After realizing that my vintage clothing business wouldn’t be able to scale to support my financial goals, I racked my brain for what I could create.
I alternated between feeling despondent and exhilarated. Everything seemed to already exist in a beautiful, complete package. I felt like everyone had some magic formula and I’m trying to figure out how to emulate it.
I read in Choose Yourself to write 10 ideas a day, and I began writing lists of ideas. Write what you know – create what you know. Something I know inside and out is events and vendor experience. My network is full of event organizers and vendors, and I’ve had the pleasure of gossiping with many a vendor about the shortcomings of events. On the flip side, I know the pressures and stresses that event organizers face creating and managing events.
I started looking into current products offered, and didn’t find anything I was enthused about. It seemed disjointed. I know the pain points that vendors experience, and I sat down and had conversations with event organizer friends to see what they struggle with. I began to see something take shape in my mind.
An app for organizers and vendors that would handle all of the frustrations that exist when creating and managing events. For vendors, a place to create a profile and to find events that are happening near them. For organizers, something to address every point of the process. Applications, communication, logistics. No more spreadsheets, random emails, and survey sites cobbled together.
In theory, all good. Ideas are flowing, I’m feeling excited. I sent out a survey to all the vendors I know to ask a few questions about what they would like to see differently about event organization. I read The Cold Start Problem to learn more about building networks. I realized that the organizers, while a much smaller group than vendors, will be the backbone of this network, and that I need to re-orient the solution to serve them. With no events being published, there is no reason vendors would choose my app.
I searched “how to build an app”. I saw recommendations galore: join an accelerator, raise funding, hire software developers, prepare to spend $$$. I started feeling discouraged again. My coding skills were enough to make a custom Myspace page in 2006. I completed Google’s UX design certificate and made some wireframes in Figma. I checked out The Lean Startup from the library and learned about creating an MVP (minimum viable product) and about how to use the Build – Measure – Learn cycle to make sure ideas are worth building.
I’m certainly not quitting my business to pursue this project, but I’m spending a significant amount of time to work on it. There’s still so much I don’t know, I’m really stumbling my way through this. I also wanted to write about my experience in a bare-bones way, to see if I truly dedicated myself to building something, if it would come to fruition.
