Today is Week #1431, weeks are calculated based on my age, and it has been 1431 weeks since I was born. Let’s start this.
I started with an IT service agency because I wanted to become self-employed and then an entrepreneur, so I never have to worry about making money. It’s been more than 5+ years (2,141 days), and I think I did become self-employed (sometimes I also doubt it), but my entrepreneur journey is taking so many hits.
Week #1074: First Internship
I started working with Arbunize and learning about doing business. I mostly worked on software development to deliver website development projects.
Week #1103: Plan for Neolen
Week After being good in building software, I planned to start my own agency, Neolen. People ask me why I chose this name. I chose the random name because I wanted to create a meaning for the name instead of choosing a name that already had meaning.
Week #1125: A day of my graduation
I made a decision to not to do job and reject my QA Infotech Offer and decided to so with Arbunize to learn entrepreneurship.
Week #1282: My First Startup – Pacome
When I was working with Arbunize, I tried to build a product for the stock market to provide predictions on buying and selling signals. But the product failed because I was not able to create a good algorithm for predictions, and the competition was high. There were many reasons, such as lack of planning or research; I just approached it with a “just do it” approach.
Week #1307: A day Neolen is Born
I started with Neolen, doing web development projects and looking for new projects. I found a few new clients through referrals by friends or other clients, and things were good for 2 years. Then new projects were declined, and I had to reduce the company staff from 10 to 4. Since I was not doing marketing and sales properly, I was not getting new clients.
Week #1336: My Second Startup Neoverse
AR/VR has always interested me; I believe it is the future and presents the best trillion-dollar opportunity. However, sometimes I feel I’m not ready for it. So, I decided to build a game in AR/VR called Neoverse, where people can play, have fun, and earn crypto. It’s a world where everything is governed by games, much like the anime “No Game No Life.” I spent a lot of time planning and writing a white paper, as well as helping developers who were building the game. Unfortunately, I had to stop this project due to a lack of money, as Neolen was not performing well, and I didn’t have the funds to invest in another project.
Week #1364: My Third Startup Neoleads
I believe the third product I built was an extension for Upwork freelancers to assist them in crafting Upwork cover letters and finding matching jobs with the best shortlisting rates. I conceived this project because one of my clients sold his text-to-audio company for $200K with only 1K active users, and I wanted to quickly make money. Additionally, I thought it would help me secure projects for Neolen through Upwork. However, despite my intentions to create a successful product, it did not work out as planned. I launched it with a flawed product, which took too much time to develop. Moreover, I faced stiff competition and struggled to attract customers, as I hesitated to invest in advertising because I felt the market is too small and not worth it.
Week #1384: Complete Pivot of Neoleads
I realized that I needed to learn marketing to attract more customers for Neolen, so I decided to embark on learning marketing. While learning marketing, I also decided to undertake a marketing project. This time, I conducted thorough research and published a few blogs that you can find on the website.
I began building an email marketing project and launched the first use case, targeting startups to connect with investors. However, after working on it for more than 9 months, I find it hard to believe that it will succeed. The market competition is intense, and there’s a significant spam problem that seems almost impossible to fix. I understand that developing different use cases and gradually onboarding customers is the only way to make it successful over time.
Week #1431: Refocus on Neolen
Since I’ve learned email marketing and acquired valuable knowledge that can help me acquire new clients for Neolen, my priority now is to stabilize my primary business, find new clients, and establish a solid service-based company generating at least $1 million in revenue per year. I plan to open an office as well. Concurrently, I will continue working on Neoleads to launch new use cases and onboard new customers until either I sell it or decide to close or pivot it.
Stay tuned for more updates.