Fitit, a Startup Experience
Lesson learned the hard way — founding a startup
‘Fitit, fitness done your way’ was supposed to be the next big thing in the fitness tech world. A kind of “Uber” or “Airbnb” that gives you a whole new experience with your fitness journey.
We wanted to let users connect with new trainers and studios, and schedule sessions easily while focusing on their fitness goals.
How it all started?
On a nightly drive with a friend, we used to think of new startup ideas and butchered them like the investors of the ‘Shark Tank’. We knew an idea had potential if we still couldn’t let it go the next morning.
That’s what happen with Fitit — we started our small research and found different companies that provide a part of our wanted product, but there was no holistic solution that was aligned with our vision (yet).
As two people that had no experience whatsoever in the startup and tech world at this point, we started to learn from scratch. From understanding basic terms such as R&D and UX to angel investors and cap tables, and so on.
It goes without saying, we both had no coding experience (although my partner was scheduled to start studying CS at the university). We understood that we would have to use an outsourcing software company to be able to launch a real product.
While still exploring the fitness market, talking to fitness trainers and potential users, and trying some of our competitors’ services, we also looked for the right development company to work with (that happens to meet our limited bootstrap budget).
We met with about 8–9 different companies until we found the one that sounded enthusiastic about our idea, so enthusiastic that they offered to join our founding team and be a part of the new company.
The deal we set, included us paying the ‘base costs’ of the design and development of the product and this is a considerable amount of money.
Diving in
At this point, we didn’t know the real meaning of an MVP and saw the full product in our vision, no one pointed us in the right direction and told us we are off track.
“MVP — that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.”. — Eric Ries
The company we worked with, presented itself as having a lot of experience in the field of start-ups, something that looking back we can say is not that accurate.
The features were starting to add up to our vision, we met with different fitness trainers and interviewed them about our concepts. After getting their feedback we have dived into writing one very(!) long PRD (product requirements document) together with the development company. It’s important to mention that we have prioritized the features’ importance and their development order in our document, but we will come back to that issue later.
It took a long time to finish the document and it was turned over to the company’s designer, who did a great job communicating our vision.
But another huge mistake we did right here is going full-on mobile apps. Not only that it made the process more complicated and expensive — it was good for users but did not suit our customers, the fitness trainers.
R&D +-
Excited with our app design, feeling the exit closer than ever, we let the development company do its thing, while we the founders focused on building the marketing plan, the ongoing operations, and connecting with fitness industry professionals.
Getting updates about the development progress, we were thrilled to organize a fancy launch event. We invested a large sum of money in the event, gathered notable speakers from the Israeli fitness industry alongside 100 plus trainers, and set the date with a 2-week buffer of the date the development company claimed that the app will be ready.
The launch date was near, and we haven’t seen the app in full action yet, also — we almost haven’t seen it in use at all. Naive that we are, we initially thought that once we transfer the requirements to the developers, we can trust the company and wait for the product.
A week before the scheduled launch event, we could not postpone it at that point, and no working product was in sight. The development company Insist that the product would be ready on time, and we had nothing to do but hope for the best.
Failed launch
At the lunch event of Fitit, our contact person at the development company arrived a little early and showed us the product they work on so far — there was a nice logo of Fitit on his phone screen, he tapped it and revealed that… the app is not even close to being ready to any users use and basically — we have nothing to offer to all the guests that arrived our launch event.
After the lectures from our industry speakers, we Introduced our vision for Fitit to the guests that expected to immediately download the app, we sadly told them that the app isn’t ready to use yet and we will update them immediately with the official app release :( .
3 long months later
Going back and forth with the development company, after 3 long and stressful months we got an OKish product that contains some basic features that are not related to our prioritizations from the PRD but we were so desperate to get started and present something to the fitness trainers that accompanied us all this time. Of course, we delivered it with a promise from us to them to update the app shortly with all our promised abilities.
To start off, we offered the product for free, analyzed customer behavior, and talked to our users to get their feedback.
Since we offered some kind of marketplace that relies on the network effect, we had to gather trainers and trainees together and try to match supply and demand to keep users satisfied.
“Network Effects refer to the incremental benefits gained from new users joining the platform, which results in the product becoming more valuable for all users.” — Wall Street Prep
Day-to-day of a junior startup
Since the official app release, we have talked to the newly signed-up users every day, offered support, and tried to bring as much traction as we could.
A lot of our previous leads were no longer relevant as they found other solutions that could answer their needs while we couldn’t satisfy them.
Over these few months, we have been in discussions with the development company regarding the missing features and all the bugs that kept our users away.
With the launch of the product and the influx of users, we managed to gain more than 300 trainers and about 5000 users on the platform. We felt hopeful and started looking for investors who could help us grow.
During the search for an investment, we understood that the performance we have presented is not enough to receive investment on the one hand, but on the other hand, when the development company is a shareholder in the venture and the way it operates is so bad, no amount of funding we can raise will make us move forward.
It has finally hit us, and after a lot of time, resources and effort, we realized that we didn’t really have a partner for one of the most important parts of our venture — development. It doesn’t matter how much we would advertise, design, and support customers — a product that doesn’t work is a bad product.
Thank you, next
Adding Covid19 to the equation we had no other options…
The most difficult decision we made is to terminate the venture. The decision ultimately cost us a lot of pressure, money, and precious time.
There is a brighter side
The experience taught me a lot about all the different aspects of a Startup. Working hands-on in every domain — from the basics of establishing a company, market validation, user research, MVP, marketing, working with data, investors, and many other tools.
To all of these practical tools, I can add the combination of navigating uncertainty, taking risks, dealing with unexpected events, and making important decisions that are crucial to the future of the company.
But perhaps the most important lesson is building the team — because this is the vital element in the foundation of any project and it is not so easy to fix.
“Don’t be afraid to fail. Be afraid not to try.” — Michael Jordan