Some ideas come from a simple observation. Mine came from Facebook, more than ten years ago.
The Beginning
It all started when I was just a trainee at a communication agency in Algiers, my second job while I was still a student at the INSIAG institute. My days were spent building websites for clients, while also designing logos and flyers, everything a small agency produces day to day.
It was Facebook’s golden age. And that’s when I noticed something: dozens of posts a day, in groups, where individuals and companies were looking for a marketing or web agency for their projects. It happened on repeat. Same questions every day, same recommendations in the comments, same noise.
I asked myself: why doesn’t a place exist where companies can simply find the agency they need?
B2Com, the First Attempt
My first idea was simple: a directory. I called it B2Com. It didn’t take long, I built a landing page on Joomla to present the idea, and shared it on Facebook.
The response was immediate. Dozens of agencies signed up, wanting to be part of it. The need was real, and I’d just confirmed it with almost no effort at all.
But I was young, inexperienced, and had no idea what to do next after a validation like that. So I kept the idea in the back of my mind, and moved on.
Years Later
Time passed. I kept seeing the same posts, the same searches for agencies on Facebook, except over the years, the numbers had grown. The problem hadn’t gone away. It had gotten bigger.
I told myself: this time, I’m actually doing it.
But before I continue, there’s an important detail I need to mention. In 2019, I went through my first burnout, which pushed me to leave my job. And the mistake I made at that point was not properly treating it. I quickly went back to work, this time at an e-commerce startup, while also continuing freelance work on the side, and that’s the context in which I started building my project. You can imagine the workload.
The Birth of Commect
The first thing I did was find a new name. A play on words between “connect” and “communication,” it became Commect.
This time, I validated the idea a bit more seriously: a polished landing page with an integrated blog, and I started talking about it on Facebook and LinkedIn.
The result exceeded every expectation. In one week, more than 100 agencies, including some well-known, major agencies, wanted to join the platform.
Up to that point, everything was going smoothly.
When It All Fell Apart
Then the burnout came back. Harder this time. It forced me to leave Algiers and move back to Sétif, where I stayed for a while, out of the spotlight, away from everything.
The Mistakes I Made
Looking back, I can now pinpoint pretty clearly what went wrong:
- I worked day and night, without any rest.
- I never found a team, I was doing everything alone.
- I fell in love with the project, to the point where I stopped seeing the warning signs.
- I never had a mentor to guide me.
- I followed the hype of events, and started showing off more than building.
Commect could have succeeded. It had all the ingredients, a real need, fast validation, massive interest right from launch. What it lacked wasn’t the idea. It was me, and the way I handled everything that came with it.
