I'm closing Joyinapp.
Over the last two years I dedicated myself to building Joyinapp, a way for people with ideas for apps to make them a reality.
I started alone, throwing an ugly MVP into the air to see if there was any interest. There was. People posted app ideas. Some of them were good, some of them weren't, but it showed me that there are many people out there with app ideas but no way to execute them.
After a short while, Gil joined me and over more than twenty months, we've built a fully-functional web platform to be the home for people with app ideas.
Today, I sadly announce I'm closing Joyinapp.
While most of us are hearing about successful startups, I want founders and co-founders of failing startups to know they are not alone and this is why I'm going to share my experience and thoughts as to what didn't work out and what I'm going to change in my next venture.
Joyinapp failed because:
1. No Team
Investors are right when looking for a strong team to work on a startup together. Running a one-man show startup is hard not just because of the highs and lows you experience by yourself but mainly because it's very easy to lose focus while handling too many things at once. Sure, you can prioritize, you can be great at multi-tasking but for the long run, you either slow your own progress or split your attention over too many things.
Don't get me wrong—Gil was awesome and we're good friends but he joined to help with development until we raised funds, not to be a full time co-founder, something we both understand today was a mistake.
Besides Gil, I worked with two other people for a short time but one gave birth and couldn't keep working without a salary and the second did the best she could but it didn't work out.
Finding good co-founders at the bootstrap phase is not easy but it's worth your time and if you see that you still can't find anyone after a while, ask yourself, “Why aren't they joining? Am I working on something that is not interesting enough? Am I working on something that will take too long to build and raise money?”
Not finding a team is a red sign—don't ignore it.
2. Building Too Much
Understanding what the ‘lean startup’ method is, believing in it and practicing it are three different things. I was good at the first two but failed miserably with the third.
So I talked to a lot of users, collected feedback, analyzed onsite behavior and tried to build minimally. But then, when I characterized whatever it is I wanted to build, I went too far and built too wide—added obsolete features, acted upon feedback which came from one or two users sometimes.
So we created a really big, beautiful monster that could do many things and offered a lot of features. What a mistake that was...
First, we wasted a lot of time working on stuff that wasn’t important enough at the stage we were in. Second, it slowed us down with every change we wanted to make because we had to go wide and consider many things that might be affected due to that change.
Build as minimally as you can, never let one or two users dictate a change and always ask yourself the following questions before you act: - Is it necessary? - Will it bring more users? Or, if not - Will it increase retention and usage significantly? Only after you are totally sure, go ahead and do it.
3. Bootstrapping with a family is hard
I read stories about entrepreneurs who are sleeping in their cars, living on coffee and cornflakes and wait tables to keep their startups running. I adore these people and every time I read such things I wish I was a bit younger when I first started, but today I have a wife and a two-year-old toddler who I love and therefore can't live like these guys.
So I invested quite a lot of money (which, looking back, I realize could have been saved) and have reached a point where I can't invest anymore and need to start wrapping things up.
4. Lack of a clear technological value
When I first started Joyinapp, all I wanted to do was build a B2C product to serve people. I didn't think about the fact that investors want to see a clear technological advantage over the competition nor did I think about raising the entry bar high to make it harder to compete with us.
This was wrong.
It's OK to build simple solutions as long as you have a compelling USP that is not UX related because, most of the time, UX can be copied quite easily.
Most of the investors I met along the way wanted to hear about a technical edge that will make it work, something they can believe in, something that will intrigue them. If you don't have it, they will ask you to simply prove to them you're on to something. How? By getting very high traffic and even higher conversions.
Today, I agree with them without a doubt.
So these are the main reasons why I'm closing Joyinapp. Of course, there were many other things along the way, but if you get the above right, the small things won't matter.
As for me, I'm not going to give-up entrepreneurship because of this failure. I can tell you that I'm moving forward to the next thing with the full intention to improve myself by implementing the lessons I learned over the last two years on my way to creating something great.
You're sincerely invited to reach out to me on my Linkedin, Facebook or Email.
Cheers, Yogev.
