Sometimes I think to myself, how in god’s name are we still surviving? Because we’ve had so many screw-ups that I can’t believe this company isn’t dead.
Since it’s a good exercise to look back on all the things that didn’t work out and make us say, ‘man what did I get myself into?’ I will do that below.
So this is all the failures we’ve ever done that I can remember since 2015 September.
First prototype late 2015, didn’t quite work.
The 2015 co-founder exodus. We went from 6 cofounders to 3 real quick.
Tried to do a 8+ member team one time. Implosion ensued and we went back to 5.
Tried to develop a mobile game for Tabulit with a friend, didn’t work out purely due to my incompetence, but that friend is now publishing that game on his own, so it’s not a complete loss.
I dissed Amazon (Comixology) in an email and the publisher I was sending the email to told me off. Now I don’t diss anyone in my emails.
May relaunch (2015), which was tooted on about but never happened.
Printed business cards a month before we rehauled the entire design of the company.
Printed bookmarks that became obsolete within two months.
Printed stickers (they were friggin expensive too). I always ask myself now, why?
Went to two book fairs, basically got nothing out of both (except a few awesome connections) before realizing that book fairs don’t really work for a digital publishing company.
Original content project for Founder Comics and Pet Bros (discontinued after running out of money for it)
Redesigned site plan couldn’t be adopted correctly, because I suck in front end code, and MJ needed to focus on back end.
Our redesigned logo looks like Tumblr’s.
September relaunch got delayed to October (2016).
October relaunch got delayed to November
November 1st got delayed to two weeks later.
Developing our own website. Wished we had realized this before we spent an entire year doing it.
My attempt to code out a custom Wordpress site.
Every single comic project I attempted to do in partnership with an artist.
The token model.
James left.
Had to drop out of the Wavefront accelerator because no money to pay the fee and no one in Vancouver.
All our attempts for funding.
Podcast advertisements.
Various versions of subscription plans.
Every single promo code we ever tried out.
Every single discounts we ever tried out.
Putting promo cards in cafes and other places that would accept them. No one actually looks at a promo card and says, hey I should subscribe. So promo cards don’t work.
Ed’s idea of printing comics on a large postcard sized papers. People don’t read this either.
And many more that I couldn't remember.
As Jeff Bezos says, every great invention needs a lot of failure. So we're not necessarily discouraged. It is a bit of an annoyance though.
In any case, after Rux took a look at this list, she said:
“It really is about the process. Each step taught and brought you closer to reaching your goals. We’re creating a new type of economy for artists. Don’t give up just yet - it takes time for change to take place”
To which my response was, I never said anything about giving up (hell to the naw naw).
- Alex
