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 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!"
Hi there, my name is Kate, I'm a Product Owner (a.k.a mommy) of the fresh-launched asset management tool AssetSpace For almost a year, I'm wearing a visioner's, manager's, owner's, designer's, QA's, marketologist's and a lot of other hats while working on product. Ask me anything!
Somorr identifies emails and informs you whether they are deliverable. By doing so, you may significantly increase the number of emails opened while avoiding the customer's junk.
- Are you a website owner?
- Does your website require a signup page?
Don’t worry, in 30 seconds you can drag & drop the elements that you need, and Somorr will make them for you, plus your website database will be encrypted and protected against script injections and hackers.
•
