My business failed, here are my feelings (iii)

Editor's note: As the saying goes, "Women's wardrobe is always one less clothes", Australian girl Nikki Durkin also have this feeling. But unlike other girls, she chose to solve the problem by starting a business. In 2011, 19-Year-old founder of the fashion exchange website 99dresses, so that millions of women always feel that there is no suitable clothes to wear a woman has an "unlimited wardrobe." For a time, the influx of users continued, the site also seems to be more and more popular. But in a male-dominated tech venture, competition is brutal, especially for a 19-year-old girl. Finally, her business, like 90% other startups, cannot escape the fate of failure. Most people often only see the scenery on the surface of entrepreneurship, but do not see the bitterness behind, but the failure of entrepreneurship, often stay in the rational analysis, a few perceptual perception. So she decided to tell her story and talk about her personal feelings about failure. The girl's article may be the best autobiographic article on entrepreneurship failure.

We got a few people in New York, we got an office, and the release is ready. We used technology to solve the problem of chicken or egg first, but we promised we wouldn't say that, because that was a grey area. If there was a boundary, we would definitely have crossed the line. But we can't. These practices are harmless to others, so I think it's just a small problem if we get caught.

The plan is progressing much faster than I expected. Less than 3 months, our weekly trading volume has exceeded 1000, and each transaction has revenue. We are growing.

The evaluation of the App Store is also overwhelming. Obsession is not enough to describe what some girls do to 99dresses. In just a few months, several powerful buyers have spent more than 1000 dollars and exchanged hundreds of items. Our inventory turnover has steadily risen from 17% to 50%-which is 2-3 times better than our competitors. Every day I put on a new dress that I received via app. Our user retention rate is very exciting. I think that's the interesting thing my investors want us to do for women.

In the light of this momentum, we are looking forward to a positive cash flow before funding is spent.

I have 99 questions, but there are only 1 platforms.

But then growth slowed. The average value of everything is declining and our commissions are reduced, so despite the trading volume, the revenue is not getting better. We started to find some vulnerabilities in the business model. Although the user maintenance rate is good, we worry about the activation rate.

We made another pivot to save ourselves; it turned out to be the last. The adjustment was based solely on the rational judgment of all our research, but the introduction to the community became a nightmare. There was a riot in the app. While our revenue metrics have risen sharply, our other key indicator is trading in a plummeting line.

At the same time, I went to the original investors to ask them to finance the bridge (between the seed wheel and a round). I know we have something special that has great potential, and if we have enough platforms to force it. I also know that we are not perfect enough to propose bridging financing unless our original investors are willing to pay. We have been in the market for some time, although we still have to take some trouble to get out of the mess, but for outside investors it does not matter much. Bridging financing is less sexy.

We had only one institutional investor in the front financing rounds, and I was relieved when they told me I wanted to get this bridge round. That's great! It looks like we'll be alive to see the dawn of the next day.

I sent the due diligence document and answered all the questions.

The feedback time is beyond my expectation. Wednesday I finally received a call, the voice of the phone is very crisp. It sounds as if the other person wants to take the vote and take over. The nervous I finally relieved.

Then I heard a "but ..."

The rest of the conversation is explaining why they can't do this. Suddenly my heart sank. I know that the other side is our best financing channels, some of which have previously invested in the angel investors are also interested in joining, but the condition is to have VC, perhaps to someone to supervise. We don't have any money left, and we're almost out of time to find someone else.

I later discovered that the real reason was that the other partners in the agency did not like the fierce competition in the market after further observation. 99dresses focused on the fashion FMCG (the FMCG is really hard to resell), but all of the competition is focused on the designer fashion business. Despite this discrepancy, the market is still very congested and rivals are well-funded, in tens of millions of dollars.

Speaking on the phone, I felt my voice changed. I tried to be strong and professional, but I couldn't stop my speech from becoming whimpered. Fucking emotion! Embarrass me.

Final efforts

At that time, I cried to go to Marcin's home, and said he hoped that he would take another job. I feel very guilty that he wants to support his family and put him in this position.

But Marcin surprised me. He doesn't want to give up easily. Everyone in the team is unwilling. Everyone is ready to fight me to the end, I feel great pressure on my shoulders. We have a savings plan to expand the platform for more revenue.

The next day in the office sent a notice to let someone go. We have already been very lean operations, but now 2 people have to be squeezed to 1 jobs, and then we are only focused on the most important tasks to gain more time.

I didn't tell many people about what happened. This kind of crap shouldn't be talked about. If someone asks how your company works, you can habitually say something polite. My friend gave me a hug and told me to read Ben Horowitz's "The Hard Thing about Hard things" (Hard pioneering road, good book). I bought the book and read it in a coffee shop that Saturday afternoon. I had a lot of difficulties inside, I took a trip to the emotional roller coaster.

I was aware of one thing: I was too tired-mentally exhausted. No normal routine. I haven't had a normal vacation since the 2009 high school graduation celebration. Even on a vacation, lying on the edge of the pool, the mind is full of ideas as to how the strategy should go in the next step. Everything I can think of is about this damn startup, it's dragging me down.

I'm running out of bandwidth. I always laugh when someone asks me what hobbies I have in my spare time. I've been doing some mundane things like taking a shower or doing my hair, and I'm starting to have some minor panic attacks. I don't even have a plan to find a boyfriend (I've tried it before, but my startup has the upper hand). I'm not sure how much longer I can hold on.

My mother told me to listen to my heart's choice. If intuition tells me that I have no confidence in the business, it is no disgrace to shift the pace of the company to other more productive things rather than to get more money. I've learned a lot in the past few years.

I told my mother that I couldn't trust my instincts when this happened. My heart told to quit. The problem is, my intuition told me that in my darkest days, but I survived. I'd quit a few years ago if I believed in intuition.

Want me to give up unless I kill. I'm not the one to give up easily. I have to be responsible for myself, my team, my investors and 99dresses users, and I have to keep going.

I continue to touch the investors, the luck is still bad. I was invited to a cocktail party filled with VC, where I had to put on painful heels because I had done a comparative test of the heels of the peace shoes, A woman 5 feet 11 inches tall (1.8-meter) wears 7-inch high heels to get investors more time and attention than the comfortable flat shoes I normally wear. Occasionally an investor asked me if I knew what the Angel was, and there were people who asked me for my height whether I was also a model or unconsciously posing as a condescending gesture. I learned to take it all away with my high heels.

The following words from the investor said I heard the ears start to cocoon. "This business is very interesting, but we are only willing to vote for the first batch or a round." We don't vote in the middle. But we'd like to stay in touch and see if we can help you when you get to the a round. Oh, why don't you get your current investor to fund a bridge? ”

I remember one day when Marcin joked that I was a control freak, which surprised me. I never thought I was like this-I just like things to be done in a certain way and in a standard that suits my vision. As long as it is nothing to do with 99dresses, I feel that I am quite indifferent.

But in the weeks before the event, I began to understand what he meant. I'm not a control freak in the way I'm addicted to controlling results-I'm just a control freak who needs to control input.

This is becoming more and more apparent when everything at work begins to become more and more helpless. I started a much healthier diet and relaxed for the spirit. What I read about physical hacking is to understand and control the effects of input on the body. I told myself it would give me more energy to do things, but in fact I just need to have everything under control, especially when the fate of startups is so out of my hands.