MEET THE LOOPERS: I’M THE FIRST LOOPER
This is my founding story, and the story of what became Proxloop. My name is Øistein, and I’m the first Looper.
When I first started what later became Proxloop I made the mistake everyone tells you to avoid: I started with a new and unproven technology, and tried to find a market for it. The initial idea was to use beacons to do location based marketing in retail and public spaces. This was the summer of 2014 so it was up-and-coming, but not yet mainstream or “cool”. My co-founder and I did quite well, and found a new and innovative way to do it — using phones and tablets instead of regular third party hardware. This approach got us a couple of pilots, some momentum, and even got us into one of the premier accelerators in the US — The Alchemist the fall of 2015.
Then our technology in search of a market caught up with us, and got us to a grinding halt. Lots of companies were really interested, or so we though, but we couldn’t quite get to the market. It was always lacking something, not the right time, not the right focus etc. Shortly after it started to go downhill. My technical co-founder decided that doing a B2B startup was too hard, and required too much effort, to make work and therefore decided to leave. So, there I was — alone in San Francisco with an idea without a market, no technical expertise, little prior knowledge in recruiting, no network amongst developers and no momentum. This was early November 2015, and I had no traction in which I could attract people with. It took some serious soul searching, and I’m sure I spent about 2–3 hours on the phone with my girlfriend back in Norway every evening. I’ll admit, I was at a very low point, feeling like a failure losing my co-founder half-way through an elite accelerator program, and not being able to capitalize on the momentum.
What would you have done?
After 2 weeks, I made a hail marry. I decided to stop working with some new and “shiny” technology, and have fun working on a problem I had felt for years myself whilst working in retail — the lack of customer insight. In hindsight, I see that I was never truly passionate about the location based marketing the same way I’m now.
I also saw that there was no way I was going to be able to do this myself, and so I wanted to work with someone I knew had felt the same problem as me and that I got along great with. The problem; she had a job, lived in Norway with her boyfriend, and I had no idea if she would want to join me on this adventure. The only thing I knew other than the previously stated facts was that she loved San Francisco. The conversation turned out pretty much like this: “Would you come to San Francisco to work with me for three months if I paid all expenses?”, “Yes, EASILY! When?”. She’s something special! (See Ingvild’s meet the looper post for more on this period)
I see this moment and period as the rebirth of Proxloop, and the founding moment of what now is new Proxloop!
Ingvild’s primary job became hunting for a new CTO and an engineering team to build the product, while I tried to attract customers. Both me and Ingvild were anxious to get someone in right away, but we agreed we wouldn’t let just anyone in. It had to be the right fit, and that turned out to be a lot harder that we initially thought! Ingvild started working full time in January, and we found the right guy in July. 6 agonizing months — perfect btw — but totally worth the wait.
While CTO-hunting, I had to find a clever way of proving the market, and showcasing the solution, without being able to build the product. The solution — I called in a favor from a friend of mine in St. Louis who was a designer — William Frazier. Together with him I made the first product designs and drafts, and started showing them to potential customers. The feedback was completely different, and a lot more actionable. We soon discovered what our customers needed and started working on how we could solve the problem.
Out of the struggle came the best learning experience of my life, and a strong company culture. One of the cultural focuses we are implementing is helping each other out, learning from each other, reading a lot, and all of us has mentors we can count on to help us overcome difficulties. Lastly, I just want to say thank you to everyone working in Proxloop now, and everyone that has supported along the way! Let’s keep Looping!
