"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill In my previous post, I briefly wrote about coming to terms with startup failure and moving forward. Today, I would like to share what it was like to share that failure. Failure brings out one of the worst emotional states in you, which is being embarrassed. This feeling is never welcomed and one that can drastically impact a psyche. I certainly had this emotional state after admitting defeat...

After close to seven months of working on Synotate [https://www.synotate.com] I am shutting the product down and going back to the drawing board. Admitting defeat is never easy and my decision to shut the product down is a difficult one I have made, but I have come to terms with this failure and have grown to appreciate every step of the journey. The development of Synotate forced me to learn new skills, navigate legal requirements for operating a business and face new challenges. This personal ...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Beanstalk software is a massive help for developers looking to launch and scale servers without having to touch the server infrastructure. This benefit has been the reason why I have used it for multiple projects, but whenever I have needed to re-configure the server for certain use cases, I have found the product and its YAML based configuration files, ebextensions, to be difficult to use with limited documentation available. This was certainly the case when I ...

Before I launched Synotate I dreamt that it would be a home run right out of the gate. I blindly led myself to believe that the problems faced by myself and other marketers would be solved by the product I worked on for two years, but I was wrong. “Reality hit me fast” is the best way to summarize the four months since releasing the product to the public. The product has not been an immediate success, but I’m not by any means disappointed by the progress I have made and I want to share the impor...

Our life runs on email and depending on the state of our inbox, life can be good or bad. If you achieve inbox zero with ease, then congrats, you are in the 1% of people who can sleep well at night knowing they are on top of their tasks and communication. For the rest of us, it is common to stay afloat with cluttered inboxes blending important emails and newsletters to websites we didn’t realize we opted into. I, like many, fall into this category with some of my email accounts, so a few days ago...

Starting a technology business is more capital intensive than most might be led to believe. While it is true that a business can be started with as little as a free Wordpress website, most business ideas have a unique product ideas that go beyond the functionality that a basic content management system (CMS) like Wordpress can provide. Due to these functionality requirements, free or low-cost app/website building options are not feasible to succeed and the only option entrepreneurs have is to bu...

I am coming up on a month since launching Synotate [https://www.synotate.com/?utm_source=connorphillips.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=not-having-customer-sucks-but-feedback-is-key&utm_term=synotate&utm_content=article] and while I have my first non-paying customer, whom I work for, and one sign up that was from a forum feedback post, I do not have a single paying customer. It is definitely disheartening to be in this situation...no, actually, it sucks, but my feelings are the result of g...

Anyone who has been obsessed with launching a startup has come across content that emphasizes the importance of shipping a product as soon as you can. It is the product of the popular Lean Startup movement called minimal viable product (MVP) and makes complete sense because if the concept doesn’t sell to customers with a bare bones solution, then how will a well developed product fair better? I believe in this concept, but as an entrepreneur, how do you know when your product meets the minimal v...

Two years ago an idea popped into my mind to solve a daily data analysis problem that I faced. It seemed like in every meeting I attended, a question was asked about historical data trends that no one could answer on the spot and attendees would end with an action item to answer the questions mentioned. This action item required individual team members to pull the historical data points, re-analyze the trend and hopefully have notes on what changes were made during that time to be able to come t...

The basic concept of percentages is taught and typically mastered at a young age, but from time to time I find percentages being misused and misinterpreted within the business environment. I will be the first to admit that I am guilty of doing such a thing in the past (nothing to be ashamed of!), but because I don’t have the luxury to incorrectly use percentages in my line of work, the precision I have developed over time has led me to become more aware of common percentage mistakes in articles ...