2 Years of Aisle
I’ve read someplace that it takes 1000 days to know if a venture was worth committing to and although we are a few hundred days away from that milestone, I’m glad to say that many have benefited from Aisle. The journey so far has been anything but what I had expected. The product and its outcome has far exceeded what I thought we’d be able to achieve in two years.
Conception
I suppose, Aisle was conceived when I started receiving unflattering newsletters from the online avenues I signed up to to look around. Their UI seemed outdated, so I started working on a more aesthetically pleasing and functionally updated design in my free time. Back then, this was a hobby.
Goodbye Dubai
Pet care in India wasn’t as big as I was hoping it would be in late 2013. As much as I wanted to move back, the time was not right to re-open CollarBone — India’s first online clothing store for pets. I had to shut down CollarBone for lack for funds before moving to Dubai.
I did not have a compelling reason to return to Bangalore until Julie shared stories of those who contemplated suicide because of failed relationships. This made me want to understand dating better — I signed up on dating apps from around the world and listened to every possible TED talk on love and relationships. I attempted to study the psychology behind ‘what makes people connect’ and I even sat through numerous Neil Strauss videos for better clarity on the topic. Finally, on December 28th 2013 I decided that I was going to let go off a financially rewarding career and try and do something that would challenge my foresight and stimulate my creativity.
Preparations
Even though my savings were limited and we were a small team, we managed to work on building the product. We rented out a small apartment with lots of sunlight (though the image to the left may not seem so) and spent months sitting on carpets while working, for lack of furniture. Now, I often fold my legs like a yogi while sitting on more comfortable furniture.
Third world problems were always a downer, facing multiple hours of power cuts for many days a week did not help our productivity and this delayed the launch, which in turn contributed to stress. Chai shops with wifi were like our second home.
Birth
9 months in the making and Aisle was finally launched on 14th July 2014. It wasn’t just enough to launch the product, we had to hack our way into getting a thousand users in little time with little budget. Online dating is a business where if users don’t see other like-minded people on a platform, they’d churn out. The press was helpful initially, but we had to go viral.
With help from everyone in these photos we made an amateur zero budget video. Thank you Papercats.
My dream to be a film contributor was partially realised. ‘Not All Indian Men are Alike’, gave us thousands on signups in a few days. Today, we work hard to maintain that momentum.
Capital
To build and scale a dating app in a country more diverse and bigger than most requires both financial and human capital. It was at a time when Aisle had neither of these that I decided to send Jancy a connection request on Aisle, she accepted and we emailed everyday for a month. While feasting on a budget meal from Motis Kitchen on our second meeting, my phone rang. A few good people wanted to invest $100,000 in Aisle. We were in the news again. With that capital, we could now afford to have some basic furniture, a table, chairs, laptops, and a few more hands to help us build further.
Love
Bivin (the other director at Aisle) met Junica on Aisle. They fell in love, got engaged and then got married on 12th September 2015. This couple got swag — you can tell! And in the last week of 2015, I took a 5 day break from entrepreneurship after closing our second round of funding to marry Jancy.
Impact
Aisle makes a difference to society. We know!
2!
Today, we turn 2. We launched Aisle 2.0, a completely re-designed app for both, iOS & Android. We are working half-day today. We’re going bowling. This post doesn’t talk about the sacrifices, runway, bad hires, paper work, chicken pox etc. Common problems faced by Indian startups are familiar to us too. But these 2 years have been worthwhile. Shout outs to others who’ve been doing it for more. Special thank yous’ to TermSheet, Ah!Ventures, our investors and to all our members.
If you haven’t already, do check out my previous post — Why we didn’t clone Tinder
