In Our First Year...
By Newton Asimov
A lot can happen to a company in the first year. It can blow up into a multi-million dollar company or crush itself into nothingness. Finding a way to not be another statistic is what should be on every new company’s mind, especially with each decision it makes, potentially shaping its future. In the United States alone there are 540,000 new business starting a month. That means with an 81% success rate of small businesses in the first year, 1.2 million of those fail.
In the design world we learn from our failures as it is a way to spur innovation, competition and growth. However this does not mean we Leeroy Jenkins the company into the ground. When we started MachinaTek we knew we did not want to be just another cookie cutter company of design in the Portland area. We wanted the culture and the brand to establish itself, much like a new child develops, through making mistakes and living through our collective experiences.
Naivety is a quality for the noobs, one which we definitely shared. It is breaking past that and still being able to maintain the level of passion and commitment required to becoming a steward of your small business. Our biggest mistake this year was utilizing an unknown platform to launch a product. However that doesn’t mean it was vain. We learned a lot from this failure and now are deep into two amazing products that will be launching in 2015.
I am happy to announce that we are the 81%. MachinTek Design is now a melting pot of different ages, life experiences, disciplines and personalities. We embrace growth through strategic planning and creative cliff diving. We hope as we grow, to inspire, to encourage, and to develop young startup companies in the coming years, to becoming their own legends and dreams.
