10 Lessons I Learned From My Not-So-Successful Startup & Why I Never Shut It Down

Hi! I’m Yashpreet, a budding design entrepreneur. I specialize in creating women’s fusion apparels from indigenous Indian textiles.

It all started in 2014 when a friend of mine & I, out of curiosity, decided to design womenswear clothing from wasted scrap found literally at every other tailoring shop in India. We picked a few interesting fabrics, mixed them with other patches, added trims and details and viola, our first range of sustainable womenswear products was created! A few months into the business, I realized we lacked what it takes to make it big. We decided to part ways and gain more experience. I decided to join an upcoming startup at a junior level, learned how they worked on the nuances I lacked, set up things within the firm from the skillset I had and scaled to a senior level position within a span of 6 months. Work was amazing, the team was great and the startup had grown exponentially within just a few months and I had seen how my efforts reaped result. After seeing how a lot of how things work in a tiny, little 42 employee company to making it a whopping 500 employee company in just a year, I felt I knew what it would take for me to succeed. And with an utter amount of overconfidence and literally no plan in place, I quit to start on my own — this time single-handedly. I established The Svaya, a brand that would design womenswear fusion clothing.

It all seemed easy and things started to align in place. I prepared for my first offline event within 4 months of starting up and I failed miserably. A few weeks of guilt, a few more months of why am I not able to make it work and finally, the push to get back up helped me make a lot more money intensive mistakes. I was running out on my savings, had no full-time employee under me to help me offload, lived with my parents to avoid unnecessary expense and literally had no idea as to where the company was going until one operational year passed by.

Here’s what I did post that year and how I applied each of the lessons I learned to make it work:

1. I planned — Unlike earlier, this operational year I penned down my objectives. No, I did not know how to achieve them all. I learned it along the way but knowing what I was aiming for, made things smoother and more aligned with what I desired to achieve.
2. I hired — I knew I wasted a lot of my time doing things all by myself. This time, I hired. I hired many and I hired quick. I had a full-time employee who would work on just creating new samples for me, 4 full-time interns who were responsible for managing various other departments viz social, operations, backend, and designing; and a lot of other freelancers and project-based workers who brought their expertise to the table.
3. I connected — I connected with literally anyone and everyone in my circle who was working around my industry. And when I say that, I don’t just mean the executive level employees but workers too. I interacted with them to understand about the hidden operational challenges and cost-cutting hacks, that literally no one else ever revealed to me.
4. I applied — Whatever I learned from my past one year’s experience, I applied it across all the teams to reap better results.
5. I researched — This time not only about my industry and how I could make things work but about other startups. From all the other domains. I figured what worked in the market, how that could become a part of my business strategy.
6. I defined my boundaries — The most important aspect of staying focused and goal oriented is to pen it down and plan towards it. However, the precursor to this is the ability to envision exactly what you dream of creating. I filled a diary with notes on how I wanted my brand to turn out, what its core values would be, how would it stand apart from the crowd, and more. This not only helped me in branding my firm better but also helped me gain clarity on my own thoughts.
7. I chose my priorities — For long we have been asked to make a product that sells itself and build a business that’s consumer-centric. I decided to mix them both. First up we built products sticking to our core values of minimal wastage, fair trade, and textiles from grassroots of India. We then made the brand size inclusive by offering sizes from XS to XXXL. Next up, we specifically designed silhouettes that looked great on women with petite figures to more curvy women.
8. I budgeted my time not just my money — For the first time ever in my entrepreneurial journey, I gave a few exceptional hours to myself to just unwind and explore. A few weeks ago, while scrolling through a few articles on Medium, I came across an important point. “Good ideas don’t come to you when you sit and think. They usually hit you hard when you’re busy doing nothing!” This stuck with me and trust me, I got a lot of my ideas on distribution, inventory management and designing when I was either in going for a movie, or listening to the radio or just strolling around in the park thinking about nothing.
9. I learned the lesson that money can be earned only when spent — Money is an extremely crucial aspect of a nascent stage startup. And more so, when you don’t come from an Ivy league B-School or have a network that can easily get you funding or aren’t building the next big thing or filling that giant black hole in the market. From being super particular about how much I spend in a specific department to reap the results, I went loose and spent more on unnecessary things. This way I failed fast. I quickly assessed what worked for my brand, what delivered results — sales or traction wise and what led to wastage. After having spent a decent amount here and there, I knew exactly what needs to be spent where and how now.
10. I learned that it’s not easy to wake up every day and hit your workplace, unlike what we all imagine in the start — I am a super passionate workaholic. I can work like crazy and skip meals and loo forever if I enjoy doing it. However, for the first 14 months of my startup, I hated waking up and going to the office. I was never on time. I was never aware of how my day would turn out, I never knew what difference I made to my brand. But I kept going. I would go and plan. I would crib while at it but still get back to it. I would wipe the slate clean a zillion times but I would pester it until the day came when I finally wanted to jump out of my bed and go to work. I kept on moving.

NOTE: I learned that all founders go through terrible phases. Some are embarrassed publically, some go broke to the next level, some get humiliated for even trying, some return home to the family with broken hearts. But, one thing that’s also common in each one of them is their power of persistence.

Have I made a difference yet? Not really. Have I hit the jackpot and know where am I headed? Well, once I genuinely did and that helped me pick my next course of action. But, there’s a long way to go. Will I make it? Yes. Even if I fail, I know I would have taken a lot with me from this almost two-year journey of my not-so-successful-yet-but-will-soon-be startup.