Tyler Reed

At the moment I am biding my time and trying to find the right idea to pursue. I have been able to sort my ideas into two categories. The first being stupid ideas you see on Techcrunch and wonder how they raised funding at all. While the second are near impossible industry disrupting ideas that make meaning.

What I have realised is that Aduity was much like a first girlfriend, you know – your “first love”. However, once you have parted ways, you realise that you never really knew what love was but you now have a slightly more mature understanding. I think somewhere along the line the long term vision of Aduity was lost and therefore it ultimately never made any meaning (nor was it going to based on the new direction).

I’m not sure I want to build a startup around another “me too” idea. I’m not sure how important aggregating social commerce status updates from multiple platforms via mobile is (hint: sarcasm)? I’ve learned that startups are an order of magnitude harder to build than you expect.

I’ve slowly stopped exploring the ideas in the first category and have started thinking more deeply about the ideas I have placed into the second category. If I am to pursue an idea in the second category, I know that I will need to emotionally and psychologically prepare myself for the long haul. While the beginning might be humble and there might be no justification that I am on the right track for some time, I still need to maintain conviction that I am on the right track. I know it’s not easy because I’ve been there before.

I know ideas are a dime a dozen and that it all comes down to execution. However at the same time great execution on a crap idea still makes it a crap idea. And that is why I want to ensure I pursue the right idea. The idea that inspires me every day, the idea that I can build a great team around, the idea that makes meaning and then money, the idea that I fall in love with.

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
- Michael Jordan

It was mid 2008 and Younique was doing reasonably well. However, I had an itch that I needed to scratch. I wanted to build a mobile advertising platform – think DoubleClick meets AdMob. At the time the mobile advertising market wasn’t as competitive as it is today. Towards the end of 2008, I decided to forgo the R3m+ revenue Younique was likely to generate for 2009, shut it all down and found what would today be known as Aduity.

Unfortunately things haven’t turned out as planned. I’m not going to go through exactly what went wrong, it’s still a little too early. However, as the founder, I have to take responsibility for the failure irrespective of what went wrong. I am publishing this because I want to force myself to become more comfortable with failure and to also encourage other tech entrepreneurs to share their failure(s).

1. Great Technology isn’t the Silver Bullet

We built some great technology. I think the most impressive piece of technology we developed was a version of iAd for Nokia devices, which was no easy task. Unfortunately you need more than technology. Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. It is important to pay attention to market timing, sales and marketing that equals, if not trumps, your product development efforts.

2. Release Early, Release Often

It’s something that has been said over and over again, but when you’re in the driving seat it’s easier said than done. I am a perfectionist and want things to be perfect. We had our first trial run after 3 months of development but it took us almost a year to put out our first major release (and quietly too). After a few months it was clear that our mediation layer feature was most used, so we ended up ditching everything else and turning the mediation layer into the product. If we released earlier, we would have known that sooner and saved ourselves precious time and wasted code.

3. Raising Capital is Time & Energy Consuming

I wasn’t 100% familiar with the process of raising capital until I actually did. It takes time to find the right investors, never mind those who will actually back you. It takes time to negotiate the term sheet. Once you’ve got a signed term sheet, there’s still due diligence, then drafting of agreements and once those are signed, you finally get the money. In an ideal world it should take less than 3 months (once you’ve got a yes), but it can take up to 6 months and in some cases longer. It is time and energy consuming and will affect you and your team as it remains top of mind.

4. It’s a Priceless Learning Experience

I can only become a better entrepreneur by learning from both success and failure. Arguably you learn more from failure. I would have preferred to fail faster, but then I would have missed out on some of the other learning opportunities. I have definitely learned to manage a team of developers and designers much better. I am now more intimately familiar with the process of raising capital. I have also picked up a few more skills along the way and more importantly have learned and grown more than I had expected to.

Conclusion

One might think that I have wasted almost 3 years and the large sum of capital I personally committed. One might think I was foolish to even attempt it in the first place. I like to look at this way. I have no regrets. I was able to pursue an idea that allowed me to meet incredible people along the way that have contributed to my growth as an individual. I have failed at a young age, and might do so again, but everything I go through now makes me a better entrepreneur – like wine I get better with time!

In this second episode of withTy I sat down with Chris Humboldt and Jean Moncrieff the team behind iThawt and Compass at Emerge Studio, the skunk works division of Emerge Group. Both products they built are solutions to their owns problems and their clients’ problems.

We chatted about how both iThawt and Compass came about and how they convinced an impressive client list to host important documentation in the cloud. We also discussed how they solved their problem of subscription billing and how they went about determining their monthly subscription prices for iThawt.

I was particularly interested to hear how iThawt pivoted and their future plans of introducing social business into the platform. Even though iThawt has only recently launched, I was impressed with it after playing around with it for a while. Chris and Jean would really love feedback so they can progress in the right direction, so sign-up and give it a go.