Closing PrydeVR: The end of a Medill-powered media innovation startup
Our company was a failure, but our experience wasn’t
I never wanted to be a CEO.
But when I applied to the Medill School’s Media Innovation and Entrepreneurship Specialization, I knew part of me really wanted to make something new.
The specialization prepares a cohort of students for possibly the ultimate product management course: NUvention Web + Media. In just six months, a team of business, engineering, design and journalism students is expected to:
- Discover a problem.
- Ideate a technology-enabled solution.
- Prototype and test it with real users.
- Code a real product and improve upon it many times.
- Launch the product and market it.
Our team was awesome! We had skills, passion, a process and rapport. We all initially wanted to do something in virtual reality, but we quickly, and wisely, pivoted to doing something for virtual reality. We discovered an industry-wide communications problem affecting developers and players, and we ideated our product (then called ShareVR) to solve it. We prototyped with Chicago VR developers, who in turn evangelized our product to the wider VR community.
ShareVR’s first product was a plug-in for VR developers that made it easy for their users to record a video — from a third-person point of view — of their experience in virtual reality. The technology addressed many players’ desire to share experiences with friends on social media. But more importantly, for VR game studios, players sharing videos meant more grassroots marketing.
After dozens of product and website iterations, trade shows and pitches, we were able to regularly engage a bustling VR community that thoroughly engaged us. And at the end of the NUvention class, ShareVR got top marks from the entrepreneurs and investors who saw the final pitches.
So our class was over, but ShareVR was not. ShareVR was accepted to the Northwestern pre-accelerator “Wildfire.” With $10,000 in funding came the opportunity to pursue our project as a business.
On Wednesday we incorporated. On Saturday I graduated. On Monday I started Wildfire as CEO.
Of the five co-founders, I was the only one to have graduated (and thus needed an income to support myself). The team agreed I would work full-time for a little under minimum wage. I would be most closely supported by our chief technology officer and VR aficionado, Chen Chen, who would work with me for 30 hours per week. The others each committed to 20, 10 and 10… time permitting.
Going from classmates to a company, there was a lot more to do. New things like meeting with lawyers and accountants, sure. But also, going from 10 customer contacts per week to 30 per day. From attending one evening event per month to ten. From one “big” pitch every three months, to three pitches per month.
Things that felt huge at the time had only minor impact in retrospect. A noteworthy example is that trademark lawyers told us not to do business as “ShareVR” because it would be considered too descriptive for a trademark. So we brainstormed new names and logos and changed to “PrydeVR.” The rebranding felt like a huge effort to coordinate, but it didn’t seem to hurt us.
What hurt was waning adoption of our product among VR developers, leading to waning excitement internally.
When we incorporated, we were excited. Our product was beginning to generate buzz in the wider community of VR developers. In retrospect, we didn’t know how to differentiate between flattering reactions and sold customers.
Many developers would tell me, “Maybe I’ll add your product in a few months, with my next update.” Chen and I legitimately believed that if we maintained the relationship, and came back in a few months, adoption would occur, player videos would generate new leads, and Pryde would boom. But while Chen kept developing, and I kept marketing and demoing new versions of our software, the praise from the VR community wasn’t translating into adoption of our product.
For Chen and I, Pryde was our favorite thing to work on. But our co-founders had other commitments that supported them, and it was time for them to do what was best for them.
Within 20 days of founding, PrydeVR went from five members to four. By the end of the summer, it was just Chen and me, with intermittent help from friends.
But as ShareVR got smaller, it also got busier.
The buzz we generated as a team meant ShareVR had relationships with 60 “interested” VR developers, a growing backlog of feedback and bug fixes, a rotating door of “show me what you’re working on” investors, and a roadmap that sold a dream that was becoming harder to seeing over the horizon.
I spent half of each week scheduling meetings, preparing decks and plans for the next pitch; the other half updating our website, contacting VR developers, and simply trying to tug leads down the sales funnel.
By October, I had only two modes: working at my desk, or sleeping on the couch next to my desk. Pryde had spent our Wildfire money, and now I was hungry for customers because I was relying on my personal savings.
But investors told us that they wanted traction. So we changed our pricing from a model which would have made us very little, to one that would make us basically nothing, in a last-ditch attempt to get traction from customers.
