I started my company Ascendant.Finance in 2021 with the intention of helping small businesses that were interesting in launching web3 services to equip themselves with the technology and understanding on how to do it. By year three, we were creating software with the same objective. Here are some important things I learned about myself, about business, and software in the last three years from my experience consulting and launching my own startups.
Solo Founders Are At Disadvantage
Year Three was the year is started to become impossible for me to do everything myself. I was trying to market and do sales meetings during the day, and write code at night into the early morning. It wasn’t very healthy nor very sustainable. Also, because I had limited time for each part of the business, the quality suffered in each aspect. I couldn’t always be available for sales calls or responding to issues with bugs. I created a great lead magnet but could barely find time to aggressively push it. I imagine this is why being a solo founder isn’t recommended. With these shortcomings, I knew I was at a disadvantage compared to a team with a dedicated CEO, CMO, CTO, etc. So this was the year that I focused a lot on bringing in people who could fill in the gaps.
Fall In Love With The Problem, Not The Solution
I learned to be obsessed with the problem, and not the product I was trying to sell. I love building SaaS because I hate doing the same work twice, especially when I can find an easier, more efficient way to build a framework for what I do, automate the process, and then sell the result at reduced cost and zero to no labor. The most important component to that (and this is part of the reason why I say I learned to become obsessed with the problem and not the product), is that the processes I was trying to automate were all jobs I was actually getting paid for. In other words, I had good reason to believe that the product would have a market because it was solving a problem that I was already getting paid to solve. This was a drastically different outlook than what I had when I started the company back in 2021. Having no clients or not even having worked in the industry, I built the product that was in my head, and then tried to go looking for buyers. The process took months and was not very fruitful. I think many entrepreneurs and founders do this and receive similar results. You marry yourself to the product without really solidifying the “who” and “how” and “why.” You just start it because it sounded like a great idea. The few SaaS that I have built at this point (CryptoCadet Pay and LogBook), were weekend projects that I built out of the desire to either speed up or completely automate tedious and sometimes complicated processes that I was already getting paid to solve and therefore I would benefit from them even if I had zero users.
As an addendum to that point, it’s okay to dream big, but if you don’t have any user data to support your lofty ambitions, you may be positioning yourself for failure. This is usually the part where a founder might expect to rely heavily on viral marketing, because they themselves do not know how to reach their consumer. But if you don’t know, the marketer you’re paying all that money likely won’t have a better idea than you. “Shouldn’t it be their job to know?” That is an optimistic perspective that will only be proven faulty after you’ve already shelled out thousands of dollars minimum, unfortunately. It is harder to find your customer niche than you think it is. Doing surveys and market research will help, but nothing will prove that your product has a market better than getting people to actually sign up and use it. This is where you will often hear the advice on finding product market fit, that the process should be organic, and with minimal to zero ad spend, in order to truly find your consumer niche.
Where To Start
Someone asked me how to get into web3. This person was asking about web3 development specifically, but my advice applies to all aspects. You have to be obsessed with it. You cannot build one thing one way and expect it to stand forever. You can’t expect that one marketing approach that worked in 2021 will work in 2025. You are constantly learning new things, and testing that understanding against your old habits and perceptions. That is a challenge, but it is also why there is so much opportunity to identify a new problem and be the one to profit from its solution.
TechJD is the Founder of Ascendant.Finance, which assists web2 businesses to transition to web3, consulting on all facets including SEC compliance, tokenomics, development, and connecting with angel investors. For more information check out ascendant.finance or join the Discord.
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