There is no overnight success

Overnight success takes 3 years:

We launched the new idea in a three-day scramble, got some initial press, users loved it, and four months later raised $1 million from amazing investors. A year after that, we’ve raised $6 million, made real revenue, attracted hundreds of thousands of users, and recruited amazing people to join our team (we’re hiring! join us!). And, best of all, we’re just getting started.

So, what happened in those three days?

I’m convinced that if we had the idea for a daily deal aggregator back in 2007 or 2008 or even 2009, we wouldn’t have gotten traction because we would have messed it up.

But, after two and half years of failing and learning, we knew exactly what to do:

Product strategy. We had become a part of the lean startup movement. I had gone to the New York lean startup meetups from the beginning, read Four Steps to Epiphany, and knew we just needed to build a minimum viable product.
Coding the prototype. I had taught myself web development over the last few years and Jim had taught himself front-end development. We didn’t need to find an outsourcer, we just quickly built it ourselves.
Designing the user interface. We had already designed a bunch of prototypes. We knew how to design the landing page to collect user email addresses, the sign-up flow to collect preferences and to ask our new users to spread the message.
Getting initial press. We knew how to craft our story in a way that would get journalists interested. We got featured on TechCrunch and Wired giving us a strong initial boost
Getting investors interested. We had built relationships with many New York angel investors over the last few years and we were able to quickly drum up some interest based on our traction since they already knew who we were.
Building buzz. We had become involved in the New York tech community and our friends in the industry really helped us build initial buzz for Yipit
Now that I look back, I realize that I was wrong to think that we had nothing to show for two and half years of hustling. While we didn’t have outward signs of success, we had learned something very important: the art and science of starting a new venture. It took us almost three years to know what exactly we had to do during those three days.