I think it was a combination of bad luck, timing, and some bad decisions on my behalf. I learned a lot from the experience.
Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well.
I looked at the figures, and although it might be possible to cut out all the tech/product side and just leave operations, then we would really be in a zombie state. I thought it was better to cut our losses and move on.
Makes sense. I actually stumbled upon 99dresses the other day after looking at Polenizer(I'm a Brisbanite). Hoping to grow a startup here, not because of some strict nationalism, just too lazy to go through the visa process =D
Curious -- where did all the money go? How did you manage to spend $700k~ -- you hired 2 developers (full time, why?) and took care of ops over 3 years? How long did it take, four years?
5 full time staff, an office, flights, marketing expenses - that all ads up. Apparently we were burning a third of what a startup at our stage normally is with our team size, and I even thought that was a lot.
Was your office in SF (SOMA?). What marketing expenses -- were you paying for user acquisition on mobile? Were you flying to Australia and back?
Lasting 4 years on 700k with 5 people and no income (or even 2 years) with some other minor expenses is relatively low burn, though. We budget 100k+~ / person / year. If your app involved shipping dresses to your office, unfortunately you need to run the ops for it and handle physical objects :(
Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well.
I looked at the figures, and although it might be possible to cut out all the tech/product side and just leave operations, then we would really be in a zombie state. I thought it was better to cut our losses and move on.