For years, I carried a naive belief: ‘Just do the work & everything else will take care of itself’. Then a painful experience shattered this belief. Here’s the story & 2 things I would now advise my younger self. A short post
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It’s 2018, 8 years since I started 321 Foundation. All this while we have focussed on 1 aim: Improve learning for some of India’s poorest children. A big funder invites us to be part of their impact evaluation. We say yes.
Several other organisations also agree to this independent evaluation. In most schools, Baseline shows only 20% students at desired learning levels. Then each organization implements their program in their respective schools. After a year the Endline is done.
Sadly most programs show no major improvement over the 20%. Then we get our results. We have delivered a ~ 4x improvement. (Nearly 80% of students reach mastery) We are flooded with a mix of joy, relief & pride. It has taken a decade of relentless work to get here.
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Next year we 10X the number of students in the program. The results sustain. We clearly have something that works. I take this data to potential funders. On top of my list is a prominent funder who had asked for more rigorous impact evidence. We have it now. So I approach him…
He says: “Gaurav this is great but if your impact is so good, why haven’t I heard more about you from others ?” This stuns me. A while back, I had decided to reduce our outreach & focus on building a world class program. My hope was that the results would speak for themselves.
The funder said no & many others said something similar. This shook my naive belief: ‘Just do the work & everything else will take care of itself’ We had done the work & had the results. But I had not built enough credibility beyond our core supporters & this hurt us.
(Credibility is essential to increase your luck)
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For a long time I was angry at myself for making this mistake. Recently I have seen many founders share how this is a common ‘1st time founder’ mistake. At-least I am not the only naive fool.
Knowing all this, the 2 things I would tell my younger self:
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1️⃣ Know This
A → better product B → better distribution A vs B: B will win most times. You might dislike this but don’t disregard it. If you don’t want to become B & don’t want to struggle like A: Become C. C → Great product + Great Distribution. C is unstoppable.
2️⃣ Do This
Marketing ≠ ‘Yucky’ Ex. 1: #buildinpublic People do the work AND talk about it: their highs-lows, learning & questions Gets others to cheer for them Ex. 2: My friend Henry May’s update emails It’s informative, fun & personal It makes me feel part of his journey
This kind of marketing doesn’t seem hard or yucky. It sounds fun, I could have done it & it would have helped so much.
——— That’s why I share these stories. They help me get stuff off my chest & hopefully will help someone in a similar state.