It’s 6 months since I started writing these updates, to build in public. And it’s a year since we began Amygda.
A quick note to you – thank you for reading my updates, liking, commenting, and messaging me about them on LinkedIn. Being a founder is a lonely world, so your interaction is super-valued and does add joy to life
Here’s the snapshot:
- Team has grown to a total of 6. 4 full-time ( Product, Data Science, 2 x software) and 2 part-time (Sales, Marketing, BD)
- Signed a GTM partnership with industrial £1B+ enterprise company in Europe
- Launched the MVP for the enterprise customers
- 3 new enterprise trials to begin in 2021
- Successfully delivered a paid trial in 2020, leading to commercial discussion for 2021 (soon to be announced)
- Technology support from Amazon and another partner (soon to be announced)
- Successfully navigated/navigating the pandemic
This was hard, really hard
Building a startup is hard. You should never underestimate the risks, sacrifices, and persistence that founders show. There are founders everywhere right now, with their heads down working away at some crazy hours.
Some probably haven’t slept for the past 24 hours.
Some, probably planning to shut down their companies as the runway comes to an end.
Unless you become a founder, you will never understand all the shit founders go through. I have a lot of respect for founders. And hopefully those of you who want to become founders really speak to founders before taking the leap.
Building a startup is hard. Building it in the middle of a pandemic, even harder.
But truth be told, everything is hard. And if you think this is hard, imagine the medics who are working for the past 12 months in the pandemic, trying to save lives.
Now, THAT IS HARD.
Compared to that, I’ve had an easier task – I am only building a startup.
Not risking my life, literally.
And really, 2021 is also going to be hard, so is 2022, and 2023, and 2024, and 2025. (My English teacher won’t be too happy to see so many ‘and’ in one sentence).
Honestly, I’ve come to realise, it will always be hard. My job, is to be ready.
Ready for whatever comes next. As a team that’s our focus for 2021.
Amygda is ready for 2021.
Damn, that felt good to write!
What’s the plan for 2021?
It’s a crucial year for us. We’ve built traction in 2020, and as a pre-product startup a lot of potential customers have put their trust in us.
2021 is really about delivering on that trust and building on that traction.
We have just launched our MVP and that will be live with customers in Q1 2021.
So if I was to summarise 2021 plans they are:
- Go live with customers in Q1 2021
- Grow team on data wrangling, data science, and software engineering
- Continue with the customer-centric discovery
And how about fundraising?
For a deep tech enterprise startup-like Amygda, a lot of investment goes in upfront for a longer payback period.
So we do require funding.
Fundraising is also a job that distracts founders from running their business. It certainly distracts me. We are in a good place and will be in a better place by the start of February in 2021.
Right now, I am only open to smart money angels and tech investors who understand B2B enterprise market.
If you are an angel investor reading this or a deep tech investor, drop me a line on faizan@amygdalabs.com. It would be great to share this opportunity with you.
And that’s all for the update
It’s been a crazy year for everyone.
And each one of us has been on a different learning curve.
So take a break. Freshen up.
Next year, be ready.
That’s my aim.
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What do you think of this week? Let me know by messaging me on LinkedIn or tweet me @faizanpatankar. I love talking, just mention you read my blog.
If you want to read more…
Why do I openly share all our moves about building an industrial analytics startup?
The week we launched the MVP (Week 24)
Product dev and lessons in recruiting the first external hire