What we learned from Fashmatch

We are 300k shy of the 1million user generated outfit suggestions at Fashmatch, a personal goal of mine, but we won´t be able to make it. As of today, we will be forced to close our shop and with it to halt this project that aimed to revolutionize the way people get conductive to purchase fashion advice.
I am tempted by my ego to put all the blame on the economic crisis and say that Fashmatch is just one of those small shops victims of risk aversion and illiquidity, but that is simply not true. The external factors are just one in many determinants and at the moment it is the least instructive and valuable for me. I rather focus on what I could have done different in order to build a company that although immersed in uncertainty, could effectively coup with risk and deliver the goods regardless of the external adversities.
Here are some of the main reasons I think we failed to take Fashmatch to the next step:
1. Fine tuning versus exploring new grounds: At fashmatch we had, as I constantly repeated to anyone who would listen, a small but very active early adopter user base. With over 20 page views per user, close to 2 million page views, an average of 3 outfit suggestions per user and close to 20 minutes per session, users clearly enjoyed Fashmatch. Our challenge from early on was to move from this point to critical mass adoption, but we failed to accomplish this goal. The reason, I think, is because we decided to give priority to creating new features rather than fine tuning the ones we had. We said to ourselves that in order to leapfrog into a massive audience we needed easier to use features that will attract less engaged yet more mainstream users. But what happened is that the same old users kept coming back to our main application while the new applications barely brought new users. Underlying this decision was the notion that we had maxed out our early adopter audience. After watching how things played out at some of our competitors’ sites, that assumption proved to be false. In retrospective, I believe that our reasoning was supported by a “stronger leg” logic: we were better and felt more comfortable creating new features for the site than we were on fine tuning it. Every time we tried a fine tuning tactic we failed (that was our weak leg), while every time we tackle a “new features” tactic we had limited and small yet measurable success. Even though the strategy was not the right one, the tactics results kept pushing us the other way.
2. Lack of patience: As I have said in another post, we tend to confuse the speed at which tactics yields results on the Web with the speed at which strategy can yield its results. Tactics works fast: you can add an “invite friends” button and right then and there see if it’s working or not. Strategy always takes time: to move buyers from offline to online shops, to move communication from one medium to the other, all of these efforts take time to play out. I believe we were unable to commit to our fine tuning strategy also in part because we submitted it on an unrealistic (appropriate for tactics) timeframe. Persistence does not immediately include patience and without it, it can turn into disoriented efforts.
3. To get US funding, you need to be in the US: We set up a development office in South America and the idea was for me to stay in the US, doing Biz.Dev and capital rising. I never quite managed to make this work. I had to spend lots of time with the coders to make sure things worked out the way we needed. From abroad it became increasingly difficult to raise money.
4. More likely than not, you need more than one founder, or an early employee that complements you strategically: point no.2 was greatly reinforced by the fact that I had to run both operation and business. If I had a co founder who could take care of ops, I would have had more time to focus on fund raising which, as everyone will tell you, consumes more resources that you might think.

On the other hand, I started Fashmatch with a set of preconceptions that have been validated and that I believe also deserved to be shared:

1. Social media can empower a more conductive to purchase experience
2. Great web products don´t need lots of money to get off the ground and in front of users/consumers
3. Frugality has always proved to be a good business practice
4. Hard work is more important than knowledge and whit and often is the best way to acquire and preserve both.
5. Listening is more difficult and more important than talking. Listening to your consumers and understand what they want (this includes analytics) is the key ability of any business person.
6. Determination, hard work, flexibility and optimism are the key character features of any great entrepreneur.

Thanks everyone for sharing Fashmatch with us. These are times of reflection, but they won’t last long. Sooner than later the lessons learned need to be put in good use.

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