120 Days of Retail: Day 60 - Progress Recap

One of the hardest things about creating a company from nothing is ignoring feedback. Not customer feedback- that's more valuable than gold. But ignoring feedback from non-customers, who are your only sounding board before you build a product.

The founders of Airbnb, who are both designers, were told by dozens of investors and venture capitalists in their first year that their idea was trash. One investor even Irish exited their lunch meeting without saying anything.

Of the hundreds of introductory emails they sent to potential investors, one read "I like everything but you and your idea"-- leading one founder to ask, well what else is there?

In the last 60 days ListIt planned to create an MVP, soft launch to a small group, then begin growing and expand to at least one other software engineer and ideally a customer service person.

None of it happened. A crappy website has been chipped away at slowly, a bunch of blog articles have been written, and we've filed but not received paperwork back yet to incorporate.

But here's what we have done:

• Learned a ton about the retail sector and its need for omnichannel solutions for small businesses
• Zoomed in on the problem of buy online pickup in-store (aka Click-and-Collect) to more easily explain the value-add to local businesses
• Learned that demand for pickup in-store is growing faster than the demand for delivery (4x faster!)
• Filed to incorporate as a C corporation in Delaware and learned about filing taxes as a solo founder

On the one hand, it's not much. It doesn't matter how much you train to box if you never go into the ring and fight anyone. Your record is still zero-zero.

However we do feel we've learned a lot and become even more convinced of the necessity of the idea. Which isn't nothing.

ListIt is the Buy Online Pickup In-Store solution for local retailers. It’s free and takes only seconds to upload your first product. You can reach out to me directly at james@listit.one