If I Had Known; A Startup Founder Reflection
By: Samantha Smith
Tags: Failure, Founders, Startup

Ever since I started my own company, I’ve read every blog post I can get my hands on about failure. I thought if I read enough about how things went wrong for others, I’d have the ability to avoid disappointment myself.

I’d like to begin by saying that my company is still alive, but pivoting largely from the “big vision” I (and those who have invested blood, sweat and tears) hoped to achieve. The dream was to create a color-focused home planning and search tool.

I had the idea for Vishion, the only color search engine for home, the summer of 2017. We launched our mobile app July 2019. We let our users know that we were shutting it down and pivoting to a B2B model yesterday.

No, Vishion is not dead. But this shift from the original mission, and putting my startup back as a side hustle, does feel like a huge failure.

At this moment, instead of telling my story over-and-over again to those I come across individually, I want to tell you the whole tale now. I want to tell you where I think it went wrong (outside of the gut-punch that is COVID). It would be easiest to simply blame COVID for everything, but when I am being extremely self-reflective, I do have to admit there are a few things I would have done differently.

This is what I wish I had known from the beginning and where it went wrong.

Our (paraphrased) Journey

It’s impossible to capture the ups and downs of starting a business. There is a reason companies like to hire former entrepreneurs; we know how to take a punch and get back up.

Vishion won the Early-Stage Startup of the Year in January 2020.

I’ve pitched hundreds of investors, won and lost a few pitch competitions, and even participated in an accelerator (after being accepted and rejected from a handful). I found and lost cofounders, hired a team, and navigated the complexities that come with managing a team during COVID. I’ve had investors who really believed in what we could accomplish and those who would string us along just to “change their minds” at the finish line. My story isn’t unique — you hear versions of the same tale from almost any startup founder.

I want to fast-forward to where we were the last week of February 2020, before things began to go bad for the world. We had won Early-Stage Startup of the Year in Charlotte and I had just travelled the country with the Brandery Accelerator, pitching dozens of investors in multiple cities. We had launched Vishion social (the ability to search and share designs by color)in NYC and won the SoGal Global Pitch Competition in San Francisco. I remember sitting at a bar in NYC, seeing our first major coverage from Architectural Digest, and crying tears of relief; it was finally happening.

I know exactly where I was when I told my husband (after two years of effort) that I finally saw a path to closing our $750,000 seed round. My dream was all falling into place; my team’s hard work was finally paying off.

Hell Month: March 2020

After winning the pitch competition in San Francisco, I had about two weeks and three cities worth of traveling left as I tried to stack a few more investors into my first round. I was flying home when I saw SXSW was cancelled because of COVID. Although I was aware of the virus, that was the first moment it seemed like something we should be concerned about. A few days later, we got an email from SoGal saying someone at the pitch event had tested positive for COVID. All of my travel plans and meetings immediately came to a halt as I went into my first quarantine.

At first, I was merely managing the change from physical meetings to virtual. Many conversations circled around how everyones reaction to COVID was a bit overblown, but better to be safe than sorry.

The week of my 31st birthday, March 14, is now what I like to call “Hell Week”. It was the beginning of the calls from many of the investors (who had committed just a few weeks earlier) to pull their investments. Only one or two fully pulled out of their commitments — most asked for time to reevaluate. All of the calls had the same tone; they needed to figure out what was happening with their existing investments before moving forward. They needed to see how we would weather the next few months.

I spent my birthday mostly by myself, shell-shocked. There were a lot of tears, deep breathing, and making any excuse to be alone. It goes without saying that there was a lot of wine too. It took me about three months to be able to talk about that week without crying. We had $300K in the bank up until that point and had to scrap all of the plans we had put in place for the $750K round.

There isn’t a playbook for surviving a pandemic. We had spent two years researching and testing, just to throw all of that data in the trash. We focused on interior designers and high-end home brands as our ideal customers, both of which were small business owners dealing with a similar panic as myself. Right away we hosted a Virtual Market with industry experts to help our target audience and to get a sense of how the industry was dealing with COVID in real-time. The event was well attended, but the tone was very bleak if you weren’t an established designer or a brand with a strong supply chain, sales funnel, and digital presence.

It was also clear that the market we hoped to expand to, homeowners and DIYers, were having a field day sprucing up their homes during the pandemic. If we had raised the full round of capital, we may have had the financing to seize the day. Unfortunately, to survive, we had to cut costs anywhere we could.

