Are We There Yet?
I've worked on bringing a few ideas to life over the past 2 years. None materialised, but I learned a lot. I've ranked these based on how far along, how scalable, and most notable lessons learnt:
- Brade: a plug-and-play accounting tool for salons and other beauty services. We built Brade to make reconciling multi-channel payments, forecasting finances and filing taxes 10x cheaper and 100x easier. People found the product intriguing, but either a) preferred one software for daily ops or b) trusted their human accounts far more; both are reasonable reasons.
- Pubbler: a self-learning assistant specifically for Substack writers built on Anthropic's Claude Sonnet model. Despite positive waitlist signalling, I decided not to launch for other reasons.
- Banga: a WhatsApp booking agent for restaurants. Banga cut total booking time by 80% during testing – from initial message to email confirmations. The value-add was clear, but the business model wasn't.
- Sasa: a dating app for university students with two modes: "Good Time" and "Long Time". We pitched this at a Valentine's Day event and got 0 signups.
- REN: a wearable ring for individuals struggling with addictions to discreetly seek help via touch sensor & BLE. REN was designed based on Prochaska and DiClemente’s transtheoretical model of behavioral change.
- Shora: a digital health platform connecting EHRs (patients) and EMRs (hospitals) for better travel healthcare. A lot of things were rather unclear here, but as expected for my first-ever 'venture'.
- Soundtrack: a 'song a day' social media platform based on the tried-and-tested streak model by BeReal. Soundtrack didn't launch, but I assisted & advised on design, product and GTM.
- Orchard: an anonymous online community for Gen-Z users to get mental health advice without stigma. This wasn't a great idea, and the business model wasn't clear either.
- Staycey: a swipe-to-book hotel search engine built on Booking.com and Expedia's APIs. People really really (really) did not want this for some reason.
- Almanac: an AMA, Reddit-style forum for student-alumni networking & mentorship. I built this specifically for my alma mater, but it unfortunately wasn't picked up.
It's uncertain why some of these didn't succeed as expected. In some cases, it was simply a matter of inertia. In other instances, it's quite possible we 'overniched' and were just 1–2 pivots away from getting it right.