Hunger in the eyes of a 24-year-old: the diary of my entrepreneurial journey

[BlackLands]

Hello everyone, I will use this thread as a diary of my entrepreneurial journey. This is the main information about me:

• I am 24 years old and born in southern Italy, a place where the highest ambition for a young person is to work in an office for life or enlist in the armed forces.
• I have a bachelor's degree in computer science, a master's degree in Data Science and several experiences abroad. I studied in Stockholm and worked in a big tech in Luxembourg, plus I ran a startup podcast where I got to interview several experts in the field of artificial intelligence and improved my ability to ask the right questions. Since January I am moving to Spain to work full-time as a Data Scientist.
• I have a small YouTube channel where I talk about speeding up learning and I run a small podcast where I interview experts in different fields. Although it does not have much of a following partly because I never invested too much time in it, it has given me the opportunity to meet millionaires and investors and more generally to expand my network.

Why I want to become an entrepreneur:

• I have always been a creative person and the idea of creating something of my own doesn't let me sleep at night. Also, when I get messages from people thanking me after watching one of my YouTube videos, I realized that giving value is what I enjoy most.
• My mother died when I was 18, I want to start a foundation in her name and financially help as many boys and girls as possible to continue their schooling.
• I want to be free and no longer have the need to work. If one day I want to read Russian literature all day, I want to be able to do that.
• My escape number is about 8 million euros, this amount will allow me to live the life of my dreams without having the need to work. I aim to reach this figure in 10 years. It's not possible to earn this amount of money being and employee.

For 2023 my goals are:

• Develop a SaaS platform and have at least one paying customer.
• 25,000€ euros in the bank of liquidity.

What am I doing as of today?

• In October I graduated from college and so now I have time to focus on my entrepreneurial career. I started thinking seriously about it 2 weeks ago.
• I created a landing page for a SaaS service that I want to develop. I have created a small team of freelancers who are creating me the video introducing the platform and the background voice explaining what problem I am going to solve.
• The landing page is ready, now I have to test the market response and improve the presentation based on feedback. My target audience is mainly students so I am going to talk to my brother's friends and the mayor of my country in such a way as to publicize my idea in schools. In addition to that, the video inside the landing page will be publicized on social and we will see how many people will enter their email inside the form.
• I have not developed anything yet, if the response is positive will develop a prototype using no-code platforms.

I will update this thread every Sunday.
I don't know whether I will eventually succeed or not, I just tell you that I have seen the people I loved die and I in the first place risked my life. I don't give a damn about doing what needs to be done, I have no mental limitations.

I am always open to feedback, so feel free to comment.
I wish you a good life and a death with no regrets.

 

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[Mihalsky]

Hi BlackLands,

Glad to have you trying Fastlane!
Let me ask you some questions so it might get easier for you
Can you shed some more light what is your product?
What type of students are you targeting - anyone, specific faculty etc? Determining your audience group in details is quite important

Good luck!

 

[AnNvr]

Hey BlackLands!

Massive well done for everything you have done already. I am in tech and Italian too, and although I live abroad I prefectly know what does it meant intended as coming from south of Italy , the social texture and mindset ( I'd dare say Italy as whole, generally speaking ). So be proud of everything you have already built!

I genuinely wish you the best for your journey and I have faith that you'll succeed in some way. All the best for you!

Cheers from a fellow Italian who lives oversea!

 

[BlackLands]

Update 01/01/2023

- I placed the promotional video within the landing page with the hope of increasing conversions. I also fixed a graphical error when visiting the web page from a smartphone.
- Due to various unforeseen events, I was unable to create a Facebook campaign, which was a lucky thing. I created several threads (in English) on Reddit in which I asked indirectly what the problems were with a particular service (without showing my landing page as it was written in Italian and with the audio of the video in Italian) and got over 80 replies, many of them argued. The cool thing is that some of the responses had a lot of likes, so some of the problems are really heartfelt. I took notes and prioritised some of the problems which will result in an MVP. How much time and money should I have spent to get all this feedback? I bless that I was born in this era!
- Having never done interviews to validate an idea, I read a few chapters of a book about it and created a framework for myself that I will always keep up to date. I swear, I did not read to procrastinate.

Objectives next week:
- To receive at least 10 pieces of feedback (between calls and low-budget ad campaigns) from potential customers about my landing page and the product I intend to create.
- Sketch out the design and see whether to hire a design on Fiverr. I have a strong feeling that a simple design will be one of the main points of my product to leverage.

That's all for the week, best wishes for the new year. Be faithful to the process!

