I know firsthand how annoying it can be to have to spend a lot of time looking up information or responding to the same questions repeatedly because I use Slack every day at work. I'm wondering if anyone else faces this problem as well and how you solve it today.
Hi PH community! Wanted to share the story of how we went from a failed product to $1.4M in funding, hopefully it will bring some learnings. We released Waiver, an app to block overdraft, maintenance and credit card late fees right here on PH in March of 2021. The launch didn't go particularly well, we hardly knew what we were doing, but found an accelerator program willing to take a chance on us a few months later. We managed to get 350 users on the platform and the data began to point to an interesting problem: the vast majority of payments that failed and either bounced bank or overdrew bank accounts came primarily from subscription services. The data led us to research this problem more in depth and we began to understand that this is a big issue for all parties involved. 35% of recurrent payments fail, and failed payments cause a plethora of issues for both merchants and consumers. Our app ultimately failed to gain traction and investor interest as banks began to announce cuts to overdraft fees. An investor who had committed $1.5M in funding eventually backed out when Capital One announced that they were getting rid of overdraft fees. With $2,000 left in the bank we decided to pivot and follow the data. 3 months later we closed a $1.4M round. Today, we are building a payments infrastructure for subscription/recurring payments. Our timeline:
March 2021 - Launched waitlist on Product Hunt.
April 2021 - Released on TestFlight.
May 2021 - Got accepted to an accelerator.
June 2021 - Fundraised. Failed.
July 2021 - Recruited Engineer.
August 2021 - Co-Founder and Engineer joined Full-Time.
September 2021 - Built MVP.
October 2021 - Released on App Store.
November 2021 - Fundraised.
December 2021 - Failed.
January 2021 - Pivoted product.
February 2021 - Fundraised.
March 2021 - Closed $1.4M Pre-Seed Round.
February 2022 - Launching beta of new product on PH. My key learning:
Your ideas don't have to work, they just have to help you build a better product.
I asked people what the last presentation they prepared using PowerPoint and they all said "Do you still use PowerPoint? What a shame!" :D Let me correct it this way: "What was the last presentation you prepared (eg. keynote speech, progress report, sales deck, etc.), and which presentation tool did you use?"
I wish someone had told me how much time it would take. I was so naive when I started my company, thinking that it would be easy to get off the ground and make a name for myself. What I didn't realize until later is that there's so much work involved in building a business and so many things that can go wrong. I'm grateful for my experience now, but if I could go back and tell myself something about starting a company, it would be: "Don't expect things to go smoothly. And if you had to pivot... PIVOT!"
Your same bank account, but without the annoying fees. Enjoy fee-free banking with your current account, no need to switch banks or open new accounts. Waiver blocks overdraft, maintenance and late credit card fees.
I launched a thing last week, and it didn't get any good response so wondering what I did wrong. So here's your chance to roast it Link: https://blubi.ai/