I suggest reading part 1 and part 2 for more context if you’ve not done so already…
At some point, during the high of it, all my business partner fell ill, which would slow down our momentum. By this time, we owed our family and friends money; I had not been paid a salary in about 6 months; I had also helped to fund the salaries of the small team we needed to keep the other business afloat and, our dream of becoming millionaires from this “overnight success” was slowly slipping through our fingers.
It was an amazing adventure and I learned so much about myself, about building a business and about the importance of seeking the right help early on.
Cause of death of brilliant ideas - low action.
Ok, to set the record straight, I don’t talk about this ever as having been a failure, because besides celebrating possibly a smidge too early - we did try our best!
We took to the streets to engage with both potential users consumers and merchants - User research;
We successfully built an MVP - Product development & management; and
We tried to get it funded, which straight-up takes balls to do!
One could blame our marketing budget or the lack of startup know-how, but I do think that at this time in 2011, South Africans weren’t all the way ready to accept location-based (one of our USP’s) apps into their lives.
Even though Uber (also the food version 😏) and GMAPS are now commonly used all over the country, we are still not as clued up as our UK counterparts using apps like CityMapper - a fully location-based app, navigating Londoners and the rest of the world around the UK by foot, bike, car, and rail.
Side note: Groupon had a location-based version available in the US at the time.
Much like I’ve done with the other one thousand plus ideas I’ve had for new business ventures that for the most part have huge social impact and very little initial monetary ROI - I’m basically a missionary (rich from the guy whose not sold made money from idea to-date and continues to write more often of failures than successes), my enthusiasm grew, as did my ability/affinity to convince people around me to buy into it (“it” the business). However and unashamed to say - I lacked execution.
Now though in 2020, I think I’ve got a better hold on the latter.
Thanks for reading
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