My brothers and I sold our last business to Domain for $180 million. It didn't start out that way. We began as a real estate printing company. We printed brochures and flyers, and we printed signboards and went out to install them.
We wanted to be big, but the way we took orders couldn't scale to match our ambitions. So we built a very basic ordering system in PHP, an old language, where buyers could enter their quantities and where they wanted things delivered. That was all it did, and it solved one problem: getting orders through to the business.
We kept improving it. It grew an artwork builder, then digital marketing, then photography systems. It became a full real estate marketing platform, and a service business that couldn't have sold for much turned into a technology business we could sell for a lot. We only worked out what it was because we were in that market for over ten years.
I'm watching the same thing with Clipflow. It started as a tool for YouTubers to create content and work with their teams. After three years we understand that businesses want to make content, so we're building the tools for them to create it, publish it, track the analytics and work with a team. I doubt it will look the same in three or four years.
People call this pivoting, but a pivot to me is a hard swap. What I've seen is small refinements to the angle and the direction. You learn who your core customer is and what their problems are, until you can speak their language and market to them easily. That takes time.
So I wouldn't wait until you know exactly what the business is. Start with the idea you have and keep showing up and improving it.
