My Experience as a First-Time Founder
This is the story of how I started Career Principles, an online education company with the goal of becoming a career-focused alternative to university
Just over a year ago, my co-founder and I started Career Principles from scratch. And when I say from scratch I really mean it. No name, no logo, no website, and no money. But hey, at least we had an idea we believed in.
Our vision was (and still is) to become a career-focused alternative to university. We’re not there yet, but that’s where we want to go.
Business Strategy
Every successful company has 2 pillars: Product and Distribution.
Product (which can also be a service) is what you have to offer. For us it’s online courses teaching you real-world skills such as financial modelling, data visualization, and business analytics. Eventually, we hope to transition from just offering courses, to offering career tracks where students will be able to explore different careers, learn industry-specific skills, and recruit for those jobs.
Then there’s distribution. This is all about how you acquire customers. Common distribution methods include paid ads, referrals, SEO, and more. And here’s where we had a competitive advantage. I already had a YouTube Channel with 30k subscribers at the time. This meant I had an audience that was interested in what I had to say. So that’s where we initially plugged Career Principles, and that eventually led to our first sales. From there, we’ve been working on building multiple distribution funnels to diversify our sales channels.
Given our limited resources (we’re bootstrapped) it’s difficult to prioritize one over the other. It’s the classic chicken and egg problem. Without sales we can’t build a good product, and without a good product we can’t sell. To some degree, I think raising money could help us focus on product first, and then optimize distribution. That said, we’ll see if we end up raising!
My Business Background
While this is my first company, I’ve had a few similar side hustles. This is important to note as I had already acquired a set of skills that would serve us well at Career Principles.
First, I knew how to write (reasonably well). I practiced on Medium, where I got paid to write articles on business concepts. Eventually, these articles got published on major Medium publications. This was a big confidence booster, as it was my first time making money on the internet. If you’re curious about the stats, I had 150k+ views in my first year.
Second, I knew how to teach. While studying at Cornell University, I worked as a teaching assistant, then expanded on that by creating a course on Udemy, which ended up selling to over 500 students with a 4.7 star rating.
Third, I knew how to create. It started with a career-focused YouTube Channel that amassed over 30k subscribers and 2 million+ views in one year. Below is what the channel looks like as of April 2023.
Each of these side hustles taught me relevant skills for building an online education company. These skills include how to write, teach, edit video, design, market, and sell. So by the time I went all in on Career Principles, I felt confident I was well equipped for the job.
My Take on Solopreneur vs. Entrepreneur
While I’m sure there’s cases of successful solo-founders, for me, it was essential to have Michael (my co-founder) on board. Not just for the great work he does, but also for having somebody else to share the highs and lows with. I think it was important for me to understand my limitations in doing things alone, and I’m thankful Michael felt ready to go all-in on Career Principles with me.
P.S. Michael, if you’re reading this, I appreciate you man!
The Struggles
It would be disingenuous not mention some of our struggles. As a startup, especially a bootstrapped one, you’re always stresses out about money. Do we have enough to pay our team? Can we invest in more people? Is it too risky? These are all decisions that I struggle with — especially when we’re dealing with people’s livelihood. Fortunately, the business has done much better than we anticipated, so we haven’t had unprofitable months. Nonetheless, it’s still something that keeps me up at night.
Another strategic part we struggle with is distribution. Finding the right channels to acquire customers is harder than we anticipated. We’ve had a lot of trial and error there with different channels. That said, in the past few months, we’ve started to see some encouraging signs. Fingers crossed!
The Future
Despite these struggles, I’m finding the startup experience to be very rewarding. Getting warm messages from students reminds us of the impact we’re having on thousands of people’s careers.
While we still have a long way to go — both on product and distribution, I’m excited for what the future holds.
As I’m writing this, I’m started to get energized again. Let me hit publish and get back to work.
