I failed two startups
Everyone should startup. Irrespective of it taking off or not —it shapes you up as a person. Obviously, given that you put in your heart and soul into it!
I founded two startups and was part of the founding team at one. It was a crazy roller coaster of learnings, emotions and dreams
Grito
I was still in the final year of my undergrad; in my early twenties and super passionate to make an impact.
I had an urge to build products that can improve the lives of the people. Yes! I know you can relate.
It was 2013 and the internet has already stormed the Indian market with cheap internet and smartphones.
Fake news (or biased news) was everywhere. There were (and is) no statements by media houses anymore. Everything was an opinion (still is). And that’s bad.
That struck the chord and hence led to the ideation of crowdsourced journalism platform with a focus on hyperlocal news. However, the idea was to have a product through which end users can get a — first-hand perspective of what’s happening in and around their immediate surroundings.
Not so obviously I imagined this to be the next sensational product after Facebook and Twitter. After all, I assumed this impacting millions of lives. How naive right? I know!
As a next obvious step, I started building the app. Not so soon, I was spending my days and nights writing the code for a product that has — no designs, no UI/UX, no pre decided product flow, core offerings, etc.
Result: I miserably failed. We launched the app, ran some FB ads, etc. Nobody used and we had to shut down in 6 months.
So what were the learnings?
- Never assume. Always have your assumptions backed with data
- Know the market you are building the product for
- Take feedbacks. I was too confident to take that. Only a fool can say this won’t work —guess who turned out to be the fool
- Ask for help — you never know who can give the much-needed push
- Networking events are useless — with some exceptions of course
Akadmy
Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world — Nelson Mandela
Education is the best possible way to impact society at large.
And as I said, I am a sucker for that. Have I made some real impact? I doubt! In fact, I didn’t!
But hey, it's not about the destination right, it’s the journey. Might sound cheesy, but this statement holds in almost all spectrum of life. Talking about life — the destination is death. But who cares. We are living in the moment, enjoying every bit of our lives.
Anyway, I envisioned a virtual teacher — who teaches students just like a real teacher with real-life examples, etc. Wow, this can solve so many problems. Even students in remote villages can have access to the best learning experiences.
With our experience in coding — I along with my cofounder decided to start with this vertical. We built a fancy product, packaged it really well. To date, I am really proud of it.
The product was good, our offerings were excellent and the pricing was just right.
Despite this, we again failed.
So what were the learnings?
- As an engineer — product development is easy, selling is not. For eg. our very own Nikola Tesla. Despite so many inventions, he couldn't monetise!
- The right founding team is everything
- Being humble — with all the failures and rejections that ought to happen
- Persevere — it takes time for businesses to flourish. Setting up a 1-year goal only offers disappointments
- Criticisms are not personal
- Focus on quality and then scale
- Customer obsession is everything — amazon’s success is a no-brainer
- Listen — to your customers, employees, co-founders and everyone else
- Take a break — life is not all about working and making an impact. Live your life and enjoy every day. It’s a journey remember
Product overview (some screenshots)
GRITO
