Startups: The arbiter of dreams— a brutal teacher.
My first startup and what I learned from it. [Part 1 of 3]
Welcome to Lessons Learned, where I take a very interesting experience throughout my design journey (whether it be a personal experience or an interaction with a mentor figure) and write a retrospective. In doing so, I hope that my transparency helps others in their journey and may offer insight into my personal & professional growth and development.
I’ll be writing this as a 3-part series:
- Humble Beginnings (this post)
- Life Hits You Fast (tbd)
- One Final Push (tbd)
In the spring of 2013, I had just wrapped up my second year at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) as an Interactive Design / Game Development (ITGM) major where I met one of my soon to be co-founders, Wyatt Gallagher in a 300-level course in Data Design. I had met the second co-founder Joseph P. Albanese on a SCAD shuttle bus leaving from one of the dorm communities we lived in on the way to two separate parties. Unbeknownst to me, Wyatt and Joe had already formed a friendship and I would soon be pulled into a project that would change our lives.
Humble Beginnings
Fall 2013
Avengers, Assemble!
Over the summer, Wyatt, Joe and I exchanged frequent correspondence in regards to building an iOS app as part of a custom course advised by ITGM Professor, Josephine Leong.
Once we convened in class for the first time at the start of Fall Quarter, we decided that Joe’s apartment would be our bunker for all things iOS. The initial concept for Feels materialized from a whiteboard session ranking the app ideas we came up with during our summer breaks. After narrowing it down to three options, our next set of criteria were that the app needed to be done quickly (after all, these classes were only 10 weeks long), and could have what we considered, home-run potential*.
*Home-run potential = a product that is both socially-good and hopefully, wildly profitable.
After a few hours of debate, we kept coming back to one thing: a decision-making app.
Carving Out a Niche
We sought to change the current method of making decisions, through the creation of a new experience on a device that many people use: the iPhone. People spend copious amounts of time hammering out the positives, negatives of their options when making a decision in the context of what you’ll gain and lose, but what about feeling about the options presented in front of you? Could emotion be the key to unlocking a more holistic approach to decision making? We asked if we could tap into people’s intuition to solve their dilemmas?
And we found that if we were to craft an experience to challenge these questions — we could find the answers we were looking for.
Feels was born.
Experience is Key
We knew that we couldn’t beat paper, but if we could carve a compelling experience, that would be the difference between a gimmick, or a product that can change people’s lives. Spearheading the research and user experience process, I proposed three core ideas that carried out into the rest of our journey:
Key Insight: We learned that the use of emotion adds a level of depth and context to your decision making process. Thereby, arming you with the tools necessary to make a great decision.
Making it Real
We agreed to a simple grading system with Professor Leong: If we successfully submit the app to the App Store by the end of the quarter, we would all receive 100%. If we didn’t, we fail.
This was a tall order; we only had nine weeks remaining, and one developer—Wyatt.
In hindsight, that summer, he told us both to learn iOS Development (something I regretted for a while) and this wouldn’t have put so much pressure on Wyatt to build everything, but we didn’t take it seriously. And it might have cost us dearly in the long run.
We put a plan in motion as the clock was ticking and a month is not a lot of time for novice product developers. Our UI exploration happened on whiteboards, with most prototyping being done in live code. We used Sketch to mock up more polished UI details before implementation.
With all development projects, there were many late nights, headaches, continuous streams of coffee, beer, Velveeta, and random episodes of Eastbound & Down to keep us occupied as we crushed bugs, tested our emotion algorithm, and cried hysterically when nothing worked (or perhaps I only did). So it was of no surprise when we actually got it working that we all had to go out in style: A champagne toast. [Aside: I’ve got the video somewhere.]
November 29th, Launch Day.
None of us expected for Feels to get any praise outside of our immediate peers, classmates, and our professor for a grade. The minute we launched, we noticed Feels climbing up the charts.
These Kids Mean Business
Watch The Presses!
We debuted to the world on Black Friday, November 29, 2013, a week after Wyatt graduated. Our initial campaign made our app available to download for $2.99 until the beginning of the Christmas holiday—we then made a gamble—we sold it for 0.99¢. And boy did it sell.
