The ups and downs of launching your first startup
Today’s post is a personal post. It’s about the trials and errors I went through to launch my first start up, Giant Themes. I hope you enjoy the post and it helps anyone who is on the verge of launching their first start up. It’s been a fun ride and definitely one that I am going to love talking about in this article.
This article is going to cover everything from the initial idea that I had inside of my over active creative mind, to the point of launch (just a few hours ago) and what I envision for the future of the start up. If you’ve launched a start up in the past, I would love if you could shed some light on your process in the comments and for those of you who haven’t launched a start up yet, any questions you have would be awesome to see in the comments.
The initial idea
Around June of last year I wrote a post on WP Guerrilla about the top 10 wordpress theme providers and mentioned that I was tossing around the idea of a wordpress theme site myself. Realistically, I had been thinking about it for about a year prior to that. I am a freelance blog designer and the transition into a wordpress theme start up seems like a logical move in expanding my revenue, so I thought about it; then quickly stopped thinking about it. A few months went by before I actually started really thinking about it and putting plans into action.
The brainstorming and planning
When I really started putting things into a notebook and started hammering out the details, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had a lot of ideas and a lot of special ways to make my site ‘different’ than the other theme sites. I bought a moleskine notebook and started using it – a lot. I planned out the domain name, which was an extension of the Guerrilla network I was trying to build. The original domain name, GuerrillaThemes.com was purchased, set up and had a splash page put onto it within a matter of a few minutes.
And then the waiting began. I got caught up in client work and lost sight of the site again. A month or so went by and I started really putting the marketing together. I planned a huge launch for January 1st 2010 and promoted it heavily via twitter, facebook and email. And then I got a twitter message that asked me why I was copying Gorilla Themes.
The first road block
After thinking things through and even though the Guerrilla Themes name was built off of the brand I was trying to establish, I realized that in general conversation, the two names were identical, regardless of spelling. I talked it over with Brian Gardner and also spoke with Carlos from Gorilla Themes and decided to make a transition into a new theme company name. After all, I hadn’t launched yet and there wouldn’t be much trouble moving things around.
I wrote a post on the WP Guerrilla site detailing my move from the old name to the new name and made sure to detail my reasons why. If you’d like to read more about that, you can head over to read it.
The (almost) early ending
After I set up Giant Themes and got the ball rolling with it, I slipped back into the normalcy of client work and forgot about Giant Themes. When the deadline of January 1st came closer, I realized that I wouldn’t have the time to launch properly – so I didn’t. January 2nd rolled around, and the 3rd, 4th and 5th. After the first week of January, I started rethinking it totally. I felt beat down. I felt like I lost any steam I had built up previously and started daydreaming about other projects. If this sounds crazy to you, you should read the comments on the over active creative mind article I wrote on Spyre Studios – I am not alone in this.
The rejuvenation & those who helped
After breaking down one night from all of the pressure and talking with my girlfriend for about 3 hours, just venting all of my frustrations and fears, I felt a lot calmer. It was a great feeling. I knew what I had to do at this point and Giant Themes was definitely a part of it.
After that evening, I spoke with Jon from Spyre Studios through email and vented a bit more – and I have to thank him for not laughing at me or calling me crazy, because I’m sure the emails I sent off to him were a bit haywire. After 5-6 back-and-forth emails, I had a 100% clear plan in mind. I had around 80-90% of the Giant Themes site done and knew that a good day’s work on it would complete it. So I did it.
The launch
I officially launched Giant Themes at Midnight on February 8th 2010. It was a great feeling. When I sent out the tweets and facebook messages, I immediately got feedback – all of it positive. It was an amazing feeling, one that I cannot describe to you. Within the first 12 hours, I’ve had 500 hits to the site and the page views are over 3 pages per person. I’m happy with this result. I didn’t expect 10,000 visitors in one day. I’m right where I expected to be.
The one thing that did kind of set me back emotionally was the fact that not one sale has been made up to this point. I know it’s a numbers game, and the more people who visit your site, the more chances you have of making a sale, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t hoping for a sale or two today.
The future…
My plan is to continue to grow the site, grow the available themes and also use the blog to generate traffic by releasing freebies (texture packs, icon sets, ect) and also writing tutorials for wordpress and xhtml/css in general. I’m hoping that this helps the traffic keep flowing and the sales start coming in.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d love to know your thoughts on Giant Themes and the iSocialize theme that I’ve got for sale.
It’s one hell of a ride, but one that I wouldn’t give back. The only thing I’d change is that I would have done this all a hell of a lot sooner. Lesson learned – if you want to do it, do it. It’s that simple.
