I’ve been getting this show on the road for a long long time, but I finally managed.
I want to explain why launching Evoque has taken me so much time already and is still not launched. I’m not looking for excuses. I know I could have done much better.
Mistake no 1: Including “nice to have” equally with “must have” features
I’ve always been having 1001 ideas per minute and I was trying to put them all down in one product. I was a typical feature creep, unwilling and unable to give up some of my “brilliant ideas”.
Evoque started with something like this…

to evolve through this..

and this..

Into this.

I have spent countless nights conceptualising and designing screens, only to redesign it the next morning, because I didn’t ‘feel’ it.

Mistake no 2: I was too ‘perfectionist’ in my cheap amateurism.
That closely relates to the mistake no 1. I’m no graphic designer professional but I still wanted to put strong emphasis on aesthetics (while I should just get the features pushed live with minimum of UI as other startup founders did – Zuckenberg or Karp).
Google can afford it, not me. Their ex-designer Douglas Bowman once said:
Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions.
I was bothered with shades, font sizes and all the things which are not a priority. I was designing layouts in Photoshop and then demanding perfect reproduction from my front-end developer. Wasting time.

Mistake no 3: Losing time on bureaucratic, not worthy activities
As this was my first that kind of venture and I didn’t have any partner with me, I needed to focus on all aspects of company. I had to conceptualise, design, network, do marketing, and worry about finances. In Poland, where I come from, UE provides lots of funds for young entrepreneurs and it’s easy to get them, therefore I was seeing the same help here in London. It turns out financial aid is allocated only in extremes: either you need to be poor/uneducated/in difficult situation – Prince’s Trust, or your start-up needs to be ideally in biotech/nano-tech/highly specialised field and there needs to be some initial traction. For those in between – such as me – the best idea is to reach to 3Fs.
Another issue is intellectual property – many founders don’t bother about protecting their IP from the very beginning and then things like Facebook’s Zuckenberg vs Winklevoss brothers or Snapchat conficts happen. I had a fairly revolutionary idea (back at the time Evoque concept was focused around semantics, natural language programming for risk management and investment relations as stock prices basically fluctuate due to speculations/emotions (this 17 year old kid got it right in publishing field)) and I wanted to see if I can protect it. I lost some time in Business & IP Centre, where I was told that software can be easily patented in US (hence so many lawsuits between tech companies) but it’s almost impossible to do so in Europe (open-source regulations etc.).
Mistake no 4: Choosing wrong, not trustworthy people
The biggest and most costly mistake was choosing the very wrong people for the team. Because I didn’t have any IT friends, I decided to hunt for developers via geeky IT sites and offer them paid, remote work. I didn’t really know what I was doing, as I did not have any completed business requirements document (I was designing and conceptualising Evoque on the go) and all I could do was creating inconsistent mock-ups packed with tons of non-prioritised features.
No one built their business alone, nor did I have all the answers. That’s why I was expecting my team to put more logic and technical order into what I was trying to achieve. I needed initiative and brainstorming. Instead, I got confused minds. They say your team is only as strong as its weakest link.
It’s really long road until you see results. You need to make your team believe in what you believe. You need to constantly motivate them. It’s 100x harder if you are trying to achieve that remotely. This is where we are now. We are 5 now; 2 of us are in Brazil, 1 in Poland, 2 in UK, London. All of the guys are great and I could not possibly ask for better team. Of course we lack proper communication and collaboration and that’s our biggest issue. Time zones and dayjobs are heck of a problem.
But as long as we believe in the common goal, we will make it happen.
“Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm” (W. Churchill)
For those who think startup life is all glamorous, there is disappointing news – it’s all BUT glamour. It’s a constant failure and learning the lessons. Fail once, fail twice. Fail some more, over and over again. That’s ok. Because as long as you get up and push harder, you are progressing. I’m still learning to embrace failure and challenge the status quo wherever I can.
How do you know when to stop? Mostly you don’t. Most people give up upon their dreams when they reach their 30’s. Their ambition and aspiration cool off and they settle for stable and “responsible” jobs. Those who remain in the dummy entrepreneurial positive state – are seen as daydreamers or having Peter Pan syndrome. But I can’t give up. I don’t want to live 9-5 lifestyle, I need to take control over my life and create opportunities not only for myself but for people I really care.
What I feel? Constant frustration. Frustration that I can’t do all by myself (even if I wanted to) and that I can’t provide the best possible conditions to work for my developers. When you succeed, people think it’s because you were lucky. There is no such thing as luck. Or rather not in its “magical” meaning. Thomas Jefferson once said “I am a great believer in luck. I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”
So with perseverance, hard work and constant dose of naivety I keep calm and move on..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-ARuoSFflc