Here’s the interesting thing about putting a dollar amount to an app : Depending in the industry, product type and offering you’re shipping, the model of “freemium” and the method of pushing social pressure to accumulate downloads to develop an intangible value of your product doesn’t have to apply to you. For us, because we knew that we wouldn’t a) insert ads and b) collect user data for manipulative purposes to sell it, charging users up front ensured that we’d be paid for our efforts and any user would feel safe knowing that we are transparent and did not use their information for financial gain.
In the weeks that followed we gained Best New App for Productivity, Best New App Overall — then we gained hundreds of downloads, to thousands and got us paid thousands.
By early January, we had a banner feature by Apple under the Productivity category in the United States. In the first two months we sold nearly 6,000 units. And for the first time in our lives, we were making money from a digital product we made in the app store that inspired us to be designers. Pretty cathartic, right?
We had really made an impact, we thought.
Key Insight: The best thing about releasing an app and sending out a shit-ton of cold PR emails during the holidays, is that if you can make a product that’s just good enough to stand out, people will talk about it. And did they!
TechCrunch’s Sarah Perez declared it “the pro/con list for the emoticon generation.” GeekWire had it as “App of the Week”. And a multitude of other blogs raved about it’s initial release. Here’s a quick list (assuming most of these still work):
- App Annie — “Analyze Your Decisions with the Feels App”
- KnowYourApps — “Feels Review”
- The Industry — “Make a Decision by Trusting Your Feels”
- Youtube — “Feels App Review by Andrew Roth”
As we rose through the ranks in Apple’s App Store, we saw rise to the global reach Feels had in the first full month since our late November 2013 release. From France, to Japan, to Morocco — we were being shown on an international spotlight.
For three students out of SCAD — this was insane. And we wanted more. Or, if anything, Joe and I wanted it one way, Wyatt, another.
Ambition Divides
The winter break following our successful class project launch the team made a decision to try and pursue a fleeting dream to see if we had the mettle to build a product worth using, and possibly paying for our student loans, our parent’s loans and some serious bankrolls.
We all know the main aspect to creating a business is to be profitable. We weren’t a non-profit and we sure as hell weren’t philanthropists — but of course, we did have a strong pull toward building a business that was ethical and transparent.
As our numbers came in, so did our appetite to reach more people, and our willingness to get in front of any camera, blog, podcast, interview video we could find. Based on the efforts from Joe and I, we nailed TechCrunch, Technical.ly Philly and other publications. In retrospect, they didn’t yield any sales (a topic of marketing I haven’t seen many startup stories cover IMHO), but at the time it felt awesome to have tangible documentation of our existence.
So here’s what went down.
As Joe and I were on a guerrilla marketing onslaught, we found an interesting opportunity from one of my mom’s great friends: Paris-Nicole Payton, CEO & Founder of PNP Agency, a PR firm that has helped retired NFL players transition into philanthropy, community leaders and even sponsorships and endorsement deals. Bottom line, while she hasn’t represented any tech firms, she knows how to run an airtight campaign — with the right direction, we’d be on and poppin’. So we’re both excited after having a conversation with my mom, then following up with a conversation from Paris, we’re like, “it’s a bet!”*
*it’s a bet = “say no more, we’ll act on it.” ‘It’ being the operative word for any particular action or directive given. Not sure why I just explained a slang term.
As our excitement grows for opening up a potentially “yuge” opportunity for both Feels (the startup-in-training) and PNP’s first steps into Tech PR, Wyatt wasn’t feeling it. And we were pissed. Really pissed.
In retrospect, I understood his trepidation for going to someone who’s not vetted in the tech space. I understand that his commitment to building feels needed to be carefully tended to — as it was his baby — but it was ours too. And like all parents, we had differing opinions on raising our child.
For Joe and I, it meant exposure. The more eyes on our product, the larger the conversation. For Wyatt, it meant “doing it right.” And what was right to him was all the way left for us and we butted heads. It got bad. Tension you could cut with a steak knife. It was hard. We had a loosely written partnership agreement that only allowed us to make decisions unanimously. The problem, is that it’s those important decisions that often get ignored, unaddressed or unanswered that have serious implications with how we do business. So we were at a stalemate and the PR op fell through because we couldn’t make a decision.
