Journey of An Entrepreneur: Most startups die, why not launch two?

Make sure to read parts one and two of the series!

When I did the Kickstarter for Bilal’s Stand, something else stood out to me: the publicity value of a crowdfunding campaign.

If successful, you’ll likely get dozens, maybe hundreds of people to share your campaign on Facebook, Twitter, etc. It’s the type of organic publicity corporations die for. I thought “what if we could let corporations tap into the marketing by being sponsors for campaigns and offering matching dollars? They could be the catalyst for launching campaigns!”

Catalyst + Launch = Catalaunch.

There were a few problems with the idea (including the name, everyone thought I was saying “Cattle Launch”, like it’s some devious agricultural startup). For one, there was a chicken-and-egg problem: sponsors would only be interested if there were campaigns, and campaigns only if there were sponsors. I had neither, so could attract neither.

Secondly, beyond the sponsor concept, why would people use Catalaunch? What did we stand for? Nothing, pretty much.

Still I was learning a ton in Bizdom and felt excited to try to launch my own tech startup. I wasn’t ready to quit.

At the end of the fall, we had to make our final presentations. I created a mock campaign to illustrate my idea: Lincoln (the luxury car brand) sponsoring a campaign by the Detroit Opera Company. Because, you know, rich people like the Opera.

As I was rehearsing my slides, I realized there was something special about this idea, and it wasn’t Lincoln as a sponsor. It was the Detroit Opera House.

You see, Detroit is a surprising city. It’s known for its crime, race riots, and economic depression. In 2013 it became the first major city in America to declare bankruptcy.

But at the same time, there’s a real sense of community in Detroit. People who have stuck it out through the thick and thin, and new people like me moving in from the suburbs and other states to be part of this comeback story.

As I thought of the Detroit Opera Company, I realized, “They don’t need Lincoln to sponsor them, they could do this all by themselves.”

I realized there’s a space for a community-focused crowdfunding platform. Kickstarter for your backyard.

I found what we stood for: neighbors

Figuring out the identity for this new community-focused platform gave me confidence to build the Muslim crowdfunding platform I had been thinking about.

Most startups die, so I figured why not launch two to hedge my bets?

In the winter of 2012 I convinced my longtime mentor and friend Haaris Ahmad to partner with me. He became my angel investor, and together we started building these platforms, which later we named Patronicity (the neighborhood platform) and LaunchGood (the Muslim platform).

We found some developers in Pakistan that Haaris had begun to use for another project, and they thought they could build the beta version of our sites in a few months. Just in time for Ramadan! (hahahahaha)

Lesson learned: things always take WAYYYYY longer for developers to make than they think.

A few months passed, and it was clear we were nowhere close to launching the website. Being impatient by nature, I decided to hack it and launch my own WordPress site.

It was called LaunchGood, it looked like a crowdfunding platform, it even had Muslim campaigns with a donate button. But if you hit “support” it took you to the real campaign on Kickstarter or IndieGoGo or GoFundMe.

Effectively, LaunchGood was a crowdfunding consultancy. I worked with other Muslims to help them run really successful campaigns and in the process started building a brand for LaunchGood.

More importantly, I found something else at this time: my cofounders.

Find out how Chris found Amany and Omar in the next post! Never miss a post — subscribe to our blog!

See how we’re celebrating 5 years and check out some of our favorite campaigns here: launchgood.com/birthday