$ENIOLA 07: The Post-Mortem
Today is something different, the sun has set on something special but it is not all doom and gloom. Many of you reading this article have been following the journey of early.fans, eagerly awaiting news of its progress. Instead of this article announcing our launch and genesis drop, I am sharing that early.fans is winding down. Now, this is not to say that it is goodbye forever. Our MVP and demo will be available online to showcase what we have built. Additionally, the underlying technical infrastructure will maintain its integrity in the event that a creator reaches out to us to launch their NFT project. However, the team has decided to stop actively building early.fans
I know to some this comes as sad and perhaps even unexpected news. The purpose of this article isn’t a press release, but to write about my learnings from attempting to build a start-up. See this as a personal self-reflection piece that has gone public.
The Flame is Lit.
Myself and Okori were building a stealth startup, around the same time Paradigm and a16z announced two large crypto funds. This was a massive signal, we were both web3 competent (for U.K. standards anyways) and with that Okori sent me this message…
We didn’t know what it would morph into at the time but this is where early.fans was born, the same concept as above but with musicians. We set out to carry out market research, testing specific hypotheses, reading up on regulations regarding tokenisation of assets, and more. When we had confidence in our mission statement, USP, business model, and go-to-market strategy* amongst other variables, we built a team to help us with our mission.
*These change as you build…
Just a lil’ bit of gasoline
In March early.fans as an entity and the founding team as individuals enjoyed a string of successes. Pedro (our CTO) was accepted into AccelerateME which is the United Kingdom’s biggest student accelerator. This gave him the opportunity to learn the skills needed to become a complete founder. We even shot a cool announcement video celebrating this achievement :)
https://twitter.com/withearlyfans/status/1494039822905847815?s=20&t=KzmDZ3ZZV1VcQF0CM46Ffw
In the same month, I joined Launch House a social club for founders, engineers and investors united by the central belief that the purpose of life is to build things with your friends that make the world a better place. As a member, I have access to the retreats, programmes, people network and perks. We were certain that this would give early.fans an advantage directly (investors) and myself (expansion of my knowledge and network base).
https://twitter.com/elijah_ajuwon/status/1513623180069552141?s=20&t=KzmDZ3ZZV1VcQF0CM46Ffw
This period was filled with constant late nights working and ideating as a team. Our work ethic, storytelling and ability to build meaningful connections with people we met meant that many people were excited and bought into the mission of early.fans. The news spread, decks were built and intros were made we found ourselves sitting in front of multiple angels and funds. Some got it straight away, others didn’t. Some said that we needed to be well-capitalised and didn’t want to take the risk and others said that we needed to work on our moat. However, this didn’t phase us. We thugged it out and continued building, irrespective of investor apprehension or unfavourable market conditions.
At this point, we had scaled to a team of eight covering tech, product and community. Understood our mission and vision, our customer segments, finalised our gtm strategy and sorted out our roadmap. We also had an extensive waitlist of fans and artists and had identified the artist for our genesis launch on-chain. We had just taken off and were looking to the moon and beyond as our final destination.
Petering out
So what happened? How did something with so many eyes and interest quietly fade away? Let me preface this by this was a multivariate issue and no one is at “fault” for where early.fans is at right now. Additionally, nothing was done with malicious intent, this is not finger-pointing but serves as an explanation.
A number of things happened which led to us losing momentum. I will list them thematically rather than explain each point in detail.
Team members and artists going AWOL.
Split priorities within the core team.
Failure to fundraise.
Fizzling out on activity on discord, mirror and twitter (on our side).
Not meeting self-imposed deadlines.
Attempting to redefine how we re-position ourselves.
My lessons
Of course, this is not the outcome I was dreaming of when we first started to ideate about early.fans, however, this has been a rewarding experience. Sure, it is not a unicorn but I still extracted a lot of value from building my first product. To preface, these are the lesson I learnt directly from my time building early.fans and is in no way a reflection of what you must do to succeed as a founder.
Be swift when fundraising. We had a number of angels who were eager to back us financially. However, I wanted to hit a minimum verbal commitment threshold before sending out term sheets and getting money sent to us. This was a mistake on my part; considering the value of this was in six figures. As I chased the big lead VC and neglected the angels that were interested in us, it meant that momentum on that front died especially when the bear market hit.
Be product-focused and customer-obsessed. Working with Okori introduced me to the world of product design and thinking. He doesn’t know this but he has an American way of thinking about product (which is a way of complimenting him without giving one). Getting to truly know your customers, what problems they face and how you can alleviate their pain points is something that is overlooked by many founders. I think this is especially true for first-time founders. From a product standpoint, what hypotheses are you testing? How are you testing these and what are you ultimately looking for? Be comfortable pivoting when need be → this shouldn’t be a problem if you are mission-driven because you are addressing the same problem statement but from a different vantage point.
Build and maintain your relationships. Not every fan you meet will turn into a customer. Not every associate you meet will write you a cheque. Not every talent you meet will join your team. Take time and be purposeful in building relationships with people you come across in your entrepreneurial journey. Forget that “you never know how they can be useful in the future” rhetoric. It’s just as predatory and transactional as the “what can they do for me” rhetoric but with the expectation of delayed gratification. Institutions and people back the individuals working on ideas as much (or times even more) than they back the idea itself. I believe that having people buy into YOU as a person is the best social currency you can have.
Create a workstyle understanding. If you have a co-founder(s), or better if, when you get a co-founder reach an understanding regarding work styles. Your character, personality and idiosyncracies can indicate work style, patterns and behaviours. I work in intense bursts over the course of a day, working on high-priority matters first. I have little appetite for meaningless meetings or sharing information that isn’t salient. To some people reading this I sound like a dream worker, to others I sound like their worst nightmare, a group of people would put me somewhere in the middle. Setting expectations (and how to compromise) if need be is important.
What’s Next?
Who knows… just keep your eyes peeled though. I got something special for you.
Thank you to everyone that has been part of this journey from the core team to those rooting for us from the bleachers. I love you all.
E ✌️❤️