The VICEJAR Story
THE IDEA
I was sitting in a courtyard scouring Wired magazine for an inspiration and came across an article about a guy being addicted to his BlackBerry, yea, this was a while back! Interesting, I thought, you can quantify this BlackBerry addiction and to make it fun, somehow your bank account could be deducted. Then I thought what about other vices that we had, smoking, drinking, too much television; how would I quantify that those habits.
I tossed this idea around a couple of friends and and they loved it. It was basically your traditional swear jar, digitized. People were already doing it. I was a finance major so I started building models to monetize this business.
MOMENTUM
Right before launch we went to San Francisco’s TechCrunch and presented at Startup Alley. We spoke to so many people, I lost my voice. Its was one of the coolest days of my life, product validation. We met fellow entrepreneurs, venture capitalist, and journalist, immediate exposure into the tech world. https://www.aol.com/on/techcrunch-disrupt-3-startups-that-aim-to-make-your-life-easier/
We jump onto the app store and we get great reviews. Coupled by the addition of user referrals via regulator. It was a great start. Then more positive momentum; I met with the co-founder of OneKingsLane’s, met with Dr. BJ Fogg from Stanford to talk about behavioral change, got interviewed by several local online publications; best of all the meetings were fueling user growth via social media, etc. The momentum was so great that I quit my six figure job.
HBO’s SILICON VALLEY
All the startups at Disrupt Tech Crunch were invited to film in Culver City to do a remake but this time it would be for the finale of Silicon Valley’s new hit show. Strangely enough, I was plastered all over the screens. They just kept replaying a scene of me getting interviewed.
We then launched a commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGjLTMrCdos&t=10s
THE PIVOT
We didn’t get enough users on VICEJAR and the development costs were staggering. I realized that I needed to start coding myself to keep this company going. There was too much need for coding changes and we needed to continue pushing it.
THE CLOSURE
Closing a company isn’t as cut and dry. I’ve heard of stories where people keep the URL or app name then get bought out for couple tens of thousands. So we continued to run the servers and do ad buys even though we ran out of cash. The server costs were low enough to keep going and we just burned up time doing free ads, like facebook and instagram. Eventually we lost momentum. We still got users organically but not enough to cover development costs of building new features and monentization.
LESSONS LEARNED
The biggest lesson I learned was the application of the scientific method in business. I learned that all those start up mantras were right, that every other author was passing on the same wisdom in different ways: launch and adjust as you go, keep shipping, ship a turd, if you’re not embarrassed by your first product then you didn’t launch quickly enough, ultimately, they were saying to test demand before you build any supply.
My favorites were building a startup is like building an airplane on the way down, said another way, jump out of the plane and your wings will unfold as you fall. Truth is i couldn’t have learned all those things by reading all the books that I did afterwards. I wouldn’t have even been interested in those books unless I started. Sacrifices were made, I lost investor money, I put my finance career on hold for about 3 years, I lost a large downpayment to a house, couple girlfriends broke up with me but I have no regrets, I gave it my best shot, VICEJAR has been one of the greatest learning periods in my life.
