This post is part of the Building It series where I share my journey building a startup, Amygda. Published weekly and as transparent as our customers, investors, and partners would have us be (read: legally allowed).
I have continued to write about building Amygda, a B2B industrial analytics startup. It’s now in the fifth week.
I share about everything we do, openly.
Why do you do that Faizan? Are you crazy?
So I thought let me answer that for once and all.
I openly share about building an industrial analytics startup because transparency is key in the industry we are involved in. And honestly, transparency should be key in everything we do.
I come from a middle-class family in India. A country where every parent wants their child to be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer.
For those of you who want to know, my mum wanted me to be a doctor. I ended up being an engineer. Only a minor heart-ache for her.
She’s over it now.
The next thing after becoming an engineer or doctor or lawyer is to stay in a job for years, and years, and years.
So after becoming an engineer and getting a job at Rolls-Royce, my mum was finally getting round to accepting that I will finally make her proud.
Heart-break – I quit that role after 8 beautiful years.
Now, this was a minor-plus-plus heat-ache for her.
But she got over it.
She trusts me
Anyhow, the point of mentioning my mum is to say, I’ve always been transparent with her. I have made mistakes, and I have definitely deviated from a track that is often walked.
But she trusts that I know what to do next when things are not obvious.
And she for sure knows I don’t walk the trodden plot.
That’s because I am transparent with her. Also because she knows when I try to lie to her. Mums have this super-natural power that you just can’t fool her. Mums go along with your story, but deep down they know there’s something else.
So eventually I decided to always just be honest with her.
If I can be honest with my mum, why can’t I be honest with everyone?
OK, let’s now say good bye to mum in this story. Bye mom.
So, as I was saying, why is transparency not a default mode to operate on?
Here’s why I am transparent in what we are doing, weekly, to build a startup.
1. I struggled with any info on building an industrial analytics startup in the B2B field
So why would I put others through the same? I want to write what we are doing so someone might have a read in the future and it speeds up their activity. I like solving problems, better even if it’s a problem of the future.
2. Amygda at it’s heart is helpful
Yes, we are a startup. And we offer an industrial analytics solution to customers. But we do that because we want to be helpful. I wake up every day dreaming about making industries more efficient, using data. Along the way, we will make money, of course. But I like helping. If that’s different to what other startups do, like hot damn do we need to look at ourselves.
3. Industrial analytics is a field for next 10-5 years
There aren’t many startups building with the vision we have. I believe there will be few more who will figure out the changing business models of the future in asset-heavy industries. But for now, most startups are in one narrow aspect of industrial analytics. We are in this for long term, writing a weekly post about what we are doing shouldn’t be enough for someone to copy what we are doing. If they do it better than us, then hell, we deserve it. It’s a challenge to us too.
4. Building an industrial analytics startup is hard
Honestly, reading alone isn’t going to help anyone build a startup. Which also means, stop buying all the shit ebooks and courses about building a startup. The only startup that is built using those ebooks is the seller’s business. Partly, I write for folks to get a preview of all the stuff that goes on. And so much more that doesn’t even make this blog. It’s hard. Let no one tell you otherwise.
5. The future is much more open
In the B2C and D2C world, there is a lot more openness about sharing tactics, growth strategies (like using the partnership as a growth strategy that I wrote about), and other stuff. But in B2B startups don’t share the behind the scene stuff. And sharing what they go through. Some weeks there is nothing exciting that happens at Amygda. Whilst other weeks, it’s crazy. Let’s be open and share that. I believe the future is much more open. Much much more open. Investors will be more open and look for open data. Corporates will change the type of persona they have. Be open. Or I could be wrong, and I will share that too when I figure that out ?
So how transparent will you be, Faizan?
Good question, and honestly, the answer is – a lot.
If I can, I will even open up a version of internal dashboard we have. With regards to what we are up to. The challenge is actually keeping it updated. I hate doing things manually.
So I look to automate most things. Which is why I am figuring out how to do that without screwing up any info that hasn’t been approved to be shared. I have to respect the customer, team members, and investors’ privacy.
But let’s see what I can do about sharing more data and other stuff with you.
OK, so in summary what happened at Amygda?
It was a good week. We actually had a prospect who reached out to us. It is our first inbound lead.
Cut-away: to those of you who are new to terms like outbound-leads and inbound-leads, it’s worth understanding them. But don’t sweat over them.
And this prospect is a collaboration opportunity. Fingers crossed ??we can convince them of our capability.
We are probably 6-12 weeks away from closing this if it goes our way.
Next week the hard work continues.
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What do you think of this week? Let me know via messaging me on LinkedIn or tweet me @faizanpatankar. I love talking, just mention you read my blog.