a fixed budget, and implemented Git to keep track of the changes he made. Best decision of my life, for I was able to see what changes he made code-wise and understood it better, which helped me learn the language much faster than it should've. (Note that I have an academic background in CS, so that's why it was easier). But this definitely changed the course of my web app, because soon I was able to make new features by myself!
Which brings Lesson 3: If you're trying to learn how to code or make something, hire a developer and make them keep track of their work using Git or something similar, and learn from that!
Afterwords, development was smooth sailing and I would stay up 16 hours a day creating new features. (Which I don't recommend because it'll mess with your state of being.) However, we got a lot of work done fast and exactly how I wanted it.
We decided that we needed to take this to the next level and find someone that could potentially help us. We reached out to our friends and two of our friends directed us to a CEO of a startup incubator, where we pitched our idea. He said it was interesting and decided to help us! We're currently not sure where this will lead us, but I'm hoping it'll help us advance much more quickly.
Lesson 4: Connections. Reach out to your friends or anyone who you believe can help you connect with the right people that can help! Don't be afraid to ask.
So after sleepless nights, tons of research on how to get things done, and lots of help, we're finally launching! I would actually like to thank /r/Entrepreneur for helping me through this journey because I've learned a lot of things from here and used many resources that were linked on here! Thank you guys! We're looking forward to the future of our business!
Oh and please give us feedback on our website, we truly appreciate it! If you also have any tips or words of advice, please do tell!
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