I got some inspiration from 37signals Signal vs Noise post "Forget passion, focus on process" for this post.
About 3 years ago I started a new company that has produced so far 4 startup projects. Back then we did not know at all what we should do. We had so little experience in doing startups from scratch, so we found a market were we thought that we could do a difference.
This was the start of cSupport Live Chat. We already had an idea of this market. Kasper Christensen, the co-founder of the company, was a web designer for big web agencies, but he found it difficult to find any both esthetically nice and reasonable priced live chat solution. So we agreed to do this as a test project. This would prove if we could do a startup from scratch! So we worked, and worked, and worked.
While our competitors were large teams, we were just two guys. While our competitors had funding, we bootstrapped. And let me say, boy it was hard. I had no idea how much work it was to actually build this live chat solution we imagined. I don't think I have tried anything as hard as that, including my time in military, and moving to other country with no network starting from scratch again.
However we succeeded despite all the hardships. It seams that our lower prices have lowered the overall pricing for live chat, part of the number one goal. Our live chat is one of the most well-designed, and competitors seams to begin caring more about the design/UX, also part of the number one goal. We were profitable after 6 months (probably was a little more for breaking even). It seams that all our competitors had heavy funding, and therefor had a much, much longer period before breaking even. And we proved to ourselves that we are able to built functioning startups from scratch!
But in the end, was it worth it?
At times I wonder why I did go through all that. What do I care about live chat and customer service! I am just a programmer, a creator! In the process I learned the importance of customer service, more about doing sales, landing pages, user experience, design, accounting, and so many other things.
But where was the passion? Why continue? The focus was not to make much money, but to offer a great alternative, and give us the experience we need to release bigger projects (as we are now doing with Peakium). It definitely did that! But I discovered that one of the most important things in entrepreneurship is not what you are doing and feeling, but it is what your customers are doing and feeling! They trust in your product to be the best for their money.
With their money they say that your product is the best solution to their problems!
This is what will keep you going! Your customers happiness for a great product, as well as your employees happiness to work on something that does a difference in people's lifes!