Time to Pivot
We have to start again…
This is an ongoing series about me starting my first legit venture, a lifestyle company. In the last few weeks, we are developing our first curated experience called Lifeventure, a 24 hour adventure race where participants in teams finish as many tasks we have as possible.
I still remembered one of the first things I learned from my entrepreneurship class at my old university:
R&D = Replicate and Duplicate

A lot of successful businesses copied business models, or entire ideas, and place them in different contexts (e.g. different countries). Uber copied Lyft. Alibaba copied Amazon. Samsung copied Apple.
So when it comes to Lifeventure in Hong Kong, I decided to follow suit of the giants of the tech industry. I replicated from Questival, down to the style of its trailer video.
But if starting a business is as simple as copying others, everyone would have his/her business then…
Regardless, I went ahead and identified the few things needed to create my MVP (minimal viable product):
- A polished promotional video (to tell people what the event is about)
- A bunch of pictures and short clips of the tasks people are going to do at the event (to show how fun it would be)
- Copy text in Chinese and English (to compliment all the visuals)
- A first draft of the marketing plan, including channels, key partners and schedule for promotion

Ready, set, launch?
Everything is done by the end of the first week. We are ready to launch.

Before we officially launch, I want to do a sort-of soft launch among my friends, telling them to join this awesome event. So I called up a friend, telling him all about Lifeventure. By the end of the conversation, I asked him to buy a ticket. I thought he would say yes in a heartbeat because of how much fun I had when I did it in San Francisco, and that this would be the same thing. He replied:
Hmmm… I don’t know. But it’s just not that interesting to me…
What?!?!?! It shouldn’t be this way. I copied everything “fun” and “exciting” from Questival. Maybe I asked a wrong person. Let’s try other people.
Out of the six other friends I asked, five said no. If that’s not a sign of this not working, I don’t know what is.
I was frustrated. I worked so hard to get everything ready in one week (pulling multiple all-nighters with my videographer friend, banging all the details. And then spending 2 days under the sun shooting everything). It looked the same compared to Questival, down to individual shots in our trailer. The nos from my friends just sunk me. All my work was wasted…
On one hand, I wanted to give in. If 86% of my friends said it’s not good, maybe it just was not a good idea. On the other hand, I just didn’t want to give up. I always jump head first into a project, and quit after the slightest obstacle. This is the one time I want to proof myself that I can preserver.
Ultimately, I decided not to quit. But those nos are still going to be nos regardless of whether I want to give up or not. I have to change something. But what should I change?
It didn’t work. But why?
Few hypothesis as to why it didn’t work:
- I just wasn’t pitching the event well enough to entice people
- The event itself is not interesting, regardless of how I pitch it
- I wasn’t pitching the right people
Some hypothesis above preceded others. So I started by the last one:
Am I pitching the right people?
I rembered the business model canvas that business school taught us. The first thing to fill in the canvas is target audience and value added. So who do I want joining the event?
I could visualize a few of my friends on top of my head. But to put it into words describing who they are (personas as business designers called it) was extremely difficult.

In addition to the characteristics of the personas, I also included what they liked on Facebook similar in nature to Lifeventure (based on the likes of those friends I can think on too of my head)
With the target audience sort of scoped out, I knew that the friends I asked fall into my desired personas for the event. So I was asking the right people about my event. Moving on:
Is the event interesting?
I learned in research method class that you can’t ask leading questions like “do you think this event is interesting” because they are biased towards an answer. So to figure out whether Lifeventure was interesting for my target audience, I called up my initial six friends again, this time asking more objective and inqusitive questions:

For more objective research, I also researched on events that were popular among my target audience.

It was amazing what I found:
- Most popular events had either two characteristics: a combination of two seemingly unlatching elements (e.g. Daybreaker = party + yoga), or something that people normally wouldn’t do/didn’t have the opportunity to do (e.g. theme parks: people don’t usually get to experience “magic”)
- People would pay around HKD 100 to HKD 300 for the events. But there should be concrete things that can justify the price (e.g. Swag, prizes)
- Socialability (the ability to make others “wow” on social media) is a big value for participants. Socialability is what makes some events cool and others not
- Network effect plays a huge role in events like Lifenventure. People would only join because others joined. They would share the event with their friends in the hopes that their friends would join
While Lifeventure could be an interesting event and priced similarly with other events, it lacked a few key elements:
- It is not something that you normally cannot do: the 300 tasks that participants will have to do are things that they can do in their spare time, but they just wouldn’t do
- It is not socially cool: since the tasks are mundane and ordinary, they will not attract “wows” when shared through social media
- Price does not justify the “experience”: for HKD 250 the participant only gets some swag (T-shirt and a bag) and the experience. Most people think it is overpriced
The more underlying problem is that the tasks themselves are not unique and interesting enough to entice people.
With this in mind, we have to start again…
Lessons Learned
- It’s not as simple as replicate and duplicate: while most companies replicated other companies’ business models and ideas (there are only a handful of companies that are uniquely revolutionary, not even Apple…), successful companies modify their business models to suit their audience and carve out their own niche in the market place.
- Never start with assumptions; start with hypothesis: my assumptions in starting Lifeventure is that my peers in Hong Kong would be excited about things I was excited about. I couldn’t be more wrong. While I can start off with this “assumption”, I should make sure that this assumption is valid before building the project on top of it. Scientists also start off with assumptions, but they acknowledge that they could be wrong. They use those assumptions as hypothesis and apply rigorous testing to vet the hypothesis.
- Act, but think before you act: the last article talked about blind convictions. While it is necessary to throw away some rationality to take the first step, sheer conviction is not enough. Being thoughtful for next steps is equally important. Constantly thinking about the goals, objectives and the most optimal way to drive the project forward will allow it the sustain (note that I said most optimal way, not the best way because sometimes good enough is what it all needed, as I learned later).
- NO is tough love: It was so hard to hear nos from friends, especially on something that you worked on for some time. I learned so much more on the nos than the yeses because the nos force me to re-examine my work, and figure out what went wrong. One of the biggest lessons from the nos is that sometimes the result does not equate to the amount of work you put in.
This is episode 3 of an ongoing series about me starting my first legit venture, a lifestyle company. I would like to thank a videographer friend who helped me a lot in preparing the materials for Lifeventure. Although we didn’t get to use it, her hard work and dedication are greatly appreciated.
