Valuable Things ⊆ Hard Things | My first startup
It is always weird looking back at the work you did and thinking: did I really do this? This was how I felt when I saw my archived Steady work the other day, so this is me penning down some thoughts about the experience of starting a startup.
Some context: Steady was a startup trying to make mental healthcare affordable and accessible to Gen-Zs. As much as people tell you how difficult it is to start a company, nothing really beats the real experience. The truth is: building something of value is hard. For every hour of actual “work” you do, there are a lot more hours spent thinking about why and how you should do something. And when things don’t pan out the way you would like them to, there usually isn’t a clear cut answer as to why it didn’t.
Throughout the journey, there were just as many ups as there were downs. Though I find myself inclined to say that the highlight was when I saw the team on the news, or when I first saw our photos in the newspaper, what I miss the most are the times we worked till midnight over zoom or sat in silence trying to figure out how to solve a problem. There was a sense of purpose, a feeling that we were doing something important. If one were to look at it objectively, we were just three students working on this gargantuan task of making therapy cheaper; it was an uphill battle. Yet, despite the odds, we believed that it was something that was meant to happen. And that we were the ones that would make it happen. What started off as a random off-tangent conversation about mental health on a train ride home, turned into an almost year-long chapter in my life.
The Process
The first few weeks was just us talking to therapists. We wanted to find out why therapy was so expensive. There has never been a generation like ours that was so aware of the importance of mental health. Yet, therapy services remain economically and socially inaccessible to many. After numerous conversations, we found out that this was the result of multiple confounding issues, many of which were beyond our control. In spite of that, we found an opportunity in providing asynchronous help for individuals, which served as a jumping-off point for our bigger goal.
With a rough idea in mind, we jumped into action. This meant designing and iterating on the fly while consulting therapists and friends along the way who believed in the cause. The challenge was getting our first few therapists to join our team. Many were willing to talk to us, but few were interested in joining. Our ability to enlist qualified professionals was going to make or break us as we were nothing without our therapist partners. But after weeks of cold calling, dozens of LinkedIn messages and hours of Zoom meetings later, we were able to assemble a small team of amazing therapists who believed in us and in our mission.
We finally soft-launched in July with our mobile app. The feeling is like letting your baby take its first few steps for the first time (not that I would know). Seeing the application on my phone for the first time was magical. I remember thinking: This was something I help build! Now I will be the first to concede that this beta was not the best; the design was clunky and there was much to be desired, but this was a start, a good start nonetheless.
As we all know, in any two-sided market, the hardest part is to keep both sides happy. This meant talking to our therapists and also users to understand their needs. We were always quick to adapt: pivoting from a pay-per-use model to a subscription-based one, introducing new features and also participating actively in communities online and offline. Through this constant iteration, we were slowly seeing some results.
Our major break was when we first heard wind that CNA and the Straits Times were interested in featuring us for mental health awareness day. This was also when we landed our partnership with The Woke Salaryman. We were overwhelmed by such excitement only to be hit by the realisation that we were not prepared for such a surge in traffic. All this was happening over a week and at that point, our therapist network was not yet able to accommodate the projected number of new users. I think we could all agree that this was a defining moment for Steady. In the days leading up to D-Day, we worked day and night finding new therapists, generating marketing content and pushing app updates. This turned out to be a major milestone for Steady which made huge headway for our user and revenue growth as a result.
Reflection
Looking back, my Steady journey was special. It is not every day you get to work on something you feel for with the people you trust. And though Steady did not end up being a massive success, we did what we set out to do: help people. The lives that we touched and in turn touched us made working on it worthwhile.
On a more personal level, I learned so much from this process. As a designer, I had to fight for my ideas. This meant finding the balance between when to push for what I believed in and when to compromise (something I am still working on). This also meant incorporating objective-focused thinking throughout the design process. Everyone in the team challenged each other to be better and as a result, we all grew tremendously throughout the process.
Confidence is something I still struggle with today. I would be lying if I say it does not suck when someone says that the design is not good enough. Being able to objectively evaluate my own work has got to be one of the most difficult things a designer has to do. But I realised it is not about achieving this idealised state, instead it is an ongoing process.
Going back to the start of this essay, making something valuable is hard. Yet, the irony is that it is also what makes it valuable. The process of trying, failing and then trying again is how we create something that is truly precious. This is something I remind myself every so often.