The complete drawn-out reason why my startup failed
Two years ago, I shut down my first startup. Here’s a blog explaining everything; how we started, what we tried, and why we ultimately shut the startup down.
I met my cofounder, Brandon, in the fall of 2015. He had just organized a marketing competition for Badminton Canada and realized that lots of coaches still do registrations and payments by hand. To help out his high school badminton coach, he built a simple online portal and called it Coachletic.
At the time, our university was funding trips to startup competitions around the world. Brandon wanted to seize the opportunity and was looking for a team. For me, this was a chance to travel, learn, and work with Brandon, for whom I have a lot of respect. He sold a company in high school and there was a lot to learn from him. At the time, we weren’t planning on actually doing a startup — we just wanted to have some fun.
Over Christmas break, however, things started to get real. Brandon and I drove to badminton clubs all over Toronto for customer interviews, which gave us hope that Coachletic might become a real thing. Many people were actually using paper and filing cabinets and no one seemed to have good software. However, there wasn’t a clear customer in badminton either. Small clubs were fine managing their 30-ish members on paper. Big clubs had clunky desktop solutions but were resistant to anything new. Plus, the market for registration software is busy, and trying to enter it with badminton clubs is too niche. However, the university-sponsored competitions were approaching and we had to pitch. After some slight adjustments, we pushed on.
We ended up pitching Coachletic in Vancouver and San Diego (click here to watch our business model presentation). Although we didn’t bring home the gold, the competitions brought us closer as a team and connected us to really cool mentors. Brandon and I got to know each other, got a taste for each other’s work ethic, and got really excited about the possibility of turning this into something real. It had been my long time dream to start a startup and doing interviews, making pitch decks, and figuring out how this idea might work was a lot of fun.
One of our last efforts with Coachletic was pushing it from the top down through Badminton Ontario. If the badminton head honchos made Coachletic mandatory, reporting and admin would be easier for them, and customer adoption easier for us. Plus, they could get data and insights on their organization. In May 2016, we pitched at the Badminton Ontario AGM. What they ended up needing was a lot bigger than just online registrations — they wanted a reporting mechanism, tournament management, nation-wide adoption, and more. But they didn’t really have budget, and we didn’t want to do such a big task with no cash. We decided to pivot away from registrations and payments for sports clubs.
Looking back, I am very thankful for this early experience. It made me a lot smarter when assessing customer needs and a lot braver to admit when something wasn’t going to work. It also taught me to be fearless in asking for customer feedback and how to do it well. I learned about open ended questions and how to get people to tell you their true thoughts, instead of just being supportive.
By early June 2016 we had spent nine months gestating the startup and interviewed over 100 athletes, coaches, and club owners. Although the sports registration idea tanked at the AGM, we learned that sports are about more than just physical fitness. They’re about community. People love being members of clubs, seeing the same friends at tournaments, and enjoying their sport together. Originally our idea was to unite badminton clubs under one directory, but what if we united group activities in general? That’s when we pivoted Coachletic to Actively.
Actively was a curated collection of fun group experiences. On our site, you’d be able to find something unique to do and book it for your group. By mid-summer I was still working full time at my internship and Brandon was working full time on Actively. We had meetings at 7am before work and 5–9pm after work. I was so tired at the end of the day and don’t think I tanned at all that whole summer.
Because Brandon was going at it full time, he wanted things to move fast. All of his previous businesses had early sales and quick progress. As a result, Brandon brought on his friend as an intern and they spent their days calling local activity vendors to convince them to list on Actively. When they got 5 sales in one week, it felt like Actively was onto something. Brandon and I leased a car together to make it easier to visit businesses and take pictures, and I decided to quit my internship. Quitting that job meant I giving up an income and getting kicked out of the internship program all together. It might sound crazy to quit for a startup with almost no traction, but I still think it was the right thing to do. I felt so cut off from the day-to-day and Brandon might not have gone on without my full support. Doing a startup was my dream and we believed in Actively so much.
By mid-summer 2016 and, we had quite a few activities listed. Now we just needed bookings. To get some early traction, Actively organized some of our own public events. The first one was a bubble soccer bonanza with mostly just our friends, but it was exciting when passersby came over and talked to us during the event. They asked us about the initiative, and some even joined in midway through. That interest kept us thinking we might be onto something. We kept organizing events to prove demand, generate interest, get pictures for our SquareSpace site, and learn about event planning. Plus it was really easy to onboard businesses if we said we’d bring them a group within a month.
By the end of summer, things were kind of stagnant. We didn’t have consistent growth and were running out of friends to invite to events. Brandon and I were also moving to new apartments which slowed our progress even more. In late August 2016, we questioned if Actively was really a good idea. However there still seemed to be more theories to test and customers to interview so we kept at it.
At this point, the need on the vendor side was clear. Vendors offered amazing activities but didn’t know how to market them. Many got excited about Actively and were even willing to pay. However, we still couldn’t figure out who would book them. Since no bookings came in organically, we thought, what if we changed the model? We’ll plan all the events and make it kind of a club. Down the line, vendors could set up their own events, and Actively would become a real marketplace.
Between September and December, we met over 250 people, ran more than 20 events, and processed over $20,000 in payments. Running these events was really really hard. Because the activities were unique, people had to be convinced every time that they’d actually have fun. Then it had to be at the right place, time, and price, and their friends had to be free that day. Also, there can’t be a new Game of Thrones episode out that night, and they have to beat the desire to stay home and drink wine with their roommates. As a result, there wasn’t any one type of person that came to events. Some people were lonely, some came with their friends, and some just wanted to do that particular activity. With no specific need to address, marketing became very difficult. All of a sudden, making Actively a club didn’t make sense anymore.
In January 2017, there was one last idea to prove — getting group bookings instead of solo attendees. We had just brought on a new co-founder, Nathan, who developed a custom version of the platform. With this new model, vendors could publish a full experience for groups to book. That meant no one had to call for quotes or ask about catering, and the whole process would be streamlined. Plus groups would be able to filter activities based on requirements like location, group size, accessibility, etc. The groups we considered targeting were birthday parties, random groups like book clubs, travelers, and corporate teams. Our mentors suggested starting with corporate teams because they did events for building culture, and we had some interest from them in the past. However, it turned out that most companies weren’t interested in this version of Actively. Some wanted hardcore team building and were willing to pay top dollar (which we didn’t offer), some just needed a few fun ideas, and some needed hands-on event planning for cheap or free. Again, there just didn’t seem to be one clear need that Actively addressed.
Around this time we entered the Fierce Founders Bootcamp and really struggled to pitch the business. We could only explain the pain points on the vendor side and didn’t seem to be making progress. With no more ideas to test, we lost a lot of steam. More than anything, my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Since shutting Actively down, I’ve seen countless iterations of our business that seem to work. None of them are unicorns (to my knowledge) but they seem like great businesses.
When we shut the startup down, I felt both sad and relieved. Today, all illusions of the glitzy startup life are gone, but I miss our customers, partners, mentors, and team. When I’m a bit smarter, I’d love to try my hand at a startup again.
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