Two leads that started in October became sales in November. One of them, SairentoVR, added Pryde to its Christmas update. This was a huge win for us.
On New Year’s Day, I told Chen that I asked my girlfriend to marry me. He celebrated — and told me that hundreds of players had already made videos of Sairento’s game using our plugin. It was the last triumphant moment for ShareVR LLC.
One of our most important features (auto-upload to social media) didn’t work in their game at launch, but they were sure they could work out the bugs with us within 30 days. Once fixed, all those player videos would instantly share online, and generate viral traffic for Sairento and Pryde.
This key feature routinely worked in our demos, other games, and even worked in some private Sairento builds, but it wasn’t stable in their public game. While we could now go to investors with data on our power users, we weren’t generating a lot of buzz any more.
By January, I needed to borrow money to make rent. I stepped down to working part-time. And conveniently, I was approached to serve as a teaching assistant in the same NUvention course through which we had started PrydeVR. That opportunity helped me cover my rent, and extended ShareVR’s runway, for the next few months.
In February, with a few thousand videos made by players, Chen and I agreed to make one more push for investors. Chen wanted me to start with a new investor who had expressed interest in PrydeVR to him. To me, I expected the new investor to be a warm-up, after which we would move onto investors with whom we had longer, warmer relations.
The first meeting with him was surprisingly promising, and we momentarily believed he might be able to lead our ideal investment. He had reasonable questions, and I spent the next week drafting documents to respond. I flew to meet him in New York. He had more questions, but told us he was leaning yes, and hoped to close a deal within 30 days.
By March, the deal we were negotiating didn’t seem as good. While seeking advice, I went out for a meal with a bunch of friendly investors and entrepreneurs. I came away unsure that we would get a deal with this investor, or any of them.
Chen and I disagreed a few times during those weeks about which were the best compromises to close the deal with this investor, and how to align our differing beliefs about what was best for the company. But we were always able to compromise and move forward.
By the first week of April, I was burned out and living paycheck to paycheck. We went to our advisors, and that Thursday one told us: “I don’t know why you’re still pursuing Pryde, but if you keep pitching, you need to have answers for X, Y, and Z.” Chen started drafting answers for X, Y and Z.
By Saturday, my faith in Pryde’s future was no longer there. It was one of the hardest conversations I ever had. I told Chen it was time for me to go. He wasn’t prepared for that, but he understood my situation and needed time to think about what he wanted to happen next. Then he told me he had just gotten engaged too — which made me so happy, and a bit regretful about my timing.
A week later, Chen decided his Ph.D. and wedding planning were taking up most of his time, and that we should dissolve the company. There were a lot of steps that needed to follow, informing vendors, clients, advisors, and investors. Dispersing refunds, closing accounts, paying taxes and paying to legally dissolve the company.
“Man… I really loved our website,” said Chen, as we disconnected the user accounts and payments backend, and rewrote it from PHP into a static HTML archive of what once had been.
Just dissolving has been a lot of work, but it has been filled with moments of reflection.
The NUvention course challenges students to discover and solve a problem. When we started, the original problem we found was unaddressed in the VR industry. Fifteen months later, the problem is well understood, and solutions exist in most products that look a lot like what we demonstrated. Whether or not PrydeVR was successful, we helped generate buzz around the problem and showcased a solution.
We also learned way more than a 21-week entrepreneurship course can teach. We went beyond stressing about grades and we did it for real. We had real lawyers, accountants, contracts, relationships, press events, investor pitches, and real fights about what to do. We had real successes, and real failures, and real pride and real gut-wrenching stress along the way.
And we did it without burning our relationships. We all left for different reasons at different times, but I can still call everyone who was involved, and get coffee and collaborate over what we want to do next.
In the order we persisted, PrydeVR was: Chen Chen, Henry Keyser, Qiqi “Vivian” Zhang, Adam Muhammad, Eleanor Burgess — with the briefer but valuable help of Andy Woods and Vijeta Ojha, and a large family tree of advisors, supporters, customers and testers.
I never wanted to be CEO, and I don’t know if I’ll do it again. But I came to Medill to make something new, and I did.
About the MSJ Media Innovation & Entrepreneurship Specialization:
Medill website | Video | Sign up for Medill Media Innovation newsletter | Rich Gordon’s guest column (Entrepreneurial Journalism Educators Network)
