Come for the Ride…

The month of March has been a big month for us. For the first time in awhile, I feel like all pistons are finally running at full speed. I wouldn’t say we’ve been slacking off prior to this month, but now that the site is in beta and people can see it, we are definitely getting a warmer reception from our potential partners who had insisted on seeing something on the web.

So what did we do this month?

We launched our beta on March 21st. In order to get to that point, we had to shave a bunch of features off the priority list (including advanced search). If you had asked me 4 days prior to launch if we’d be ready, you would have found me sitting in a corner pulling my hair out. Thankfully, my team pulled through and now even I’m impressed.

Within a week of launch, we loaded 50,000 cars on to the site. For people in the autos industry, this probably doesn’t seem like a big number. However, if I were to view this holistically, we’ve just beaten about 95% of the online classified sites out there in terms of available vehicle inventory. Not only that, we’re on par with AJCCars.com who also has about 50,000 cars.

Within the first two weeks of launch, we also realized our hosting was inadequate for what we needed. Right now it’s a mix of unoptimized code + tons of data and updates on a small, limited VPS server. After much thought, we have decided to take the process in house and hope that it pays off in the long run as the cheaper option. For anyone whose trying to create the next YouTube, Flickr or banner ad network - Good luck! Bandwidth, hosting and serving media is a huge issue for bootstrap startups.

Obviously with the site sitting at low traffic volumes, I can’t quite claim we’re successful just yet. However, we are purposely delaying our announcement until we get even more cars in the system - which we are diligently working on. For most startups I know, a beta launch = some friends and family feedback resulting in more development work. While perfect code is important, marketing is most likely what will make or break a startup so we’ve been doing tidbits of that as well. Seeding for SEO if you will…

Other than that, our team is working on the GRA/TAG business competition. I must admit, it’s been six years since I’ve written a paper and it’s tough. Day-to-day, I’d much rather be working on the business than writing this paper. On the bright side, our mentor has introduced us to a number of smart, local entrepreneurs who have given us a lot of feedback. As a result, we have changed amended our business model with different revenue streams at least 10 times this month - which is part of the reason why the business plan is getting harder to complete.

I’m hoping April will bring other challenges though. We are definitely ready to take things up a notch and do some marketing tests.

As much as I love Andrew and VCWear, the second he started promoting it I was thinking someone should create a similar company for entrepreneurs. After all, we all need funny shirts and preferably one that was cheap and high quality so we can wear it every day until it disintegrates. (Cause that’s what entrepreneurs do.)

While I would have loved to ride the fame of VCWear and start another t-shirt company, I really couldn’t think of any funny ideas that would have made it worthwhile. Luckily, someone did! The shirts at StartupWear.com really speaks to me - some samples are below.

Yep! Guilty as charged on most of these accusations. Now if they would offer a free shirt in exchange for a blog post and a referral to the StartupWear.com site, I’d be set for my wardrobe for a few months.