I’ll give my team all of the credit in the world; they rallied. We decided to put our effort into putting our IOS app on the web, as well as expand our target market to DIYers. We were hoping we could make slight pivots, appealing to a more virtual enviroment. Unfortunately, even with the home improvement market booming, investors still weren’t biting.

When to say When

In April, I had a conversation with my team about what it would take to survive and “when to say when”. I told my team that if I didn’t see a path forward, we would need to have a candid conversation of where we go from there.

By June, we put our color search on the web and had refined a new pitch strategy to address COVID survival. Unfortunately, conversations with investors weren’t getting easier. We had to start thinking further outside the box — which meant large partnerships (that could limit our reach in the future) or an acquisition.

Over the summer and early fall, were secured conversations with two large media organizations focused on home. One conversation went to due diligence, and after a handful of meetings, felt like it was going to actually work. It would not only fill our round and give us the runway to build the company we envisioned, but was also a partnership that could help us acquire users on a massive scale. I remember saying to multiple people, “maybe all of those ‘maybe laters’ from other investors happened so we could get to this moment.”

But, as had happened more than a dozen times before, an investor who said they wouldn’t “lead us on” … led us on. Again, not a unique story for founders. Without much of a reason, other than someone on their team was hesitant because we were so early, the tide had changed in their decision making process. For me, it was the final blow.

I always wondered if I would know in my gut “when is when”. I had never thrown in the towel in my life. After three years without a salary and living through the emotional pain of a pandemic, I finally felt what it meant to be burned out. One of my favorite expressions is “get knocked down nine times stand up ten.” This time, I found it almost impossible to stand up.

I wish I could fully describe to you what it feels like, every minute of every day, to see the window closing. Every “yes” that turned to a “not yet”, where pre-COVID “maybe laters” are already a dime a dozen. If a “no” before March 2020 felt like a pinch, a “no” after Hell Month felt like a knock-your-wind-out punch. You try to keep in mind that everything in startup life is a numbers game; the more people we could reach, the more likely we were to get to a “yes”. It just seemed like the virtual “nos” came a lot quicker after March … which, in the grand scheme of things, you prefer.

Were there investors that would have said yes if I kept going until there was no runway left? Maybe. Does it bother me that if I had the will to keep going, I could be writing a different story? Yes.

My greatest fear is, and will always be, letting the people around me down. My team, my investors, and my family have put so much into Vishion, it felt unbearable to get to a point where there were no options left. Not to mention the fact that my entire identity is intertwined with my company. Who am I without Vishion?

With a pivot, we at least live to fight another day.

Reinventing Vishion

In the first few months of Vishion, we had many conversations around how we could help people search by color. Would it be best to go direct to consumers, helping shoppers search across brands? Or should we help brands with color search on their own websites?

We obviously went with the former, believing it was a larger long-term opportunity. To be honest, the idea to reach everyday shoppers felt way more exciting to me, which in hindsight is probably not the best decision making method. As we built Vishion, we had brands ask for help organizing their products feeds with detailed color identifiers. One fabric brand told me early on that 90% of their web visitors began their product search with color.

When we heard our final “not yet”, I had to prepare to tell our team and existing investors that I could no longer see a path forward with our IOS and web platform. With limited runway, I had to have the conversation you never want to have. I called everyone on my team first, because they deserved to hear from me that I had let us down.

It was a member of my team who asked if we wanted to try one more thing; We could use the technology we built and our existing runway to provide a color search plugin for home and fashion brands. Back to the original drawing board, but at least with a strong foundation. And with this, a light started flickering again at the end of the tunnel.

Our story isn’t over. I have to move Vishion to a side-hustle so I can start making a salary again, but our technology can still make us money. It’s disappointing that we won’t be able to see our big vision come to fruition, but knowing there is a “need” for our tech and that we have a chance to make our investors money back is the only thing I care about at this point.

What I wish I had known

Why did I feel the need to tell you this?

I have been very transparent during my founder journey. In part, this is because we only hear stories about these moments from successful founders … you know as you read the painstaking stories of their journey, they will eventually get to a shiny conclusion we all envy.

If I am being honest, it’s mostly because I am tired of saying “it is what it is” when I am asked how I am doing. I gloss over the bad parts, because who really wants to hear (or tell) this story over and over again. But I do want people to know I gave it everything. I do want them to know how hard we fought.

Whats the lesson for others? How can you avoid a similar fate?

Although COVID undoubtedly changed our trajectory, there are a few things I would love to go back in time and tell myself. Hopefully, the lessons I’ve learned can help other founders in their decision making process.

