Uncut's fragile vision and BHAG
The art of alternating doubt and conviction without losing one's bearings and ambition
Photo by 立志 牟 on Unsplash
This spring, we finally decided to turn Uncut into a reality by raising an initial $2 million round of funding with a handful of amazing investors and business angels. As a podcaster myself, I'd been considering doing something in the audio space since 2020 and had explored different ideas with varying degrees of success. But in early 2021, my ideas suddenly became clearer. I knew I wanted to help creators build stronger relationships with their audiences by providing a home base where hosts and listeners can have direct access to each other.
At that time, Uncut was just wishful thinking — not yet a product and not even a team. There was just Jeremy, my co-founder. Alicia, our community manager, had just joined. We knew everything lay ahead of us.
The first thing we decided to do was engage in extensive conversations with a ton of podcasters to make sure our vision resonated with them. Over the course of two months, we spoke with more than 50 hosts and gathered invaluable insights that helped us realize just how many issues creators face today.
All of this feedback was gold. But at the same time, it almost killed us by taking us away from what had brought us together in the first place. In May, we were about to pivot and start building something that had nothing to do with what we had originally planned. Thank God Judith, our partner at La Famiglia, got us back on track and helped us refocus on our original vision:
Uncut is a place for podcasters to strengthen their relationship with their audience. Our multiplayer format breaks down the barriers between hosts and listeners. It's a home base where podcast hosts can build and own a community around their content and receive valuable feedback and qualitative data, episode by episode.
Having a strong vision from the start and sticking to it certainly gives you a better chance at building a meaningful and sustainable startup more quickly. But a vision is always a fragile artifact, and listening to your future users is a necessary but dangerous exercise. You have to maintain a balance between permanent doubt and strong conviction. Easier said than done. If you ask yourself and others too many questions, you end up like Tom Thumb — lost in the forest. If you don't listen to anyone and never admit you might be wrong? You’re a schmuck. But that doesn’t mean you should strike a median stance between doubt and certainty. To pursue one’s vision, it is necessary to develop almost a bipolar behavior — constantly alternating between doubt and conviction while still falling back on your feet each time.
It takes time to find that balance, and you need to be surrounded by people who maintain the right distance from your daily activities while carefully understanding your context. We are grateful to have these people around us. Of course, this should be the role of your investors. But if you don't have any yet (or if you don't have the right ones), you can always find experienced entrepreneurs to play this mentoring role for you.
That hesitation in May 2021 didn't kill us, but it did push us back a month or two on our product roadmap. Fortunately, we are back on track. At the end of June, we wrote our 2021 Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and we are now executing on it:
In the rest of 2021, we'll release an MVP we will be super proud of (by end of September), onboard our first 20 BETA users, continue to innovate in a feature-per-week format, and build strong relationships with our first creators. In total, over 200 creators will be onboarded over the course of the year and we will launch unparalleled features that will help them strengthen relationships with their audience. Uncut will start to gain momentum in the creator economy space with +2,000 people signed up for our newsletter, Twitter channel and waiting list. It's going to be GREEAT and we'll be all super pumped about what's ahead!
I'll be back with you regularly on this BHAG to see what we did well, what we fell short of, and what we completely screwed up. Stay tuned!
Carlos Diaz - Founder and CEO of Uncut