Bonus: Web 3 and Crypto panel, some of the talk captured at the bottom of this page

7/27/22 Week 5:

Building something people want, lessons from failures

what it’s more like:

First company, AdRaid/Vapor? (ad tech company):

• building adtech to inject ads into video
• YC company, raised $1M after demo day, but…
• Good technology wasn’t enough to build a company. they shut down 6 mos later
• talking to potential customers highlighted the pitfalls in reality
  • didn’t have a business or users
  • users didn’t want it, no users were coming to them
  • advertisers/brands didn’t see ROI
• the problem was finding a way for content creators to monetize, not use (even good) tech to add advertisements into video

Lesson 1: start from the user, not the technology

Second company, PRIM:

• Laundry pick up and delivery, building something users wanted, they understood the problem
• learned more about markets and unit economics, PRIM was competing against mom and pop shops that are willing to turn 0 profit. Pickup and delivery made it difficult
• they were struggling and weren’t interested in laundry long term, when they went to advisors, they actually said to stick with it. but listened to instincts and looked at margins and didn’t see it working
• sold to PE to get some cash for starting a new business