As a serial entrepreneur, Zephyr isn’t the first company I’ve started. Recently, I was interviewed by Tom Heath, a columnist with the Washington Post. He wanted to talk about another company I launched 2 years ago and recently had to shut down. Tom writes about successful entrepreneurs every week in his “Value Added” column. I wanted to take a different approach. I’ve learned a lot from projects that failed, and this was no exception. Any entrepreneur worth her salt has a couple of great mistakes under her belt, and this is one of mine. So I thought that his readers could learn from this story and take away some valuable lessons (just like I did).
I think he did a great job on the article, and I still think the business was a great idea. The problem is I fell in love with
the idea instead of the viability of the company. And I didn’t think through the aspects of fulfillment. In retrospect, I did all the things I tell my clients to avoid every day! It is common for tech companies to fall in love with the idea of the new technology and its capabilities without spending enough time evaluating whether there is a customer need and enough budget for the delivery, sales and marketing of the technology.
I have a lot more ideas perculating and I suspect there are several more startups in my future. At least I hope so! Every experience builds on the next. The lessons learned can be applied not just to how I run Zephyr, but also to my clients (present and future) who sometimes become enamoured of the idea instead of the business viability. At least now I can say “Been there, done that.”
ssions. It is where we keep the computer that our bookkeeper uses to stay on top of billing and accounting, and it serves as our mailing address and storage facility. But everyone on the team works primarily from home or at a client location. We’ve been doing this since we opened our doors six years ago.