And it became a pattern. We sought investment, didn’t go through with it. We had a potential avenue through Google Glass, didn’t happen (lowkey glad that didn’t happen — Glass was a fad and terribly executed). I did have immense joy using it, however.
Just look at me:
It was bad. And getting caught in the throes of personal struggle vs continued education vs the ever-illustrious illusion of a young black kid making waves in the tech community shaped the decisions I’d make over the course of this three year journey. We attended countless meet ups with folks who wanted to lend assistance, all were ignored, forgotten about, never heard from again. It caused a rift. We didn’t see it yet, but life has an interesting way to relate everything back to each other.
New Year. New Business. Same Mistakes.
Winter 2014
Riding off of the high we felt during our initial run, we knew that it wouldn’t be enough to end there — and as a result, I drafted a few key cycles in our recent development phase. Coupled with the feedback from customer reviews, friends and family, we knew we needed a better product.
But first, we needed to get some things in order, like you know, a business entity, partnership agreements, legal documents, share allocation, percentages of ownership, trademarks and patents?
Yeah…fuck that noise. We knew we needed to get it done, but startups run by inexperienced people with a sliver of business acumen meant making hard decisions to not pay ourselves, invest back into the product and operate with a dogmatic sensibility was near impossible to do.
Our lack of doggedness to complete these action items bit us all in the ass later — but for now, let’s enjoy the sweet sound of feels mania.
NY Tech Day 2014
Spring 2014
The Feels team traveled to New York for the third annual New York Tech Day. This is arguably one of the biggest new tech events in the state of New York. There were over 450+ exhibitors showing off their great ideas and technologies in hopes to capture the some 10k+ attendees and litany of investors looking for the next big thing.
For us, we understood that this event is to let folks know that we exist. That in and of itself is a powerful message especially with the amount of effort, work, research and energy we’ve put into making this app.
While I think we all learned a lot about trade-shows, marketing spiels, and the like, we were unable to monetize anything substantial from the event nor were we getting any legitimate media attention. But not all was lost, besides, Feels opened other doors we wouldn’t have realized were possible so soon.
Reaping the “initial” Benefits
I nailed an internship at R/GA, got Joe and I flown out to San Francisco where we met Aaron Stevens (big ups to the homie!), and interviewed with Adobe. For a while, Feels was a resume winner and I thought this was my ticket on the success train. Like seriously. It was so dope, I single-handedly used it for my portfolio for a full year (I was definitely lazy to make new work and other projects were under NDA) and won freelance contracts and was put on the *hot* recruitment radar.
I totally rode the wave a bit too hard.
Needless to say, I had one invaluable summer of applied learning and I took those insights into the next rendition of Feels.
The Next Big Thing
Summer 2014
In order to learn more keenly what troubled our users, what they loved and what they wanted more of, I facilitated multiple beta testing rounds of updates we had, and roundtable discussions of what we could do to improve Feels.
Key Insight: I wish I collected more intimate data of each release, not just to track demographic and core user information, but more granular areas of engagement through tracking CTA’s, UX Flows and content creation. At the time, we relied a lot on assumptions and beta testing but had we taken a savvier approach to metrics and testing, who knows what we would’ve uncovered.
As a result of our testing, we developed a new interface, contextually aware decision making tools and keeping the feels as the center of the process. To us, it felt natural, soothing even. A painless experience that got better after each use. Feels 2.0. Coupled with a new website and marketing, we were ready to hit the big time.
Or so we thought.
>>> I’m writing part two so bear with me. It’ll come out soonish. <<<
Ameer Carter is co-founder of the mother/son dual purpose consultancy KM&A, bridging the gap between design and industrial & organizational psychology to inspire businesses to build better selves, thoughtful leadership and products for others. We are currently scouting projects within Fashion, E-Sports, Education and Manufacturing industries and AR/VR environments.
For all contact, reach out at ameer@kma.agency
