With all the fuss going on about the financial crisis in the US, and how it is affecting (or will be affecting) other countries around the world, I’ve done loads of reading about how startups get specially affected by this low points.
It has also helped a lot by allowing me the time to take a look at Contenidos En LÃnea and Dixo.com.
We’ve recently had to cut out about 45% of our content developers at Dixo, and although this has nothing to do with the US, it is in direct response of the significant cuts in marketing investment by our clients (which may or may not be a way for them to cover their ass for what is next to come).
This has lead us to reestablish much of what’s been going on with Dixo, its way of creating revenue, getting to know the mexican market, and the focus on the product. More importantly, we’ve been concentrating on seeing Dixo as a product and not as the company for the first time, which has pushed me into exploring the possibility of creating new projects.
This strategic thinking came out as a response of a very difficult position that meant laying off lots of great people and it was not an easy thing to do, but hopefully this decision will lead us into creating a strong platform for Dixo, and then of course we can gain back all this great talent onto a much healthier status of the company.
Preparing ourselves for all this has meant a lot of growing. For most of the partners this is our first ever company, and for me it is my very first idea, so I’m really happy that this happened since it helped me to take a much broader look at the business. It is true, there is a lot of work that has to be done from the inside, but also we have now the opportunity to evolve this idea into something much stronger. As Jason talked about in his Startup Depression essay/mail/post:Â
“Your first idea is rarely your best”
So I’m really excited of what is next to come… I have a couple of projects I’ll be announcing very soon. Both of them I’m happy to say are born from all the knowledge we’ve acquired so far. As for Dixo, we will continue to work on it and to take it closer to it goals.
While we are at it, we’ll try to survive what ever comes out from this situation in the US. It is true that Mexico always gets affected to whatever goes on with our neighbors, and as you already know, this crisis has already started to leave some casualties on the tech and web business area. As Martin Varsavsky (FON) puts it here, we may experience a period similar to what went on from 2001 to 2005. Calacanis points out in the same essay that the market will not be healthy until 2010Â (personal bet), but hopefully Rafael (CEO @ Substance) is right while saying that the internet provides better ROI than any other media and since this is true, the online marketing industry won’t be as affected as others.
My bet is on perfecting the strategy, setting goals and finding great new talent to work with. Not an easy task, but definitely the best way to get yourself around.