What I learnt from my startup failure...

The image (where I look tired because I was) was taken in Stolenspace Gallery, London, at The Social Paradox art exhibition, where my business partner Latif Baluch & I announced our startup Calio. We've just taken Calio (a calendar we designed to facilitate social meetups) down from the app stores, as we weren't able to sustain it. Ultimately it didn't work.

The exhibition we threw focused on art pieces that represented the distraction that social media causes and our mission was to make tech that helped people get off social media and into the real world. That exhibition is one of my proudest moments, and even though we're now officially done, I wanted to share three things I've learnt on my wondrous start-up journey.

1. Unwavering Vision

Our vision never changed, not once. When we incepted the idea in a bar one evening, it was about creating tech for good, and that philosophy rang true throughout the process. In fact, that vision allowed us to raise finding, hire talent, get press and communicate to people properly.

No matter what the business is, I believe the ultimate purpose and vision shouldn't change.

2. Focus on Product Market Fit

Where we failed is now obvious to me; we were too broad. We never really had that one feature that tipped the app into something that scaled. We constantly communicated the many features the calendar had, and our design and UX had way too many steps for new users.

It's important to land on the one hook that the market absorbs, rather than being broad and confuse people. I never felt that we dealt with that effectively.

3. The Product Markets Itself. The Product Fundraises Itself

If the product is good, and users are retentive, you will be fine. Building on the above, it's important to not spend on marketing if you don't know what your killer thing is that makes people love it. On top of this, we spent so much time fundraising, where instead, we should have just kept our investor contacts sweet, and they would have invested once the product found a place in the market. There's money out there.

We also too much time marketing a product without knowing what it was. This included it being featured on Arsenal TV, a great initiative, but without a clear purpose on our end.

Would like to end by saying that I have loved working with my business partner, and best friend, Latif. I feel we tackled the process with the endeavour and the right mindset, but it doesn't always work.

Chin up, move on with learnings at hand.