Founder’s Note 9

The biggest lie I've ever heard in the startup world is “build it and they will come.” When we started, I was under the impression that, if you could create a product that worked properly and looked dope, you would win. Simple right? I couldn’t have been more wrong.?

I have no doubt that the growing disconnect between brands and their customers post-purchase is a real problem - the resale market is growing at 4x the primary, customer loyalty dropped by 14% last year, and 77% of brands say customers are demanding more personalized digital interactions. That said, it is also true that only 1 in every 10 new businesses successfully capture that value. If One of None is going to be one of those successful businesses, we’ll need an easy-to-use product that provides enough value for customers to justify a subscription payment.?

For One of None, the launch of our beta marketplace offered a perfect opportunity to truly figure out who our true customer is and what product features bring the most value to them. After working with over 30+ creators to launch 20 collections, here’s what we learned:

First off, who’s our customer? With a goal of quickly creating a collection of dope limited edition products to launch on our marketplace, we first turned to the creator economy. By working with artists, influencers, and boutique creators we can efficiently produce low-quantity, highly custom products. We were also able to lean on our personal networks to find the creators, giving us Intimate access into the creation process. What we learned is that creators typically don’t have the budget to develop their products in-house, requiring us to invest upfront capital on each release. This business model made us cash flow negative, meaning for us to make $10, we had to spend $6 in advance. In order to build this sustainable business, we are going to need to work with brands that are willing to include us in their product development process, eliminating the need for us to invest upfront capital.

Next, how do we make sophisticated technology easy? Integrating emerging technologies like blockchain into our marketplace presented both promise and complexity. While blockchain offers unparalleled transparency and security, its adoption requires significant education and onboarding efforts for both brands and collectors. As a small startup team, managing and educating a blockchain-powered platform for both the supply and demand proved to be a formidable challenge. We learned the importance of making a sophisticated platform seem easy.

Lastly, what’s our value prop? As a marketplace that connects retail to resale, the main value we were looking to provide to brands is access to resale royalties. While there's a lot of merit to a brand-powered resale platform, we would have to limit ourselves to a select group of ultra-luxury businesses that drive the majority of the resale market. By leaning into other features of connecting physical to digital such as interactive storytelling and engaging customers, we are able to broaden our pipeline and value ourselves off of impressions and conversions alongside resale.

Despite these challenges, our experience with the limited edition marketplace provided invaluable insights that helped shape our future roadmap exactly as needed. Our ability to stay nimble and curious allows us to apply feedback to our future product. As a conclusion, great businesses solve big problems in a way that is innovative, empathetic, and sustainable, ultimately creating lasting value for their customers. You can’t create lasting value for a customer if you don’t know what they want.