<aside> 👋 Hey there, this quarter’s update is less about growth numbers and milestones and more about our journey of building a company, recent findings, and ideas on strategy. We’ve learned some tough lessons already this year… including how to deal with scammy investors. Our patience, emotions, drive and business savviness were tested but I’m glad to share that we came out on top; a strong resilient team more passionate than before to help propel the performing arts with our innovations.
Since the beginning of the year, we’ve pushed 100+ improvements and bug fixes and released 5 major features requested by our customers. We’ve also had some exciting new companies join Lanced and our social reach on Instagram skyrocketed! All things considered, we are getting closer and closer to figuring out the spark that will launch us into the next phase.
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When I began Lanced back in 2021, I knew that this was going to take a long time. Especially since our market, the Performing Arts, is ridiculously slow with adopting tech. But the timing couldn’t be more perfect; the old-school Boomers are making place for the tech-savvy Millennials in most of the decision-making roles.
As the next generation is taking over and Millennials are all about productivity and doing things differently, we have a great window of opportunity for innovation and adaptation. I, however, had expected that adaptation to be faster. The reality is that Millennials are still fighting old-fashioned institutes with their dated ideology and willingness to innovate.
One of our most trusted advisors put it clearly: we are not just introducing a new product, we are introducing a new way of working, working with technology. This means a change in behavior. And well, behavior doesn’t change in a day. So buckle up, we’re gonna be on this ride for a while!
Jokes aside, I have received emails from potential customers saying “We’ve done X already for 25 years and are happy with our system”. You know they are not your early adopter.
This leads me to the second thing: in sectors like finance and advertising, more people are willing to try new things, explore the latest tech and offer early feedback. In the Performing Arts, this is not the case. People don’t appreciate a half-assed product being pushed down their throats through non-stop sales emails with very little brand awareness and credibility.
We just weren’t able to “sell” the typical startup MVP and needed to create something far richer in features and usability for companies to take us more seriously. So even though we currently have a very advanced and feature-rich platform live, we are still in our “MVP” phase.
Being a first-time founder, you get flooded with tips and tricks on how to build a startup and how to raise funds. People make you believe that you can raise funds based on an idea, pre-product or pre-revenue… but that’s far from the case in 2024. (especially when you’re in an unfamiliar market such as the Arts & Entertainment)
Our biggest feedback during the fundraising process has been “traction”. When and how much “traction” makes you attractive to invest in? These are the questions I have been trying to understand. Is it 2 customers? Is it 30? Is it your first sign of revenue? Is it x MoM growth?
I stopped searching for the answer because it is more important to focus on our customers and product at this stage. I have led go of the validation I am looking for from investors because validation from our customers is far more valuable. It took me a bit to figure this one out, call me a first-time founder!
Having said all of that, I want to take the time to build proper relationships with potential customers before “forcing” everyone to buy our products/services. I don’t want to rush to get revenue because I believe a few more test trials, transparent customer feedback and positive testimonials will get us way further in the long run. We’ve already established that companies want to pay for our MVP, so now it is up to us to understand what that full product needs to be.
As I mentioned before, our target market is slow with adaptation. So to us as a company (not just as a product) it’s important to build trust, gain credibility, and become much more established than your typical startup in order for us to really sell what we do.
That means that in the coming 6 months, we will shift our focus from direct sales to creating more partnerships and collaborations and implementing a heavy content strategy. It’s clear to us that we need to step into a more educational role of how the Performing Arts can benefit greatly from technology. We need to position ourselves/our brand as leaders of tech innovation in this sector. This is where personal branding comes in as well. Expect our social presence to sky-rocket in the coming months 🚀!
As our first step in building a more established look and feel for our customers, we have rebuilt our website and optimized our customer support channels. Check it out below: