Embarrassment is embarrassing.
I haven’t updated many people on what i’ve been up to lately. And there’s a simple reason for that: embarrassment. It’s not fun to talk about being a failure. Part of me didn’t want to be dramatic in telling a story and having people read into things, but I’ll try to be a little more transparent and see where that gets me.
Maybe the last thing you knew was that Hollrback launched, I was traveling around talking to amazing people about it, and getting awesome feedback. And then things kind of hit a brick wall. I ran out of money to sustain myself, and I knew that if I could no longer eat or have a place to live that Hollrback would ultimately suffer. So I made the really hard choice to give up with ad-hoc projects and dedicated Hollrback efforts and get a “real job” in order to keep things afloat.
This is how I failed Hollrback. This is how I failed Omaha. This is how I failed my friends that had faith in me. I had to cave and push Hollrback aside in order to survive, in order for Hollrback to survive. I was once told by a representative of a local tech blog that Hollrback was no longer a “company”, but a “small side project” due to the fact that I had to get a job. I was completely crushed. I’ll never forget that feeling, Hollrback was now seen differently because I needed to be able to pay rent. Now I wake up every morning, look in the mirror and see a fuckup. Everything negative that comes to me I’ve seen since then as justifiable punishment for not being good at what I do. If you’ve never been there I don’t expect you to understand.
I really, really tried. It’s really, really hard.
This was months ago. As time went on deadlines took time away from what I was passionate about and put energy into what I had to do. Don’t get me wrong, my job is great. I’m building some neat stuff for neat people. But Hollrback was getting farther away from me every day. I didn’t know what to do next.
I was alone with a product that I saw as something the world could really use, and I had no idea what to do with it. It wasn’t about money, it only had to do with my inability to do anything successfully. I have no idea what I’m doing, and I’ve been pretty honest about it if you’ve ever approached and asked me.
Early on I was pretty confident I would build a great product, but I had no idea how to build a great business. So my plan was to surround myself with people that would work with me on that journey. Ultimately when it came down to it none of that really worked out. Not for any reason in particular, it’s just hard. Everyone involved has been top notch and I think highly of them. But once I found myself stuck I put all pride aside and started to contact people that I respected, and others I didn’t know but who others respected. Some pushed me aside, others replied with an “it’s ok to fail”.
And that’s what you’re thinking right now, aren’t you? I get it a lot. ”That’s too bad. What are you going to work on next?” I feel pretty strongly that if you had something you were ready to jump on at the first sight of strife that you never really cared that much about what you were doing in the first place. I don’t have a plan B or a “next idea”. What’s wrong with this one? It’s not Hollrback who failed. It’s me. It’s just me.
In my mind I ask a series of simple questions. ”Is Hollrback pretty great? Yes. Does people think highly of it? Yes. Do people want it to succeed? Yes. Is there a competitor in the space that has succeeded where Hollrback could not? No.” If any of the answers were any different than those I’d gladly pack up my code and move on. But Hollrback is bigger than myself. It has nothing to do with me, my success, or me being right or wrong. It’s about giving something to the world that I thought that it could use. If I ever felt that it wouldn’t benefit people I would have given up. It’s never been about me.
That being said, I’m trying to figure out what’s next that’s in Hollrback’s best interest. In no scenario would folding it benefit anyone. Remember when I asked if there was currently a better solution than it, and I answered no? If there was, then I’d let them do it and I’d be a happy user of their service. But even the people with millions of dollars behind them (and have copied some Hollrback functionality, I’m honored) can’t make things take off. To me that’s called an even playing field.
So I’m looking at options. I think the incubator/business accelerator model is perfect for me. I want to be surrounded by people who have done it before. But Omaha doesn’t currently have anything and the “big ones” out there care a lot about you having an awesome team, and I have no team. It’s just me.
So that’s that.
I thought about disabling comments to this post, since I assume the responses will be over simplified (everybody seems to know what’s best when they’re not involved), but go ahead. Tell me what you would do if you were me. Keep in mind this isn’t a product issue (“U SHULD ADD BADGES AND INSTAGRAM SUPPORT”), but a larger issue regarding myself and my attempt to give something to to the world. If you know someone that might be interested in talking with me, go ahead and share this post with them, I’d love to chat.
Related posts:
- Unleash the Hollrback! At South by Southwest. Tomorrow I head to Austin for the 2011 edition of...
- Another adventure begins. Goodbye Omaha. My time in Omaha is coming to an end. On...
- Hollrback explainer video All of us at Hollrback are really proud of the...
- Choices, decisions and fear: Part 2. I’m a fan of transparency. I like to know what...
- TechStars for a Day, startup culture, and my comparisons to Omaha Alright, stay with me. I promise you’ll get something at...
Matt
on October 20th, 2011
First of all, huge props to you for sharing a story about failure. The Midwest is so very averse to failure, and we need more people brave enough to share so that everyone can get used to talking about it, learning from it, and mitigating our fears.
For what it’s worth, I consider your need to make ends meet with a job and the Hollrback project to be somewhat orthogonal concerns.
Revenue is the ultimate goal of a business, of course, but I just don’t think it’s realistic for people to expect you to immediately pull down a living wage from a free-to-use app business model.
Plus, didn’t you write that it had become a team effort, anyway?
Think of all you have learned and done, and how scary and impossible it would have seemed to the dude in the cube at West! I hope to hear some more stories about your lessons learned, SXSW, TechStars, etc from you sometime.
Jennifer Joseph
on October 20th, 2011
I don’t think you are a failure until you give up completely. So you have to get a job to pay rent, so what?
Fuck that person who said Hollrback is just a side project and not a company. Perhaps you need to set different expectations now that you have a day job but I think you should still move forward with Hollrback.
It’s taken me well over a year to write my novel because I’m a single mom, I work full time, I was going to school full time and I run Slacker Heroes. That doesn’t mean I’m a failure. It just means that I have a full life and don’t have the luxury of sitting at my keyboard all day.
Good luck to you and let me know if I can help in any way.
xo
Jen
Aron Filbert
on October 21st, 2011
Maybe it’s because you’ve surrounded yourself with or only sought out advice or feedback from people who aren’t straight up with you. Hollrback is a great idea, but the execution (at least on the Android platform) was poor. It was unresponsive on Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G, kinda confusing at first w/ many steps to create your first card and connection, and it was actually broken when I pulled it up and tried to use it in a group of peers for the first and second time. I tweeted you directly about it but received no response, so I forgot about it and stopped using it. To be fair, I haven’t used it on the iPhone.
Also, I hardly think you “failed” anything or anybody by getting a paying gig. This must have been hard to post considering how you obviously feel about it, but I’m impressed you had the courage to actually say something about it in such a public way. You obviously feel strongly about it, which is why I feel that I owe it to you to be honest and tell you the truth about how I and at least a few others really feel about it.
It’s not all bad, though. This is exactly the type of thing that can make a mediocre product better, maybe even GREAT if given enough of a chance. Honest feedback is something you need, and Omaha (in certain circles) doesn’t really excel at that. It’s too busy giving high fives and slaps on the back to get around to that. So really, if you think about it, maybe it isn’t you who failed Omaha, so much as Omaha failed you.
Cheer up, keep at it even if it’s the nights and weekends. Listen to and solicit honest feedback, be patient, and I believe you’ll get the results and success you’re hoping for.
Gabe
on October 21st, 2011
Aron:
You’re so right about the Android client. In retrospect Android should have been completely held off and let iPhone alone be the launch platform since that’s the hardware I use. That’s the approach that other services take and that works.
From one phone to the next the Android client operated differently and due to everything outlined above and the single Android device I have not being able to replicate the issues that you, and others (different issues) have it never became a priority to work on something I couldn’t even troubleshoot. I’m sorry if I seemed unresponsive about it.
But honestly, on the iPhone (and for many Android users), people have really liked it and functionality/performance feedback was positive. Even outside of the Omaha bubble. It’s why I traveled to gain feedback. I’m conscious of what Omaha is, as I think everyone should be.
Matt
on October 21st, 2011
Aron, I totally agree that Omaha people are generally terrible about giving (and receiving) the necessary criticism to help refine things toward true greatness. Posts like this are great for starting the conversations we need to have in order to fix that in our community.
@Joe_Craig
on October 21st, 2011
The Hollrback chapter is still being written in the Life & Times of Gabe Kangas. Does it deserve another chapter? Will it wrap-up in this one? I don’t know. I don’t care. What I care about is that you keep sharing the book that is Gabe with the rest of us in the manner you did in this post. Thank you! Real real. #DundeeDNA
Andy Peters
on October 21st, 2011
I was trying to write something good, but @joe_craig already did it. … what he said.
Hollrback will be back, I’m sure of it. More important, Gabe will be back. Remember the Mac was a failure for a while. Now look at it…
Lateef
on October 21st, 2011
Sounds like you’re ambivalent about advice, but here it goes. For a consumer app, measure demand in this way: (http://startup-marketing.com/the-startup-pyramid/), then iterate to improve that objective measure. I think the revenue model is a big, gaping question, but I’m sure you have thoughts about that.
BTW, I was *exactly* where you’re at about a year ago. You’re right. It’s embarrassing. However, not as embarrassing as failing to learn from your experience.
Kevin Hagemoser
on October 21st, 2011
Great dialog all!
I don’t know you cats yet but I want to -let’s continue the dialog over a coffee or beer.
Valuable news/discussion includes unpopular topics like failure but it isn’t often provided… and that is a shame.
What format could we use to make posts like Gabe’s more common?
What would it look like, what tools, style… etc?
If you have ANY suggestions – please connect with me ASAP, I wanna chat about this seriously.
Email me: L5Group [at] yahoo [dot] com
Gabe
on October 21st, 2011
Lateef,
That’s a great, succinct post you linked to. I’ve never seen that “Startup Pyramid” before, and I really agree with it. I’ll keep that one around.
I know it’s just me, and maybe it’s a huge fault of mine, but I care way more about creating value than executing a revenue model. I find it to be premature to ask for money before you’ve actually made someone’s life better with what you offered them. Hollrback absolutely has a plan, in writing, to monetize. But it’s yet to reach that place. For Hollrback, and any consumer service, the problem is traction. It’s a really, really hard problem to get around, and I know now you need someone knowledgable to work with you on it. In this case a failed (uninformed, over-optimistic, too broad) go to market strategy is responsible for that. Getting one paid user only means that user will be disappointed. It’s not like a service company where the first customer makes you profitable and you can survive off of that reoccurring revenue from a handful of clients you hand acquired.
A lack of revenue from a successful product is a problem I’d be happy to tackle. But seeing Hollrback’s failures as this is certainly not something I align with.
Again, it’s just my opinion.
Step 1) Build something you want.
Step 2) Find out if others want this too.
Step 3) Give it to them.
Step 4) See how they use it, find what it’s worth to them.
Step 5) Charge for it.
Hollrback never got farther than a few feet off the step 4 starting line. Obviously that go to market strategy would be different in retrospect, but I’m not smart enough to know how.
Kevin Hagemoser
on October 21st, 2011
Gabe – I love that you are being so open.
My feeling is fundamentally different than yours.
Don’t build something for YOU first. That is the 37 Signals model but that doesn’t work if you don’t have a biz already that needs biz process software.
You must solve real pain points/problems with your product first and foremostly in a customer segment that is large enough and can afford your offering and which you can produce for less than the customer pays you to own it… that’s all business is.
I’m not dogging your approach but what you’ve described is creating a product/square peg and then trying to find a customer set to fill with that square peg… what if the customer needs a round peg?
Don’t build something not knowing if anyone even needs it.
Building stuff for YOU means nothing – what if you are the ONLY one that wants it? then you have a market of one (or even 100) that’s just not enough.
Build to solve a real problem – do research on why the problem exists – test assumptions about the customer and their buying habits – test it some more – talk to 100 possible customers – then build a MVP and watch 15 possible customers use the raw/shitty version of what you hope to build out later.
++ Then 100 + steps after that must be executed too but the above is a start.
That’s “my opinion” on the Steps 1 through 5+
But what do I know?
Gabe
on October 21st, 2011
I’m not saying to build out an entire company and then find out if anyone is interested in what you have to offer. But sometimes you have to take a few steps forward and build something before you can find out if anyone really gets it. I felt this way with Hollrback. If you were to ask people what the solution to having only a single business card for a single context would be, they’d say to print different business cards. If you were to ask them about the organization and management of them, they’d say a better business card scanner.
There’s the old Henry Ford quote saying when he asked his customers what they wanted they told him a “faster horse”.
To innovate is to take risks. It’s also a way to waste a lot of money and end up with a worthless company. But I’m just not interested in working on a problem that I’m not personally interested in solving. I understand that’s a drawback.
If I wanted an easy round peg in round hole problem I’d write accounting software. Everyone hates their accounting software.
Miles
on October 22nd, 2011
Gabe,
Great post – Omaha needs more discussion like this and more people like you.
I definitely see how you’re feeling – you explain your feelings well – but I’m a little confused about the why. Why exactly do you feel like a failure? Because you had to get a job to pay the rent? Because Hollrback hasn’t reached the number of users you were hoping?
How long have you been working on Hollrback? I’ve read several things from successful entrepreneurs that say it takes at least three years to give something a shot. And I don’t think three years really includes the initial development time. I think three years covers feedback, iterations, and marketing. The first time I heard of Hollrback was about a year ago and I think you had just launched. So basically I’m trying to say, have you really given this enough time to consider it a failure yet?
Also, I agree with Aron in saying that Omaha failed you. I think it’s an utter disgrace that with all of the talented business people we supposedly have here, an incredibly talented and technical person like yourself couldn’t get adequate support from even one business person to really help you with marketing and revenue. That says a ton about the state of Omaha right now in my opinion. So my advice to you is to try to find a marketing/business person (I know I know – but now I think you’re learning their value first hand) willing and able to make your company their main focus, and let them do their thing, with your guidance of course.
Also, I know you didn’t really want product recommendations, but I just wanted to say that for me one of the biggest barriers to me using Hollrback is that the signup process is cumbersome. Not very many people use it when I meet them so it’s hard for me to use it, but if there was a simple way to set up your contact info on your phone and be ready to share it in seconds, withou making an account and setting a password – I could show people how to do it when I meet them somewhere and we could trade info in under thirty seconds. Right now it’s one of those things I tell people they should use, they look at it, say I’ll do this later, put their phone away, and then forget about it.
You rock Gabe – don’t give up!!!
Gabe
on October 22nd, 2011
I don’t disagree that most companies fall into where Hollrback is at now some point. But their founders are usually smart enough to steer the ship. I’m not. That’s one of the many places where I fail Hollrback.
You also can’t compare valley companies to Omaha companies. In the valley you can take in a couple million dollars, dedicate yourself to having a team experiment for a couple years and figure out what works. A very different scenario.
Bethany
on October 22nd, 2011
There’s a lot of good discussion here so I’ll just say this – YOU are not a fuckup or a failure. Whether Hollrback takes on new life from here or not, you did something 99.9% of people never do – go all in and risk everything on something you’re passionate about. If you hadn’t, you probably would have always wondered ‘what if.’ And when you needed to cut your losses to survive, you did. When you needed to recognize your own strengths and look for help to fill in the gaps, you did that too. And through all that, you were and still are driven by the product and the users, not the paycheck.
When I all that up, I see a pretty awesome, honest, humble human being. Failure sucks, but you yourself are not a failure, and I think the fact that you’re willing to write this post and reach out just emphasizes that. Hang in there, and don’t write yourself off.
Wade
on October 23rd, 2011
Gabe, thanks for sharing.
Having been part of a startup that failed leaving a HUGE crater, I can feel for you. I agree with many above that it doesn’t have to be over. Like Miles said above, a day job doesn’t mean your not an entrepreneur.
There is a notion in startup circles that if you don’t quit your day job, then you are not committed. Bulls**t. Reality is that you need a place to live and food to eat. It’s the whole Maslow hierarchy of needs thing. In my case there is 4 other human beings that depend on my pay check for their well being. Not something to be taken lightly.
I’ve had VC’s tell me that they will only invest in “committed entrepreneurs” which is code for quitting your day job. I guess my view of that is working 2 full time jobs shows a tremendous commitment. Our plan is to get to full time within the next year, but you can’t focus on building a great business if you are worried about being thrown out of your house. Burdening a fledgling business with salaries before it can support them is not a smart business move.
What I’m saying is keep working on Hollrback on the side and find yourself a good co-founder. Good luck!
Zach Leatherman
on October 23rd, 2011
Self awareness is a cruel bitch, but it’s a necessary precursor to success. It’s definitely something I struggled with on Tournology. I don’t know that I’ve even had the courage to admit failure on it, and the site has been down for over a year now. Honesty with yourself is clearly one of your strong suits. Keep your wits about you and your chin up. The worst outcome from this is to think that you are a failure. Let me know if I can help.
Matt Gersib
on October 26th, 2011
Gabe: Thanks for this. Man, you really went out on a limb… Sharing that had to be a big challenge, but I think you can safely say there is support for you and your endeavors. Just keep the faith and don’t give up. Your example will inspire the vision of generations of entrepreneurs to-come. Think about that… You’re in a fantastic position RIGHT NOW.
Keep your head up. You can do it.
Matt Secoske
on November 5th, 2011
Interesting post Gabe. The question that pops up in my mind is: What are you going to do about it?
Gabe
on November 5th, 2011
Take a short time to reflect, reorganize, and push forward; continuing to make the best decisions that I know how to make.
Matt Secoske
on November 5th, 2011
That sounds like a non-answer to me. From what I can tell, it doesn’t appear that anything has happened with the app for quite a while now. How short is “a short time”?
So, I’ll ask again: What are you going to do about it?
(I’m not trying to be confrontational here, I just want to understand and help.)
meg
on November 6th, 2011
I think this is a milestone.
Saxon Sawai
on December 13th, 2011
Gabe,
I totally feel you on that. Youre out in Omaha and Im out here in Hawaii of all places developing something that I hope the world will want too. It’s a tough and risky business. Plus, No one likes to fail. In my opinion you should do what you are passionate about though. Just a thought but Gabe have you ever tried finding talent overseas and hiring good talent for less? You might be able to put together a team at a low cost. Ive been in the insurance industry for 4 years and thats what I use to fund my projects =) Anyhow, I wish you the best of luck Gabe!