Reham Fagiri, co-founder of AptDeco, discusses product features and service experiments that failed to gain customer traction.
Insight
Fagiri: Online furniture marketplaces must offer delivery and full-service convenience
“You have to offer delivery, you have to take care of everything, you have to make it simple”
Insight
Fagiri: Early-Stage Startups Need Structured Weekly Meetings Despite Small Team Size
“Early on, sure, you're a tiny team, maybe you're like three or four people, and people sort of dismiss the idea of, oh, we don't really need structure, we can just talk to each other all the time, but having regular checkpoints, like weekly meetings, and you k…”
Insight
Fagiri: Surprising an employee with their termination is a management failure
“If it's a shock, that means as a manager you're doing something wrong. If they're surprised, that means you're doing something wrong.”
Insight
Fagiri: Optimize pricing and margins only after proving repeat customer demand
“Early on, You can't, like, you have, you can't be optimizing just yet for margins, but, you know, it doesn't mean that you offer your product for free, because you still don't know what goes into it, like, what are the different variables, but once you've esta…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fagiri: In-house delivery grew AptDeco word-of-mouth from 10% to 70%
“So, before we had our own delivery trucks, word of math probably accounted for around 10% of our business. After we changed to the model that we knew already worked months ahead of, months before, it accounted to around 60 to 70% of our business.”
Insight
Fagiri: Profitability gives founders complete control over their destiny
“Once you get to profitability, you're really in control of everything, and this is why we're very excited about the next chapter for App Deco.”