I recently pushed an email out to the key investors, advisors and friends of find. Providing an update of our current company status. Since it was well received – I thought I would share it here as well.
😊 Thanks for the help
After a year of research and a year of building, find is officially closing shop as our find.xyz domain expires.
I can say I learned more over this period of time than any other point in my life. And I wanted to share a few of our successes and failures with all of you.
💣 Failures
- Doing too much: Our company was always spread a little too thin across the board. We were a fully distributed company, who was attacking any market doing research, and focused on scale rather than sustainability. This created a problem breadth which was too large for a small, underfunded company to attack.
- Focusing on investors over users: Being an underfunded company led by a CEO with substantial grad school loans we often prioritized investors wishes rather than those of the consumer. The goal was to always shift focus once we raised significant capital. Though that moment never fully came to fruition.
- Balancing tactical with vision: I loved talking about the vision of find with people. Many people loved it and instantly got on board with the goals. However, tactical implementation must be the priority of an early stage company. I believe we could have used some of our time in a more productive manner.
✈️ Successes
- Explosive growth: We rebuilt our whole product, launched it, instantly got tens of thousands of users, and continuously grew by 200% MoM for several months in a row. We built a fast growing organization.
- Copycats: Shortly after our traction, several similar companies started popping up. These include FYI, Curated, Corpus, and a few others. People are pushing for a product in this space – it’ll be interesting to watch it evolve.
- Continuous Teamwork: The find crew is still going to keep working on innovating the world (more on that below). Just as important, we maintained a good relationships across the board. We still hold monthly calls and help each other any way possible.
🔮 The future
- George: Is building Dolphin, an app to help people find high impact jobs tackling problems they care about. He’s starting off with finding the best companies to work for that are fighting climate change, alleviating poverty, improving education, fixing healthcare, reimagining cities, exploring space, and protecting civil liberties. Shoot him a note – george@splashwithdolphin.com – to learn more.
- Andy: Is doing architecture and product work with startups in video management, customer and employee feedback, and electronic security. He is doing some SDR work for IoT test equipment, is still associated with siliconcatalyst.com. He’s on the lookout for a stable gig. His e-mail address is anamax@earthlink.net.
- Shabs: Is on a mission to help build wealth globally for an entire generation through the use of distributed systems, artificial intelligence and open financial infrastructure. Currently launched Lake with $200,000 in assets under management for digital assets powered by a proprietary AI and in-house clearing system. Send a note to r@lake.financeto learn more.
- Essau: Is building apps for social good while helping companies (like this one) migrate to AWS. His current project is an app that allows people to report local issues in their community. Think of it like Citizen, but focused on tangible, fixable issues (like potholes) rather than crime alerts. You can reach him at essau@three-dimensional.space.
- Nathan: Is helping several startups convey their stories better and grow their market share. His current clients consist of One America Works, Augment, Zensors, Kynes and more. He’s started to discover repeatable methods that help companies grow and is looking to exploit those findings. You can reach him at mail@nathanpizer.com.
👋 Stay in touch All entrepreneurs go through their ups and downs. The key is to ensure that you learn from your mistakes, pivot and grow.
Cheers 🙂 Nathan, Essau, Shabs, George & Andy