Let’s start with the question I get the most often: Why was it so hard for you to raise money Pre-COVID?

It took me a long time, almost two years, to get to the point where I was “about” to fill my round. My fundraising challenges can be broken into 4 parts:

location (network)

business model

focus

having a female-centric product

When I started fundraising, I took a trip to San Francisco and went door-to-door asking for opportunities to pitch. Of 12 firms, it got me 3 meetings (but 0 investors).

— Location: I wanted to create something huge; but the idea of Pinterest in its earliest form would not have sold in the South (founded in 2010, they didn’t start making money until 2013). You need investors who love high-risk, high-reward opportunities, which is not the southern way. While my network in in the Southeast is literally as good as it gets, there weren’t enough investors in this pool of people to make a dent on my cap table. I tried everything to break into other networks, but aside from living full-time in San Francisco or New York, it seemed even a warm intro wasn’t sufficient to get the attention of the investors we needed.

— Business Model: if I were to start over, the number one thing I would have said to my pastself was to create a business model that didn’t rely on investors until it was time to scale. Be as self-sufficient as possible, because you don’t have the network to make your business model happen. I needed marketing dollars to really scale (which I am very sure my marketing team would tell you without hesitation). The winners in the South are the companies that can show consistent MRR pre-investment. Aside from that, I would have loved to make a salary during all of this. The personal strain it puts on you and your loved ones is immeasurable. Instead, any money that came into the company went to my team and the business.

— Focus: Every time we got a check in, I got distracted from fundraising. It wasn’t that I fully stopped; I would just get so excited about the business, that fundraising would stop being my full-time focus. If you plan on fundraising, know that you no longer get to be hands-on with your dream (at least not as much as you’d like). You literally spend all of your time convincing others why they should believe in your dream rather than building it.

— Female-Centric Product: You can’t seriously measure bias. Unless I could transform to a fly on the wall, I could never say with certainty that any investors I pitched had bias leading to their “not now” (they all say not now by the way, as to not miss out if the round becomes interesting). I do know for a fact that many of the investors, if they were not turned off by the business model, could not wrap their minds around the problem.

During a pitch competition in San Francisco, I had a judge (who was a lawyer) say his wife was perfectly fine buying couches from Amazon and would not care about the color or where it came from. (I’m pretty sure I lost that pitch competition when I told him he needed to have a conversation with his wife.) I had countless others who said, “My wife handles all of that. I’ll check with her and get back to you.” If the investor doesn’t feel the pain, they won’t think you’re important enough to invest in. Plain and simple.

As for COVID investment pitches, if we were deemed risky before, they saw us as incredibly risky now. It was clear, and honestly even more defeating, that I couldn’t overcome the negative mindset that came with COVID.

Where I went right

Hands down, I have the best investors, the best team, the best advisors, and the best partners. These people keep me going. Their strength, knowledge, and ability to inspire me is one of the main reasons I am still here today, continuing to push. I honestly could spend 10,000 more words on the impact each individual had on Vishion — which they wholeheartedly deserve — but I will only leave them with this sentence of sincere gratitude and unapologetic admiration.

My husband, by my side, when we won startup of the year. I must also mention the amazing Vita, our marketing guru, to my right!

I very quickly must mention the best decision I ever made: picking my life partner. My husband was there through every punch. He never waivered. He never asked me to give up. He was ready with a glass of wine with every “no” and a bottle of champagne with every “yes”. He never made me feel bad when we couldn’t take amazing vacations or buy things we desperately wanted. He is my therapist, sounding-board, advisor and confidant. He is the partner every woman deserves.

What’s next

Stay tuned for announcements about Vishion launching in the B2B space, as well as personal updates from me on my next big thing.

As many people in Charlotte know, a big goal of mine over the past few years is to bring more women into the startup ecosystem. I created Collective Hustle, a group that brings underestimated founders and investors to the forefront, when I noticed a lack of a women at startup events. I did this all while working on my own company, so I am excited to keep it going with a new lens. As we start to get back to normal, or life post-COVID, I hope to reinvigorate Collective Hustle’s mission in the South. It’s especially important now, considering the fact women have taken a huge hit with COVID.

If you’re a founder in need of a sounding board, please feel free to shoot me an email (sam.smith@vishion.co). The first person I went to when I hit rock bottom was another founder I knew would understand what I was going through. She instantly made me feel better, just by having a truly understanding ear.

I’m always happy to help, whether it’s a connection to help you raise your own round or just someone to vent to. Together, we’ll get through this.

Stay safe, wear a mask, and keep it colorful.