0:00 Six months of work, a hundred and seventy thousand dollars in ad spend and salaries, and on the day we killed it, our product ‘Echo’ had a grand total of seven active users.0:13 Seven.0:14 And I think four of them were us and our parents.0:18 Okay, so three.0:19 Three real users.0:20 You know, last week we talked about the Beacon mistake, getting only thirty-seven customers after spending over a million bucks.0:31 And that was a huge, painful number.0:34 But this...0:34 this feels worse somehow.0:36 It is worse.0:37 Because with Beacon, we misunderstood a market.0:41 With Echo, I think we just lied to ourselves.0:45 For six straight months.0:47 Yeah.0:47 Yeah, you're right.0:49 So where did the idea even come from?0:52 I've been trying to trace it back.0:54 I think...0:55 I think it started with that offsite, remember?0:59 When we were all complaining about how nobody reads the long weekly updates.1:05 Ohhh, I remember.1:06 Everyone was nodding along.1:09 "Too much text!" "My eyes glaze over!" And someone, I think it was Dave from marketing, said, "I wish you could just...1:18 tell it to me.1:19 Like a mini-podcast." And the room lit up.1:23 It was like a lightbulb went on over everyone's head at the exact same time.1:29 Internal, private podcasts for team updates.1:32 Asynchronous audio.1:34 It sounded SO smart.1:35 It sounded futuristic.1:37 We were all high on the idea of inventing a new way to work.1:42 We didn't sound like a company that makes, you know, boring-but-necessary compliance software.1:50 We sounded like visionaries.1:52 And that's the first trap, right?1:54 Falling in love with how an idea makes you sound.1:58 We spent, what, a week on mockups?2:01 They were beautiful.2:03 That dark mode interface, the little audio waveforms dancing...2:08 We fell in love with the mockups.2:10 Not the problem.2:12 The actual problem was that our weekly updates were too long and boring.2:17 The solution could have been "write shorter, better updates." Right!2:23 A free solution!2:24 But no, we needed to build a hundred-and-seventy-thousand-dollar piece of software instead.2:32 Because we didn't want to be the company that tells people to write better emails.2:38 We wanted to be the company that "disrupts internal communications." Ugh.2:44 I hate that I recognize that exact phrase from one of our pitch decks.2:50 So, we had the idea.2:51 We had the mockups.2:53 And then we made the first, uh, critical mistake.2:57 We talked to customers.2:59 Wait, that's supposed to be the right move.3:02 No, no, listen.3:03 We talked to one type of customer.3:06 Remember that call with Sarah at Acme Corp?3:09 The super enthusiastic Head of People?3:12 Oh god.3:13 Her.3:13 Yes.3:14 She was our entire validation.3:16 She was like, "Oh my god, I would use this EVERY day!3:20 Our remote team would love this!3:23 It's so personal, so much better than text!" She was our confirmation bias in human form.3:30 We heard what we wanted to hear, and we stopped there.3:34 We didn't ask the hard questions.3:37 We didn't ask the cynical engineer who just wants to read the three bullet points that apply to him and close the tab.3:46 We didn't ask, "Okay, but on a Tuesday afternoon, when you're swamped, and you have to communicate a complex project update...3:57 are you really going to go find a quiet room, plug in a mic, record yourself talking, trim the 'uhs' and 'ums', and then post it?" Exactly!4:08 The activation energy was HUGE.4:10 It's so much easier to just...4:13 type.4:13 We assumed everyone wanted to be a podcaster.4:17 And that's what that means if you're a founder listening to this.4:22 Your validation can't just be finding the one person in the world who loves your weird idea.4:29 You have to actively seek out the skeptics.4:33 You have to find the people who say, "Why would I ever do that?" and listen to them MORE.4:40 A hundred percent.4:41 We found our one "yes" and built a whole company around it.4:46 Okay, so the assumption was flawed.4:49 But then came the execution.4:51 This part is on us.4:53 Both of us.4:54 This is where it gets even more painful.4:57 We started with a simple spec.4:59 A big red "record" button, a "share" button.5:03 That's it.5:03 It would have taken maybe a month to build an MVP.5:07 A month.5:08 But then...5:09 the feature creep started.5:11 It was like a disease.5:13 First, it was, "Well, if it's audio, we absolutely need automated transcripts." Which, okay, that's a reasonable request.5:23 But that added three weeks and a huge bill from an AI transcription service.5:29 Then it was you.5:30 You said, "If we have transcripts, we should have AI-powered summaries!5:36 Like, the key takeaways, automatically generated!" I know, I know.5:41 I was obsessed with it.5:43 I thought it was the magic bullet.5:46 Because I was already, subconsciously, starting to feel like people wouldn't want to listen to a five-minute audio clip.5:55 So I was trying to solve a problem that our core premise created.6:00 You were patching a hole in a sinking ship with, like, more water.6:06 The AI summaries were SO bad at first.6:09 Remember the one from the finance update?6:12 It summarized "Our quarterly revenue is strong" as "The company's money...6:18 is good." It was so literal!6:20 And we spent weeks trying to fine-tune the prompts.6:24 Weeks!6:25 That's developer time, that's our time, that's money, just...6:30 evaporating.6:31 And then came my brilliant contribution.6:34 I was the one who pushed for threaded audio comments.6:38 Oh, wow.6:39 I had blocked that from my memory.6:42 Don't you dare.6:43 I want to sit with this.6:45 I was convinced that people wouldn't just want to listen, they'd want to reply...6:51 with their voice.6:53 So you'd have these nested audio conversations.6:56 The engineering team looked at me like I had three heads.7:01 They told you it was a nightmare.7:04 The UI for that alone...7:05 I know!7:06 But I was adamant.7:07 I said, "This is what makes it a true communication platform!7:12 It's about