The First 45 Days
Share some learning and realizations for early startup.
On November 1, 2023, I met up with my good friend, L, for ramen, catching up on her recent climbing trip in Europe. Toward the end of the conversation, I shared with her the problem I have with sports bras and the idea to develop a product for women climbers. As she slurped the last drop of the tonkotsu broth, her eyes lit up.
“When can we start?”, she asked
The mission started with a lot of excitement and confusion. We grabbed some fabrics from the store and started cutting them based on a template we bought from the internet. We read some juicy posts online about bras while sipping glasses of red wine.
From then on, every minute of my thoughts was occupied with either the joy of learning something new or the fear of not-knowing enough. This newsletter is a recap of what happened in the past months.
45 Days ago: Getting the Lay of the Land
Embarking on the new domain, I already anticipated getting lost in the land of new vocabularies. From the most zoomed-out vision (like how to design a functional garment) to the tiniest details (like needles and threads), I am tempted to spend million hours researching.
However, building real expertise would likely require me to go to a fashion school or work for Lululemon for another decade, which is not what I intend to do.
I know I will have to hire some experts in the field to help eventually. However, before doing so, I think it makes sense to gain enough understanding to be able to speak to them and give clear direction.
In my first month, I sewed every day just to get a feel for it. I saw how easy it is to make simple pillowcases or baby bibs and how hard it is to make an actual sports bra from scratch.
While I was proud of my bra prototypes, they were far from good enough. Getting to specific sizing takes precision and well-thought-out grading (measurement). After a month, I ran into the wall with the complex women's body anatomy and many design decisions.
30 Days Ago: Learning About Risks
As a small business, there are two types of risks that we have to manage:
Product risk (Can we build it? Can we scale it?)
Customer risk (Would people want the product? Would they pay for it?)
Meanwhile, as I tried to reduce product risk, L conducted customer conversations to identify if climbers actually have a problem with their sports bras, while will reduce the customer risk. Based on the guideline from Mom’s tests, we believed the survey did a good job capturing facts and data rather than empty compliments or fluff.
At this point, we were able to categorize climbers into three groups:
One who doesn’t notice there is a problem
One who notices the problems but doesn’t care enough to fix it.
One who has sought different solutions or even paid for it.
Most people we talked to were either in group 2 or 3. Doing customer conversations helps us identify the niche group we should be focusing on, which energized us to make progress.
15 days ago: The Transition
I still remember the hardest part of transitioning to management was losing control. It’s one skill to complete all the technical details by yourself. It’s another skill to complete the same task through someone else.
At the one-month mark, I felt it was time to hire experts to actually validate our design and sew up some samples. As we began sourcing designers, manufacturers, and suppliers on the internet, I realized the importance of finding a trustworthy partners, despite having minimal domain expertise in those areas myself.
We opted to use a known platform to find contractors, such as Upwork. L suggested that we conduct further due diligence on reference checks, NDAs, and contracts, which were very critical steps.
The world is full of specialized individuals, and our task is to find the best people for the job while ensuring things move in the right direction. Being a founder is quite similar to being a manager.
5 Days ago: Everyone Knows Someone
Everyone hold a key that could open some doors for you. You never know when you will need them.
This snippet is from a book, 'How to Make Money.' This is one of the biggest learnings since we got started. L happens to have a friend who is working on a garment project for a similar demographic. We met up and gained incredible insights from the industry, learning directly from her past mistakes.
Initially, I felt like we had nothing to offer her in return and didn’t want to take too much of her time. However, when I think about how we could share our mistakes and insights in the future, I realized that we could also be holding the key to her future door.
Building the right network and operating with a win-win mindset could mean the survival of the business. Today, I feel no shame in reaching out to old friends who I haven't talked to in decades or even strangers through social media if it means collecting new keys for our survival.
All in all, it was a wild 1.5 months. The challenge of converting an idea into reality before money runs out can be thrilling and stressful. I am excited to see what the next 45 days look like.
Thanks for reading, everyone. Let me know if you want to hear more or less about this journey!