Comfortable with a cushy, high-paying job, a hardcore techie not just dreamt but dared too and stepped out to test his fate. Confidence was high, ideas abound, and so was the fear of losing it all. Entire career, savings and a lot more was at stake. What happened? Read on…
With the onset of 2014 winters I started contemplating the idea of moving, doing something new, maybe of my own. It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Employed with a top rated brand, getting handsome package, entitled to various perks, responsibility of family… There was too much at stake. One can’t easily dare to take that risk. But then the churning within was equally unsettling.
The Dilemma
My background being that of a pure techie, I never had much idea of business. Sales, marketing and branding were all Arabic for me. Yet still, I took the dare. I kind of made my mind by November 2014 that I need to set up my own venture but it took me more than a year to finally decide.
Come January 1st of 2017, I went on to launch my venture. The day was great and so was the feeling. Optimism was at its peak and I was beaming with immense hope and enthusiasm.
Birth Certificates
First things first, I was to find a name and get it registered. Believe me, it wasn’t any easy job and given my experience with codes way more than words don’t even try imagining the list of considerations I had in my diary.
What saved my day was the same technological background that left me in the situation. I sketched a flowchart that ended where it started from. Since the name was for the people to recognize my organization then why not ask them only what they would like us to be called.
We had a simple solution to my big problem. We ran an online contest on various platforms so as to let people around the world suggest the name and that is how SYGITECH was born. It’s all about Synergy, Digital and Technology.
The other brand — QlickTrack was my own thought. Quick and One click tracking. It was to be a performance marketing platform for digital marketing agencies, ad/affiliate network. It’s been in technology preview mode and under testing, planned to be commercially lunched soon.
Registration process was rather an easy thing to do. Company registration to PAN/TAN was done from one place. It is now integrated process; you don’t need to worry about it.
Though, development of QlickTrack was started in 2016 itself, but still there were many things to be finished up, by end of April 17, product was ready for evaluation.
Team Building
Finding sales and marketing people was another challenge. Not being from the same background, what to ask, how to judge, it was all pretty confusing. I studied about sales and marketing, what are key measurements etc, based on that I selected 2 people for sales to start with.
I realized that hiring tech people was also a hard nut to crack. Initially I thought it would be easier but I was wrong. Talented people do not want to join newly formed startup if you not funded, they find it too risky.
The Sailing Begins
We managed to start working actively from last week of June 17. Beyond my expectation, we got our first project in early July itself, then there was no looking back in terms of the projects. Finding right people is still a problem but that did not let us go down, I worked hard, from HR/Admin to sales/marketing, coding, everything that came in the way, and today we are a team of 12 people.
In the meantime, QlickTrack was being tried by different customers. We offered 3 months trial, customer’s feedback helped us to improve the product and make fixes. QlickTrack is now ready to be launched.
Presently, we have 10+ happy customers, we are working on multiple projects, on software development, infrastructure management, cloud, technical consultancy, etc.
The lessons learnt
Some of learning that I would love to share with techies: before starting your own venture think what problem are you going to address and how, will it be effective enough. Do not forget to think from the future point of view, as things will change while you get the product ready.
Avoid wasting time on selecting company/product name, we often try to link the name with the object and our thought process, trust me, it doesn’t really matter, what matter is the how successful you make it, any name would just work and can become a brand.
It is essential to think about sales and marketing before you get started, we techies make this mistake very often, we think we can make awesome product, however even a best product will not succeed without right sales and marketing strategy, and of course right set of people.
It would be good idea to find people from different background and make them partner, though not easy as everyone might not take risk.
Time to market is crucial, do not try to make everything perfect but how soon you can lunch it with basic features.
With the ongoing support from friends and family we’ve been able to make our mark in the world of IT solutions business. All thanks to the hard-work of our team and the mentorship of friends and seniors we’ve been able to generate revenue not just enough to keep us afloat but also to be profitable. Guess what! The funding is yet to arrive, next level remains to achieve.