How our venture failed, and why it’s still a win
Failures can be just as productive as successes.
Here’s a business that didn’t work out, and why it’s still a win.
As mentioned yesterday, I’ve just returned from a holiday in Scotland.
While I was in Edinburgh, I had lunch with someone who’s become a very close friend… despite us never meeting.
Anoop worked at Ford in Australia. He had an amazing career, starting as a mechanic in 1989, then working through the business in sales, operations, HR, and ending up on the board of a $4bn business.
…but he still felt something was missing.
Some time ago, Anoop realised where his purpose, passion, and ability interlocked: helping people realise their true potential.
In his role at Ford, and away from it, he’d done a lot of coaching, and he’d developed all kinds of tools for helping people remove blockers and succeed.
Together, we wanted to see if we could scale it.
Like any B2C idea, this would be expensive… unless we could develop something truly viral.
We agreed we needed an MVP that was so catchy that people would share it, with an “R factor” of more than 1. This would mean that the MVP would grow organically, with no need to promote it.
If we could achieve that, we felt, we’d have enough proof to double down.
I worked with Anoop for over a year.
We ran a lot of tests and developed different MVPs – starting with a combination of Airtable, Mailchimp and Typeform, then going further with Caspio.
We went through multiple iterations, and eventually reached an R factor of 0.5.
This meant that, for every two people who used our MVP, one brought us a new user by referral, at no cost.
Good… but no cigar.
In our collective minds, this was exciting but not enough proof to warrant (further) investment, fundraising or—most importantly—for Anoop to leave his lucrative job.
So we agreed to stop.
Anoop continued in the day job, knowing that he’d given it his best shot.
We wrote off our investment and captured all the learnings we could.
So what became of Anoop?
Well, he stayed in his job for 3 more years, banked some more bonuses, and recently took early retirement.
He’s now focusing on himself, his family and his passions (which include some coaching / consulting for those lucky enough to get time in his diary).
But here’s the best of it.
Last week, Anoop and I met for the very first time.
Thanks to our time working together, on different sides of the planet, we instantly knew we were meeting a friend.
So much is possible that was hard to imagine even a decade ago.
At DQ we work almost 100% remotely. And yet it’s the people we work with and friendships we’re building that mean the most.
I can’t wait to see who we start our next venture with, and where it might lead us.
Could it be you?
