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Environmental factors
Bloozle – the Startup that never was - Part V

Continued from Product Development Mistakes (Bloozle – the Startup that never was - Part IV)

We probably still would have survived, because at the end of the whole charade – we still had a working prototype*, a proof of concept and most of all a revenue model – which hardly any online startup in those days had. But unfortunately for us – recession had to set in just when we were readying our b-plan and reaching out to investors.

In the months since October 2008 and today – we have heard responses from umpteen VC’s^ that they are not even considering investing in seed stage startups till the recession goes away. Most of them of course camouflage their response by saying that they would have invested if we had customers (essentially saying no to Seed Stage and asking us to reach beyond that stage).

Unfortunately for us, personal lives are at a cornerstone where we could not have risked our personal savings (beyond what we already had) in taking this concept beyond the seed stage. We knew (and still know) that this is an idea which needs incubation time – a couple of months may be, but may be a year – before we can approach our first customers. And we know our personal savings will not help last that far – so relying on them is a sure road to an unfinished race.

Next - Conclusion

*Thanks to Aniruddha Maru, our second developer, who developed the missing pieces of the working prototype. Aniruddha is one the most intelligent and quick to learn chaps I have met. He picked up the app-architecture and the code within hours from Manpreet. He was always quick to code new functionalities. His strength though became one of the weakness for our team – he thought so fast that he often coded things even before we could crystallize our ‘specs’ :-) and hence we could never document stuff.

^Kalpesh Khivasara also deserves a note of thanks – he has been helping us since 2007 working on concept development, helping contact VC’s and researching the web. I am sure he will be the first person whom I’d contact if I were to restart bloozle or start another venture.
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