An Obituary to my First Failed Startup

The Big Idea

This past spring, I started a startup. Storefront was to be an ecommerce platform for the Metaverse, the basic premise being that today, most people who want to sell things online can’t code a website from scratch themselves, so they build a site with a SaaS like Shopify or Squarespace, or sell directly on a platform like Amazon or Etsy. If a large number of people spend more time in VR on the Metaverse, these same sellers will need a way to build a 3D VR store for their customers to shop in.

Shopify for the Metaverse, an idea I was obsessed with, and one I had a clear vision on how to win with. Buyers would enjoy the added functionality (imagine measuring yourself with VR controllers to get your perfect size) with the convenience of regular e-commerce. Sellers would enjoy higher conversion rates and basket sizes than traditional e-commerce due to this added functionality and immersion. The possibilities are impossible to enumerate, from A/B testing AI generated store layouts, to a 3rd party marketplace for store assets, and special functionality for particular product segments, there was a lot of really cool stuff to build, that would deliver real value to businesses and their customers.

The Journey

I started working on this “full-part-time” starting in late January of 2022. I worked on refining the idea, getting it in a place to where I was confident in explaining it to others. I developed some thesis on the Metaverse and how I knew it was going to be big, and talked to a couple of friends who I thought would make great co-founders. I also talked to some mentors about the idea, raising money, and next steps to take.

The next step I took was applying to Y Combinator. I saw it as my best chance to start working on it “full-full-time” as quickly as possible, the best way to attract the right early hires, and the best way to land a large enough seed round to get to an MVP.  I built a website and a brand, put together the application, and sent it off. While waiting to hear back, I put out more feelers for a co-founder, put together a pitch deck, and constructed a few business plans that scoped out who to hire and what to build if we did receive funding.

After a month I got a message on my application. A YC partner asked if I had a demo or a co-founder. My answer to both was no, and I was (more or less) told to find a co-founder or I wouldn’t get in. I started reaching out to everyone and anyone to find a good fit, but the extended search turned up nothing. Eventually, I reconnected with an engineer I knew in college, and he agreed to come on tentatively as a co-founder, seeing what would happend after the process wrapped up.

A couple weeks after we submitted our update, and after hearing nothing, we got our rejection. It was deflating but not unexpected, I knew I hadn’t done enough to make us an attractive investment, but was hoping to get to an interview, especially so that we could get some feedback, and to see what was top of mind for investors with an idea like this.

Life got in the way towards the end of May, and as I started to doubt whether it was the right time to build something like this, I decided to put my efforts on hold.

What Didn’t Go Well

My main failure was not finding the right co-founder. I was looking for a very specific type of person; I am confident filling product and business side roles, and have enough engineering chops to lead a team of senior engineers. I explicitly did not want an engineering co-founder as there were three distinct engineering teams we would need to build; in frontend mobile and web development, in backend crypto and payments infra, and a team that would build the 3D experiences in Unity. I saw our best option as distributing the equity that we would have given an engineering co-founder, and spreading it across 3 very pointy senior developers, who could be experts in their respective domains.

I was looking for a creative co-founder, someone who could compliment my lack of design skills. Building an intuitive but powerful 3D store designer is an incredibly difficult design problem, and getting that part right was one of the cornerstones of the business strategy, so I knew a excellence for design was what I wanted a co-founder to bring to the business. However, the Venn diagram of people who are talented product designers, interested in the Metaverse, have experience in 3D modeling / architectural / human centric design, and (most critically) will partner with me has an incredibly small (if not empty) center. I think a lot about what I could’ve done better here, maybe I set unrealistic expectations, and that good was better than perfect. But it’s clear I can do some work to expand my network of like minded entrepreneurs, or to build my credibility as a builder and leader.

The other thing that didn’t go well was that towards the end, I was lost on what to do next. In my mind, everything relied on getting funding and hiring a team; what to do in that situation was very clear. But without a team, and only so much to do before building product, I was starting to feel stuck. In my head, I was thought “I don’t need to make product designs, the designer we hire will do it better than I will”, or “I don’t need to start building a demo, the engineers we hire will do that”. I should have started building, no matter how slow or how rough, progress is progress, and it would have brought us closer to where we needed to be.

What Did Go Well

Regardless of the outcome, I learned a lot in the process. This was the first time I designed and built a website from scratch, the first time I tried out 3D modeling, and the first time I had developed a novel business idea and brand. I am proud of what I was able to build, how I was able to develop and articulate my ideas, and the high level of focus and dedication I maintained.

I also learned a lot about myself from this experience. I was addicted to working on the startup, getting a rush from every long night and weekend I spent doing so. I reflected on why I felt that way, and it landed on growth and excellence as the reasons. I was growing at a faster clip than I had in my entire life, both in the skills I developed and the confidence I had in myself. And I felt that I was good at it, that I was capable, doing something that I was uniquely equipped to be great at.

Growth and excellence were always important to me, but only in the abstract; as a feeling, never articulated. After reflecting on this experience, I now recognize them as the two things that drive me, the values most core to what I am.

Closing Thoughts

The title should have a big asterisk next to it, because I will revisit this idea, but not for a couple of years. Even the most aggressive estimates have large scale adoption of the Metaverse 10+ years away, and there is a cost in being too early. Now isn’t the right time to build something like this; as VR technology improves in the next 5 years, as more elements of the Metaverse become interoperable, and as consumer adoption / time spent in VR increases, this become a more timely venture.

In the meantime, I’m going to work on building other things. This website was the first one; I wanted a place to host my thoughts, projects, and compositions. I have a couple other ideas in the works, that I am confident I could take from design through development to launch by myself in under 6 months. I have a lot skills to solidify, particularly in UX/UI design and mobile software development, that I hope to grow with these projects. Hopefully, these skills will pay dividends when I take on more ambitious ideas. I also want to prove to myself that I can see a project like this through to the end, building something that someone else finds useful.

It’s in times of reflection like this where I realize how much I’ve grown, and realize how much there is still left to get done. This year I’ve adopted the phrase “Armadillos keep diggin’” as my mantra. It reminds me to stay resilient and to focus on my goals. Armadillos dig for food and shelter, I dig for growth and excellence. As I move on from this experience and look towards the rest of the year, I hope to get after it some more, learning and building along the way.

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