 

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[BlackLands]

Update 08/01/2023

- I learnt how to use Figma's basic functionality for creating clickable wireframes. I also discovered that there are plugins in Figma that allow you to copy the design in such a way that you have a starting point, this saves a lot of time.
- I have created clickable wireframes with the main interfaces of the platform I intend to develop. I think I will post the results on various subreddits to get advice and understand what people think.
- I have created a Facebook/Instagram campaign that will be launched from Monday and will last 4 days, maximum budget 100€. The aim is to publicise the landing page and test the market.

 

[Javier Pena]

well done, man. Very inspiring that you good the right ingredients also, I a from Spain, so I understand the low perspective of life and mentality.

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 15/01/2023

• These days I started a Facebook and Instagram campaign of 100 euros maximum with the goal of validating my idea and verifying that many users would enter their email and show interest. I received very few responses. I created the landing page with Canva which unfortunately does not support Pixel, so I have no way to analyze some metrics related to the campaign. I learned an important lesson at my expense, always monitor metrics.
• I will use the 3A method learned from MJ to check if the lack of responses are due to an invalid idea or something I did wrong (e.g., copy or media content of the ADSs).
• Goal for this week is to recreate the landing page using a platform that supports Pixel and learn how to create multimedia content based on my target audience.
• I also arrived in Barcelona this week and will start work shortly, definitely slowing down my progress due to less time available.

 

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[amajangbah]

We are proud of you bro wish you all the best with your journey.Love from The Gambia.

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 22/01/2023

• I've arrived one week ago in Barcelona and I've spent most of times in make me comfortable in my new house and in the new city.
• I've start investing at least 30 minutes a day in learning Spanish since it would be important to make new relationship.
• Next week I'll join some meet-ups with other entrepreneurs.
• I didn't have a lot of time to work on my project, my goal for the next week is to create a list of errors I made and aspects where I can improve and based on this, create an action plan.

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 29/01/2023:

• I finished my first week of work as a Data Scientist. Good salary, good benefits, and most importantly my company is paying me to learn skills that will be useful for my entrepreneurial journey (analyzing churns, retentions, LTV, etc.).
• I attended several MeetUp on entrepreneurship where I met experienced people who gave me feedback on my idea and other useful things (customer acquisition, MVP building, and more).
• I finished a crash course on Bubble, my goal for next week is to implement the most important feature and use it as a prototype to give to users. No landing page this time, just a prototype.
• What will I do when I have a decent MVP? I will print flyers and place them in strategic places. Will it work? I don't know, but at least I'm getting out of the comfort zone.

 

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[BlackLands]

UPDATE 05/02/2023:

• I'm continuing developing my MVP.
• Twice a week I attend a meet-up with other entrepreneurs and I'm getting very useful feedbacks about my idea.

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 12/02/2023:

• I'm continuing developing my MVP.

 

[Tonci]

UPDATE 12/02/2023:

• I'm continuing developing my MVP.

Keep persevering with these weekly posts! It will create a good foundation for your success.

 

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[BlackLands]

UPDATE 19/02/2023:

• I'm continuing developing my MVP.

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 26/02/2023:

• Finishing to create the MVP

 

[BlackLands]

UPDATE 05/03/2023:

• In these days I slow down on my side project because of my new work. Furthermore I don't have a good work desk at home, so now I've ordered a second monitor, a good mouse and a good chair so that I can work from home and invest the time saved commuting in the project.
• At work I can talk with experts in marketing and innovation, I'm learning a lot of new stuffs that will be helpful in the future.

 

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[BlackLands]

UPDATE 12/03/2023:

• Good news at job, they liked my work and moved me to another team where I'll be surrounded by experts in Data Science and business. Growth, growth, growth.
• About my side project, while I'm waiting to receive my new equipment and to understand how manage my work-life balance, I'm reading story of people building saas using nocode tools. I think that's will be my way.

 

[Qeno]

I'm reading story of people building saas using nocode tools. I think that's will be my way.

Hi,
may I ask what stories you are reading? I'm interested in this topic and just checked convertkit out and I quite liked it.

 

[BlackLands]

Hi,
may I ask what stories you are reading? I'm interested in this topic and just checked convertkit out and I quite liked it.

Hi, if you search for "micro saas no code" on Google you'll find a lot of stories of people earning 50 to 1000 euro or more thanks to their SaaS built using no-code platform.

 

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[BlackLands]

UPDATE 19/03/2023:

• Okay guys, the progress on my MVP at the moment is a bit stopped since after work and considering the commuting time I don't have much time to work on it. By the way this week my second monitor should arrive and I will be able to start working from home.
• As I said in previous posts, I am working a lot at work but learning a lot of new things. I am asking for suggestions from many experienced people in the field of data science and business. I feel that I can grow fast and learn many new things that would be helpful in the future.