Entrepreneurship is Super Mario Bros in Armageddon mode
It’s been a while since I wrote about my ongoing entrepreneurial journey. I have been busy with a lot of things lately and didn’t find the time to sit and reflect on it.
People have been warning me about the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur and they were absolutely right. Everything we read on the Internet is about success stories of “overnight successes” like Airbnb, Facebook or Uber but let’s not forget the 9 out of 10 other startups struggle to stay afloat.
I am in none of these stories currently (fortunately or unfortunately I don’t know) and more in a limbo trying to figure out how everything works outside the corporate cubicle. Sales, legal, negotiation, accounting, tech development, product management, branding and marketing, … many things to catch up on and for me a first for most of these items.
Actually, if you really think about it, this is not that complicated:
Do you remember the Nintendo game “Super Mario Bros”? Well, it’s the same: You are Mario (the entrepreneur), you live in your Mushroom Kingdom (home based) and you need to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser (basically make your idea work and sustain a profitable business in a world full of competition and big villains ready to take you down). Seems quite easy and straightforward no? Well now put the game in Armageddon mode, there is no map to help you, all the koopas, goombas and piranha plants are 50 times your size and the speed of the game is multiplied by 20. I think you start to get the idea! It’s a war zone out there!!
That’s what makes the entrepreneur journey even more exciting! You have to learn very fast and keep moving forward every day step by step, even if it’s not in the same direction as initially planned… Most importantly you have to keep a positive attitude with everything that comes your way.
REV21
The initial idea with REV21 was to create a tool that will help and support restaurants, bars and coffee shops track their performance against their targets and their competition. With an outsourced tech company we have been bringing the tool to life and over summer 2018, we released the beta version of the platform.
Nicely done I must admit, with few adjustments here and there but the MVP was up and running. The main leap of faith here was around that:
Business owners in F&B will be interested in tracking their performance against their own targets and benchmarking against their competition.
Quite easy and straightforward. Soon after the release, the number of registration reached 15 users, a few weeks later 22 and then we flattened at around 30 users. It seems quite interesting, however, the churn rate was on the roof (close to 100%), meaning the user retention was close to 0.
I have decided to analyze the performance by cohort analysis (see my last article on the Lean Startup) followed by tracking user behaviours and understand where we should work on:
- Signed up but didn’t activate
- Activated
- Created an outlet
- Submitted targets
- Submitted revenue data
- Paid
What I have found out is that most of the users signed up but didn’t activate their account (the activation email was going into Spam). And the number of users who actually engaged in the platform (at least created an outlet) was very low …
After having talked to several users I have learned more about what could be interesting to develop to further improve the platform. Interesting comments, feedback and a lot of help from left and right. Even one feedback from a user here in Europe was that he “was really excited to see this kind of platforms coming to life” and that “it was a first”.
I made my point and proved that there is a market for F&B revenue management software today, however (and that’s maybe my personality) I need to move fast and I need quick wins. And you understand tech entrepreneurship is not about quick wins despite what we hear in the press. There is a long period of experimentations, tests and errors. A period where actually most of the entrepreneurs give up…
Therefore, I put on hold my tech ideas a few months ago and decided to shift my focus on my consulting business here in London where I knew I could make a difference from day 1.
Now that my consulting business is launched and working well, I will soon be releasing the second batch of experimentations in F&B revenue management provided by the online platform. I am currently working on branding, UI/UX and working alongside local niche restaurants to develop the platform and enhance my initial idea.
Sometimes you are closer to success than you imagine and you only need few pivots/adjustments:
“In golf your clubface must be square to the path you’re swinging on to hit the ball straight, it’s less than a 2 millimeter shift that makes all the difference. A 2 millimeter shift may not seem like much, but as you carry that small shift out further and further it has a dramatic impact on your outcome.”
Tim Hurja (PGA Golf Professional)
I am looking for this “2-millimetre shift” to develop something helpful and bringing tremendous value to every client I serve. Not only with the tech platform but as well in my consulting projects.
Catala Consulting
While I was expecting to do consulting/support gigs on the side to continue to develop my tech with REV21, I have quickly realized the market was even bigger than expected for this kind of freelance support.
I have created Catala Consulting Ltd to support Hotels with their Revenue Management strategies and practices. Providing Revenue Management in freelance, general hospitality data analysis, forecasting models, training and consulting services.
I have signed clients from asset management company, independent hotels to apartments in Europe and today I am managing slightly more than 15 million dollars of annual revenue for my clients in Europe on a daily basis. The model of Revenue Manager in remote and freelance is definitely in demand and talents in RM who understand what they are doing are still very rare.
Once again I am still learning a lot when it comes to how to market my services, retain clients and more importantly provide as much added value for my customers and hotel teams as possible. The key is to remain flexible and as much personalized as possible. All of the clients have different levels of understanding of Revenue Management and it is important to adapt to all of them, but it’s very exciting and rewarding to be able to help, train and see their revenue performance improving step by step. I really feel I am making a difference.
In the next few months, I will be looking to grow the team to be able to take more projects without impacting the overall service quality.
Also, as previously mentioned, I will be soon releasing the second version of the online platform, so if you are interested to participate you know where to find me :)
Thibault
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