As I feel little bit nostalgic today – there is lot of crazy people in Tartu developing new and crazy stuff… Same time I am sitting here behind my computer and figuring out ten more free marketing method for our newest project :)

And I started to think that maybe it is not bad idea to write about our first 6 month – from one side we are not very good example. No Seedcamps, no large investments and currently our target audience is still Estonia. But these have been our choices and we have some plans for future… Same time we have launched one project successfully in Garage – we made it work and currently we have launched second project and first weeks show that we are in right track again – with no marketing budget our children goods market still growing really fast and hopefully soon we already launch third part of our project.

We started in Garage with 7 members team – me as project manager and 6 IT guys… During our journey 2 members have left – no bad feelings, just they didn’t see that our project moves toward point where they wanted to be. All we other have been established company and we have some bigger milestones set.

Sometimes I think that what I would do differently if it would be again first day in Garage48 – and as weird it is there is not so many things. Of course if I would know everything what I know now then i would say big and final NO to Ruby on Rails – from one point Garage48 is place where you should try everything new, but same time if only one of your team-member can handle programming language in professional level and he will decide leave later – believe me – it means lot of headache for project manager and also quite big time delay.

During this 6 month there have been also some failures – maybe not big ones, but still. I have wrote several fund applications and these all have been declined. Also as our resources are quite limited then I have more ideas than guys can write into code.

I don’t know about this Garage, but last one in Tallinn in April there was requirement that in team must be project manager and marketeer – that seems quite good requirement. In some point of summer I started feel really burn-out as being only in team who leads projects, does marketing, writing articles and handles customer complaints – and all of this as part time job. It can become as bottleneck in some point.

Also for all project manager I want suggest – discuss the basic but don’t take IT side to deep into analyzis. If you presented idea and got the team – so it means that you know what you are talking about. And you don’t have time to get 100% right answers – if you get 50%+ right answers – it is enough. And if you want feedback then discuss your idea in forums, with friends who are your direct target group etc. Of course it means that if your guesses were wrong then you will fail, but that is risk what every project manager need to take.

If to reflect little bit longer about this team side then I guess that this is question of luck – you will get really random team and if you are not Guru of some team-leading method then there will come some complications anyway. Even if you will be as lucky as I was then still – even professional and diverse team can have some challenges. In our case one team member left as his time was limited and he just didn’t felt connected with topic – this is soft version… With other team member it was much harder – he was interested but he wanted answers what I didn’t know at this time and maybe some of them I don’t know yet. I am more person who likes to see from where wind will come and decide then do we need shelters or windmills – for him it was really important to get longer goal and strong focus. Of course we could make some compromise but it would be painful for all team – so we needed to let him leave, even if it meant that we lost lot of valuable resources.

But I must say that this half year have been really good… As I said that we haven’t applied any Seedcamps, got no investments and still working for Estonian market. But this have been really our choice – as single parent then it is little bit tricky for me to be away too long, there have been interested third parts but we just wanted to try our ideas first when we start to do long term promises and there are enough IT start-ups that start to look international ways in early stage… Sometimes slower way can be better.

And I hope that next year I will be in Garage again – but I need first idea what I truly believe in. Until this I just continue to make Estonian parents life easier and try some new approach with my team.

Estonian Babysitter Database (EN) – launched online 27th February in Garage48 : Public Services

Children’s product market (ET) – launched for public beginning of August

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