After 3 years, $4.4M raised, 500k users, over $1M in revenue, we just shut down. Lessons from a first time Founder & CEO.
When anyone starts a company and puts so much into it, shutting it down is never the outcome you want, nor expect. It was a result that we thought would never happen to us. We set out with an ambitious vision to help content creators make a living doing what they love. We made over $1M in our first 18 months. In 2017, our product exploded onto the scene and we saw hundreds of thousands of users flood in. We paid over $1M to nearly 20k content creators. We raised a total of $4.4M across two funding rounds from incredible investors — GawkBox was a horse you’d bet on, and many people did. Yet after 3 years of trying, we couldn’t find a business model to make it work.
I’ve spent the past month dissecting my experience as a first time CEO — playing back some of the pivotal moments and decisions since founding GawkBox. While I wish I was here writing an inspiring success story, the last few weeks of reflection made me realize that there is just as much to learn from our journey, in spite of the outcome. I decided to write this post to share some of the most important learnings from my GawkBox experience.
In my opinion the single most important indicator behind the potential success of a business is how well you know your customer(s). It is imperative to understand their biggest problems so you can experiment and deliver the right solutions to them. Just as crucial to have them close by as you work through the inevitable periods of product iteration — it’s pretty much guaranteed that you won’t get a product right immediately and customers are a crucial piece to help you get there.
