Espruce
Grooming platform for people across the globe
Disclamer - This is a journey, not a project
Before we begin, I must inform you that the documentation for this project is focused on the journey and learnings and not the outcomes. You can navigate below from the index to your preferred section
Why a Startup?
We all have our driving factors and our inner motivations, so it is important to understand why we do something, why I chose to put myself through 2 years for unlimited work irrespective of the slim odds of a startup success.
"WHY" can help figure us out all the HOW's of anything. Since we cannot deepdive a lot, I'll try to explain my why in a few short points. You can also see a brief diagram below to understand it better.
1. Extremely humble beginnings - Living in old Delhi, One room for a family of 5, no money for school, tuition and sometimes even for electricity
2. Extremely supportive family - My mother has always motivated to do my best, which ended up making me pretty above average kid at most things who believes that he will change his legacy. Got into NID- Somehow and also got a decent job
3. Money at the centre of it all - I got a job and started earning, soon my big (Job can make you so much money ) bubble was burst. This happened the moment I started calculating about buying a house for my parents. I realized that it would take me 30+ years to just get out of the home loan! I was scared.
PS: all this realization happened in first 12 months of my job
The conception
So I waited, for thirty days just contemplating and not giving it much thought. After 30 days I was convinced so I decided to take action on it.
"If you really love an idea, wait for at least 30 days, if you still love it after that, it's probably worth pursuing"
My older sister is a makeup artist, which meant that I was in and out of salons a lot when I was young. So, it struck me, hey, our salon industry is not organized and I probably have found a gap. No major player in the market and so on...
The guidance
Well now I needed to figure out how to go about it. We had a couple of courses called design management which helped us learn the basics of starting a company. So I revisited my projects, reached out to my faculties and reached a decision that it was the right thing to pursue this thing. Here are a couple of reasons
I was young
I had very less responsibilities
I was just starting my career
The risk was limited
The actual doing.. eat, work, then work more, and repeat..
So a lot of things began, I started gathering data and doing my research and found a lot of things. Talk about vaildating our assumptions.
Space for insights and Data
Problem statement
"In order to streamline the appointment booking experience for customers and alleviate common challenges encountered when searching for a salon or spa, we aim to develop a solution that enhances the efficiency and ease of scheduling appointments while effectively resolving key customer pain points in the salon selection process."
The Fun part - Design
Crunching the numbers- (Show visual Data here)
Designing was probably the most clear and easy part of this whole journey, the trickiest part was the number!
How do we find the estimate to get a runway for two years?
How much are we going to spend on Marketing
What would be the EBITDA
What would be the net cash flow
At what percentage would you grow month on month
These are probably not that difficult questions to answer if you've run a startuo before. For me, IT WAS.
So after a lot of help and reading and feedback, we were able to answer these questions. At least some of them.
MVP or MLP
The business modal
Gathering Salons
Going To Market - How do we get our 1st 100 customers
Learning
That's all folks
Finding Funding
Before we begin, I must inform you that the documentation for this project is focused on the journey and learnings and not the outcomes. You can navigate below from the index to your preferred section
Disclamer - This is a journey, not a project
We all have our driving factors and our inner motivations, so it is important to understand why we do something, why I chose to put myself through 2 years for unlimited work irrespective of the slim odds of a startup success.
"WHY" can help figure us out all the HOW's of anything. Since we cannot deepdive a lot, I'll try to explain my why in a few short points. You can also see a brief diagram below to understand it better.
1. Extremely humble beginnings - Living in old Delhi, One room for a family of 5, no money for school, tuition and sometimes even for electricity
2. Extremely supportive family - My mother has always motivated to do my best, which ended up making me pretty above average kid at most things who believes that he will change his legacy. Got into NID- Somehow and also got a decent job
3. Money at the centre of it all - I got a job and started earning, soon my big (Job can make you so much money ) bubble was burst. This happened the moment I started calculating about buying a house for my parents. I realized that it would take me 30+ years to just get out of the home loan! I was scared.
PS: all this realization happened in first 12 months of my job