Ask Me Anything feat. Kirk Simpson
Kirk
Member Posts: 25 admin
Hi all,
I want to thank everyone for joining us here today. It’s incredibly rewarding to have your interest and support and I’m looking forward to a great conversation. I hope to continue to see you around the Community because everyone here at HQ is looking forward to chatting with you, and sharing news and updates.
I’d be happy to give you my perspective on starting and scaling a business, and the challenges of entrepreneurship. I’m also interested in learning more about your businesses and experiences. Ask me anything!
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Comments
What blogs, podcasts, news sources, and so on do you follow, that make you smarter about business?
Hi Briella! Thanks for being our first question.
I dabble in a lot of different places, looking for trends. There are a lot of good business books that I generally don’t finish. Recent reading: Talent Wins; The Excellence Dividend; and How Luck Happens.
I’m always in news sources like New York Times and Wall Street Journal. I’m not very into podcasts, but I’ve liked the “Masters of Scale” by Reid Hoffman.
You didn’t go to business school as far as I can see. Do you wish you had, or is that not necessary in your opinion?
I didn’t even finish undergrad!
It certainly made some things more difficult and it probably would have been easier if I had just stayed the course. But some people have to learn by doing, and I was one of those people.
Having said that, I’ll be honest and say I still have a bit of a chip on my shoulder because I didn’t finish it.
@JackP @JTolsma please feel free to jump in!
How prepared were you to scale upwards? What were some signals that you needed to scale? What bumps did you encounter?
Do you consider yourself a workaholic, and do you think that’s a requirement for a successful entrepreneur?
No, I don’t think I’m a workaholic. I think I’m constantly striving to strike a better balance though. When you’re passionate about what you do, it’s easy for your family to see that and to want to support it.
What’s the biggest challenge of communicating your vision to prospective investors?
We thought we were ready, as we were seeing tens of thousands of small businesses coming onto Wave. Soon after, we truly discovered that we weren’t!
Mostly, that was communication and process not keeping up with what the growing team required. At that point, we had to retrench a bit, and that was hugely painful, but we learned a valuable lesson from it, obviously, and in 2016 - when we started to grow rapidly again - we made sure we didn’t make the same mistakes, by taking the pulse of the growing team much more frequently.
Painting a big enough story while also being succinct.
Understanding what motivates them (and their firm) and making sure you can tie what you’re doing with why it matters to them.
@Kellie !
What sparked you to develop another accounting solution in a crowded and dominated market? Was there a specific gap/problem you set out to solve? How has that changed since launching Wave?
What was the most stressful or challenging part of your first year in business?
Why free?
I had started a couple of businesses previously, and if it weren’t for my sister being a CPA I would have got myself into a lot of trouble!
Most small business owners are like me: They’re passionate about running their business, and hate everything about bookkeeping, collecting payments, etc.
We felt there was a reason 50-60% of business owners were using shoeboxes instead of software and that’s because accounting software has typically been built more for the accountant than the small business owner themselves.
Our driving mission has always been to solve this, and to this day it still drives me and the team every single day, because we know we’re not finished with the mission yet.
But we’re deeply committed to taking the pain away and delivering the insights that entrepreneurs need to be successful.
How did you initially "get out the gate" in the crowded space of accounting platforms? What was that launch like? How did you find your first customers at startup who were willing to give you a try vs entrenched competitors? For example, I heard about Wave through a professional network in my industry, otherwise I wouldn't have found you when I started my business. ;-)
Survival.
We needed to raise money and it was really, really challenging; while also trying to build the product, build the team, and attract customers.
For a tech startup, those first 12 months are both exhilarating and exhausting, and if you can get through them and build a product that customers actually love, you’re off to a good start. But those first 12 months are really challenging.
I believe that financial literacy is essential to the success of any small business, and we were committed to the idea of getting great accounting software into every small business’ hands, whether they could pay for it or not.
I’m also passionate about the idea that the first and hardest step in business is to find a way to deliver massive value to customers - and if you do that well, you can then find ways to grow revenue. And that’s what we’ve seen at Wave - we welcome millions of free customers, and as our customers are growing, they naturally have the need and opportunity to consume payments and payroll services that Wave offers as affordable, paid services - building value for themselves and for Wave.
Our first mistake was thinking everyone would be super-interested what we were doing, so we kept everything “stealth” until launch: and almost no-one noticed!
So getting out the gate was about getting the message out everywhere we could - blogs; networking groups; partners; associations. And it was really, really hard! But this is somewhere that the decision to go with a free price truly paid back - new entrepreneurs need to keep cost down, and there’s willingness to try a product that comes at a radical new price point.
Being free on its own isn’t enough to guarantee success - the product and the service needs to be on point too. But if you get those things right, a market-beating price offer certainly helps break through and get noticed.
In February 2011 (a few months after launch) we struck gold. The Google Chrome store opened and we built a very simple integration, customized our listing and paid a $5 listing fee. In March we were picked by the Editor’s to be at the top of the list and the floodgates opened. It was such a high.
From there we’ve used that playbook to do well on SEO, app stores and a bunch of other sources. When we were chosen by PC Mag as the Editor’s Choice in our space it was validation that we were on the right path.
The "free" business model is great and was a huge factor in getting me to finally switch to an online solution (hurts me to admit I was a shoebox and excel spreadsheet person for far too long!). Wave was really the first thing I came across that seemed to understand what my little two-person creative agency needed and how we worked. THANK YOU!
That literally made my day. Thank you for sharing that.
With artificial intelligence, do you think we will need accountants in 10 years?
@SurferMedina
The work that accountants and bookkeepers do today is radically different to what it would have been even 30 years ago, thanks to accounting software. No-one is manually keeping books on paper now!
I think AI is really a continuation of the same. AI has the potential to replace even more of the routine tasks of bookkeeping - simple categorization, for example - but I don’t see this reducing the importance of accountants. In fact, with AI making it easier for all business owners to keep their basic records in a good place, it creates an even bigger space and value for accountants to be interpreting information, and providing advice and guidance for small business owners.
@JJITPro
Was there a turning point with Wave, when things changed from “this is a super-risky idea” to “I’m confident this will work”?
And a follow-up: if one of your kids said they wanted to drop out of college and start a business, what would you say?
I feel motivated and driven every day because nothing is guaranteed in a startup - you just have to keep getting better every day. Standing still and being confident about your existing position is just not a place that I ever go to. I know all of our small business customers have a lot of options in the market, and I would never take that for granted.
What are the pros and cons of a co-founder or co-owner of the business?