dialogue!" I used the word "dialogue" in a meeting, I'm so sorry.7:18 You're fired.7:20 I should be!7:20 So what started as a simple "record and post" tool became this...7:26 this monster.7:27 It had AI summaries, transcripts, audio comments, and we even had a task on the board for "emotion analysis." Stop.7:36 We did not.7:37 We did!7:37 For two weeks!7:39 The idea was a little emoji next to the waveform to tell you if the speaker was happy or stressed.7:46 Oh my god.7:47 That is the single most dystopian startup feature I have ever heard of.7:53 What were we thinking?7:55 We weren't thinking.7:56 We were just adding.7:58 We were so terrified that the core idea wasn't enough that we just kept throwing features at it, hoping one of them would make people want to use it.8:10 And here's the lesson for anyone building a product: if you feel the need to keep adding shiny objects to your MVP, it's probably because your core value proposition is broken.8:24 You're decorating a house with no foundation.8:28 And every feature you add makes it harder for a new user to figure out what the hell they're even supposed to do.8:37 When those three real users logged in, they didn't see a simple "record" button.8:43 They saw a dashboard from a spaceship.8:46 And they logged right out.8:48 So let's talk about the end.8:51 The final few weeks.8:52 We had this thing in a private beta with a few companies.8:57 The numbers were just...8:59 not there.8:59 The weekly active user chart was flatter than a pancake.9:04 It was brutal.9:05 Every Monday morning, we'd pull up the dashboard, and we'd both just stare at it.9:12 The number was always seven.9:14 Or maybe it would dip to six, then go back to seven.9:18 And we kept making excuses.9:20 "Oh, people are on vacation." "They just haven't built the habit yet." "We need to send more onboarding emails." We did everything but admit the truth.9:32 The dog doesn't like the dog food.9:35 What was the moment for you?9:37 The moment you knew it was really over?9:40 It was a call with our main engineering lead, Maria.9:45 She pulled me aside into a Zoom room.9:48 She looked exhausted.9:49 And she just said, "My team is burning out trying to fix the transcription engine for a product that our own company isn't even using." Oof.10:00 Yeah.10:01 We had mandated that all our internal teams use Echo for their weekly updates.10:07 And after one week of awkward, rambling audio files, every single team had quietly gone back to writing Slack posts.10:16 We couldn't even get our own employees to use it for free.10:21 And Maria just laid it out.10:23 She said, "We could be fixing the performance bugs in the core product that customers are actually complaining about.10:33 Instead, I have my best engineer trying to figure out why the AI summary thinks every announcement is about lunch." She was right.10:43 We were burning our best people on a ghost ship.10:47 For me, it was looking at the opportunity cost.10:51 I pulled up our roadmap from six months prior.10:54 The one we'd planned before we got distracted by Echo.10:59 And the number one item on it was "Add compliance integrations for healthcare." The thing our biggest customers had been begging us for.11:10 The thing they had budget for.11:12 The thing our competitor had just launched two months earlier.11:17 And I just felt sick.11:19 We spent six months and a hundred and seventy grand building a podcast player for ourselves while our actual business...11:28 the thing that pays the bills...11:31 was getting flanked.11:33 That's the real cost.11:34 It's not the money.11:36 It's the time.11:37 You can't get that back.11:39 Six months of your startup's life is an eternity.11:43 So we had the conversation.11:45 It was late on a Thursday.11:47 We were the only two left in the office.11:50 And I think I just turned to you and said, "We have to kill it, don't we?" And I had never felt more relieved in my life.12:00 I just said, "Yes.12:01 Thank you." It was like this massive weight just...12:05 lifted.12:06 The next morning, we had an all-hands.12:09 That was hard.12:10 That was the worst part.12:12 Telling the team that their last six months of work was being thrown in the trash.12:19 You could just see the energy drain out of the room.12:23 We tried to frame it as "lessons learned" and "failing fast," all that startup jargon.12:30 But at the end of the day, we failed them.12:33 We pointed them in the wrong direction and had them march for six months.12:39 And that's the thing that I think founders need to really internalize.12:45 A pivot isn't just a clean slate.12:47 It leaves scars on the team.12:50 You lose credibility.12:51 The next time you come to them with a "brilliant" new idea...12:56 they're going to be skeptical.12:59 And they have every right to be.13:01 You burn through their trust.13:03 And you only have so much of that in the bank.13:07 So we shut it down.13:09 We wrote off the cost.13:10 We put up a sunset page.13:12 And the most telling part?13:14 We got exactly one email about it.13:17 From Sarah at Acme Corp.13:19 Of course.13:20 What did it say?13:21 It said, "Oh no!13:23 So sad to see Echo go.13:24 We never got around to rolling it out, but it looked so cool!" She never even used it.13:31 Our one champion...13:33 never even used it.13:34 She loved the idea of it.13:36 Not the reality of it.13:38 And so did we.13:39 That was the whole problem.13:41 We built a solution for a problem that only existed in our heads.13:47 You know, for anyone listening who's in that phase...13:51 who's building something and the numbers aren't moving...13:55 you have to ask the ugliest question there is: what if we stopped?14:01 What if we just turned it off tomorrow?14:04 And if the honest answer is "nothing would change"...14:08 or worse, if the honest answer is "we'd feel relieved"...14:13 then you probably already know what you need to do.14:17 It just hurts to admit it.14:19 Yeah.14:19 It really does.14:20 But it hurts a lot more to wait another six months.
