The end of a start up: Leaps ran its course 🏁🏃♂️
Last month, Erwan & I decided to end the adventure of Leaps. Followers of our startup adventure will know that in 2020 we decided to start a fitness app for people who don’t do sports yet. Several pivots later, we were building a platform for physiotherapists to help their patients stick to their prescribed homework exercises. After lots of learning and endless fun, we decided to pull the plug.
Why? Because we didn’t feel our idea was a viable business idea. The willingness to pay of the physiotherapists was too low; the competition already too strong; the unique value we could bring, too small.
Why not another pivot? Well, we tried. As part of the MedTech accelerator program of hub.brussels, we had all the support we could dream of to go and explore a new angle or idea. Unfortunately we didn’t strike gold. Each new idea was more and more removed from our origins. Meanwhile, time is ticking. We’re both getting older. Time is finite. If Leaps wouldn’t become what we had hoped, we weren’t going to hang around longer than necessary.
Could we have arrived at this conclusion earlier? For sure. Here’s what we learned. None of it is new, but after this experience, the same advice now has a whole new meaning for us.
Don’t build shit before the business is validated.
Many people told us, but not loud enough, I suppose. At our core, both Erwan and me are creators. He loves to write code, I love to design things. Great skills to build software, but also great distractors when building a business. It took us 3 solid pivots to finally truly validate the last assumptions without writing a line of code.
If I have to validate an idea now, I would only interview people and at most, make a mock-up page to explain that idea. If you’re doing anything more, you’re probably compensating for something. Which is alarming, because you could be compensating for a weak idea, a too small problem, a missing willingness to pay.
So for our last pivot, we continuously told each-other: “You don’t design”, “You don’t write any code”. By doing this, you don’t learn new or different things, you just save a ton of time. However fast you build, it’s always slower than asking someone: How do you solve this issue currently? If it were solved like this (insert drawing on napkin), how much would you pay for that solution?
Validate a business, not just an idea or a problem.
Second mistake we made was putting too much emphasis on solving a problem, and not enough focus on whether solving the problem would result in a viable business. On three occasions, we started from a very valid, scientifically proven problem:
- People don’t practise sport enough,
- Minor injuries stop many people from doing sports,
- Patients don’t do the exercises prescribed by physiotherapists.
There’s more nuance to all three statements, but that’s besides the point. What I mean is, three versions of our prototype were based on a real problem. Next, the ideas we had to solve those problems were not sticky, effective or captivating enough.
When we were knee-deep in the discovery and creation process, we kind of became blind to the business side. Would any of these ideas become a viable businesses? As it turns out: “No”.
Again, several people told us to focus more on the business side. But we were too convinced of our own genius, and were convinced business would come once the users came. This may have been true fifteen years ago for the Facebooks, Twitters and YouTubes of this world. It probably could still be true for some new companies today, but our users weren’t coming, and we didn’t know why. Our answer was, more development. So wrong.
The question: “How much would you pay for this solution?” is so much more important than we thought. We started this adventure because we wanted to build a better, more human company than the one we both left. We wanted the company we started to do some good in the world, to help people. I think that was a major reason why willingness to pay was such a blindspot for us.
However, even if today I were to start a non-profit organization, then still I would put a lot of weight on willingness to pay. Money is such an easy and commonly understood measurement of worth. If you want to know if your idea is worthy, ask people how much they are willing to pay for it. Even if you offer it for free in the end. At least, you’ll have a better understanding of how the solution is perceived by the customer/user.
Shout it from the rooftops.
Be as public as you can about your adventure. We did fairly ok, with these Medium posts for instance, by talking to friends and family, and joining the accelerator program. So, this is not so much something we got wrong, but something I would double down on next time around.
No one steals your idea. If the idea is very steal-able, maybe it’s not that great or unique to begin with. On the contrary, our experience was that however little we shared, it came back in tenfold. I’m sure several people around me thought our idea was crap and we weren’t going to make it. But whether people believed in it or not, almost everyone tries to help. “You should talk to this person”, “Do you know this competitor already?”, “Have you read this book?”, “Let me introduce you to this person”…it doesn’t stop.
Building a startup is a super lonely adventure. It’s very hard to keep the flame going when nothing goes according to plan. You’ll literally need all the help you can get. What we’ve learned is that a ton of people are so ready and happy to help, you just need to be out there.
What’s next?
Erwan is already back at work in Paris as CTO of a more mature startup 😉, and as far as I’m concerned, I’m starting another startup. In a completely different sector, a different location, and with different people. I’ll communicate on it in a couple of weeks on my personal profile.
Thank you! 🙏
As an obvious last note, we would like to thank everyone who helped, inspired, challenged us. You have no idea how much this was appreciated.
🙏🙏🙏
