How blowing $20,000 made me learn to code.
Two years ago I started a company called NextMover. We were the first mover — pun intended — in the Uber for moving space. I’d won Startup Weekend Santa Barbara and raised $65k in seed funding at the event.
With tons of great momentum, we set out to get our first version of the product to market. We started with simple landing pages, spreadsheets, forms, and used Venmo and PayPal for payments. It was a pretty manual process but we were able to get our first customers and learn a lot.
No one on my team knew how to code.
We decided to hire a rails developer to build our first product.
Our developer assured us that he could build our app based off some mockups we gave him. We liked him and decided to move forward.
I’d never worked with a developer and didn’t understand exactly what I was asking him to build. I had no way of knowing if his quotes were reasonable or if the code was being built properly.
Every time we needed a change, it took way longer than I thought it should to put in place.
It felt like a game of telephone — everything got lost in translation.
Part of the problem was my inexperience. We created what I call “developer whiplash” with too many changes to the product specs. Seeing that something wasn’t working I decided to do my own digging. I recognized I needed to get more educated on what I was asking him to build.
As bad as it sounds, I’d never logged into GitHub.
I just didn’t realize how it worked. Ninety percent of the contributions on GitHub we’re not him. He’d been outsourcing our product to some guy in El Salvador.
Cue cold sweat #1: We’d just lost $20,000 building a shit version of our product.
Mistake #1: Hiring the wrong developer and not knowing how to manage him.
Even after taking such a big loss it didn’t really sink in just how badly we needed this skill set until I reached out to one of my mentors, Steve Blank.
Steve is an eight time serial entrepreneur and is a leading mind in the field of startups and innovation.
I was lucky enough to get him on the phone for about 30 minutes.
I walked Steve through all of the challenge we were facing when he stopped me to ask about the team. I said we didn’t have anyone who knew how to code and he cut me off.
“Alex… you don’t have a business… you have an idea on the back of a napkin…”
Queue cold sweat #2: My business was just a napkin.
As hard as it was to hear, I knew he was right. Not having the technical skill on our team to build our product was a deal breaker for any investor and for our business.
We didn’t have the skills on our team to prototype new ideas cheaply and all the evidence pointed towards a business model that wasn’t viable. We decided to cut our losses and close down the company.
Everyone went their separate ways and remained friends. I remain close with my angel investors and am so thankful that they gave me this opportunity. The lessons I learned while building Next Mover guide me everyday.
Lessons Learned:
- Have the skills on your team to execute your vision.
- Know enough about coding to hire right and prototype your product.
What I’m doing today.
I spent the next 2 years learning how to code. I built my first app in just 30 days and continue to test new ideas. Entrepreneurship and education are my passions. Thus, most of the products I’m building focus in these two areas. The hard lessons I learned motivated me to gain a new skill and led me to an amazing team at OpusLogica. I’m currently an Entrepreneur In Residence working with the Opus team to build SaaS business.
Here are a few of the projects we’re working on.
Learn to build a viral pre launch campaign
Make simple referral marketing campaigns in seconds
Focus on your front end. We do the rest.
