G: Tell us about your start-up?
Yearbook Machine creates yearbooks for school and university students. We pride ourselves
on the quality of our printed yearbooks and our intuitive yearbook creation system, which
minimises the amount of work for both the person in charge of the book and its users.
Each user goes online to upload images and answer questions about themselves and their
friends. The content generated from this private social network is then turned into a beautiful
yearbook.
We started creating yearbooks as a direct result of our own frustrations. When leaving school
we couldn’t find a quality product that was easy to make, so we did it ourselves. Our school
asked us to create the yearbook the following year, and again the feedback was incredibly
positive. With this in mind we began to develop an online system that would allow us to scale
and create yearbooks for multiple schools and universities. It’s still a work in progress, but
we definitely feel we’re moving in the right direction; Last summer six thousand students
tested the latest version of our online system.
G: What were the biggest obstacles launching the start-up and how did you overcome
them?
The biggest obstacle was probably our lack of experience, having never created nor run a
business before. Furthermore, we founded a software company, and yet at the time neither of
us had any experience managing software projects. We managed to overcome the problem
by outsourcing our software development. By doing this we were still able to manage how
our yearbooks creation system would look, because we were designing the interface, but we
didn’t have to manage how it was programmed. As a result software engineers in Romania
and Poland developed the first three versions of the online system. It was not all plain
sailing though, the experience was still time consuming and undoubtedly stressful at times.
Importantly though it allowed us to avoid having to build a software team in house, which
was necessary given the associated costs, and because we were still studying for our degrees.
G: What would you say has been your most memorable experiences while developing
your startup?
Moving into our first office last July was memorable because previously the business had
been run out of our bedrooms at university. It confirmed that we were taking Yearbook
Machine seriously, seeing it as something more than a way of earning extra money each
summer. In that same month we also won an enterprise competition at Cambridge University,
and the founder of the business, Dan, dropped out of the same university to concentrate
wholly on the business. It was an exciting time, but it also felt a bit serious as we stepped out
of our comfort zone into the unknown.
Another memorable moment came in April of this year when our website continually crashed
because of the volume of people online. It was incredibly stressful at the time but with
hindsight it was a good thing, for it confirmed that people were really enjoying using our
service.
G: Tell us about DO’s and DON’Ts when starting the company?
Do:
Take your time. Where possible develop the idea first in your spare time. This will help to
avoid any rash decisions.
To begin with concentrate on the product itself, and don’t stop improving that product until
it’s at a level that you’re proud of. Ask yourself if you’d really want to pay if somebody else
was offering such a service.
Be open-minded about leaving your comfort zone. For example we outsourced the
development of our software to Romania and Poland, which presented a number of problems
but more importantly it allowed us to reach the position that we’re in now.
Be prepared to learn new skills. This is especially essential if working in a small team
because otherwise you may become too reliant on one individual creating a bottleneck
situation.
Don’t:
Become too absorbed by the whole networking ideal, and don’t worry too much about
impressing other startups. Early on the most important thing is to concentrate on what you’re
doing.
Don’t take a short-term view. When we were twenty we thought it was going to be easy to
create the company that we wanted. Naturally, these things take time and there are lots of
things to learn along the way.
G: Why do you choose Shoreditch to run your business?
Before we moved to Old Street in July 2010 we’d read quite a bit about the developing tech
scene, so this naturally appealed given what we’re doing. More importantly, we also knew
that we needed to be in a Central London in order to attract developers and designers in order
to help grow the business.
G: Who/what are your favorite Start-ups in Shoreditch?
Songkick and Mixcloud.
Looking slightly further afield but still prevalent on the London startup scene are Duedil and
PickLive. The former has been beneficial from a business perspective, whilst the latter is just
really fun if you enjoy football and the odd bet.
Find us on:
Website/Blog: http://yearbookmachine.com/
Twitter: @tallen99 @yearbookmachine
