Endeavour fuck-up stories: We don’t do paper, but maybe we should have

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Fuck up: Having no idea what the customer is talking about.

Lesson: If you want to go into business, you need to get your own business in order first. Preparation is key!

This is what happened: It was the year 2000. Endeavour did not yet exist but one of our so-called ‘Founding Fathers’ (let’s call him ‘Bart’ for convenience) had already started building basic websites. Bart tells: “At that time, I was basically still a kid who, together with a friend, was tinkering at these sites from an attic room. At some point, for the first time a potential customer showed up who was interested in buying a new website from us. Super cool but to be honest, also a bit nerve wracking. We hardly knew what we were doing. We were builders, not sales managers. Just to be sure, my partner had put on a suit.”

The conversation went reasonably well, although in terms of questions they didn’t get much further than, ‘Um, what colour do you want the website to be?’ On leaving, the client said he would like to receive a quote. Bart and his partner had no idea what that was. But, solution-oriented as they used the ‘Dikke Van Dale’ (the leading Dutch dictionary) to look it up.

However, it did not mention how that quotation was to be issued. Bart: “Ten minutes after the customer left, I called him and said, ‘Well, we have the quote, you know. It costs ten thousand guilders.” There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. Then the customer said, “Ehh, excuse me? What do you mean?” to which I replied, “You wanted a quote, didn’t you?”

Luckily, the client had a sense of humour and they got the order. It was the start of a successful journey that eventually led to the creation of Endeavour. Nowadays, we handle things more professionally and we’ll send you that quote. By e-mail, of course, because we still don’t do paper.