 I didn’t have a clear goal line when I set out on this journey. Perhaps that was the problem. If you haven’t traveled the road before –how exactly do you know when you “get there”? My first big innovation journey is over. Perhaps the journey isn’t over, but I do have to change destinations. Am I talking in circles? Yes. We lost our funding for Tykester – the innovation grant we received to launch this app three years ago was discontinued. Actually, the entire innovation department within our company was disbanded as part of a company restructure. So my current path as an app developer, and as the official spokesperson and founder of Tykester, has come to an end. I’m sitting in my home office sifting through the remnants and trying to box, shred and bag all the collateral that comes with a business. My garbage men are not going to be happy with me this week. Failure is not a familiar or comfortable place for me. I doubt many people would own up to being “OK” with failure, but that doesn’t make it any easier. I accepted a challenge three years ago by volunteering to be part of an innovation contest that meant sacrificing several hours a week on top of my busy schedule. Two years ago, I stepped out of my comfort zone by volunteering to head up the resulting app project, and splitting my career into two parts – both full time jobs. And one year ago, I took a huge leap of faith by agreeing to part ways with my successful career (and my beloved work family at GHG) to try something brand new, which was invigorating and terrifying at the same time. It didn’t work out. Although the app was well received and we had thousand of users and fans, we weren’t able to achieve enough success to quickly make it into a viable business product. I am heartbroken for our users, most who won’t understand that a free app can’t exist forever without a successful business plan to make it more than, well, a free app. I feel like I let so many people down – our users and testers, the company that gave us $$$ to get this project underway, the innovation department that gave me support and fully expected us to succeed, and the TV and media audiences I spoke to over the past year. But I will tell you one thing. I have learned more this year than I’ve learned in the past ten years. I found that stepping out of my comfort zone (and it was way, way, way out, let me assure you) was exciting, terrifying and stressful. And I loved it. I faced this year with all kinds of trepidation. Fear of being too old to start again. Fear of hacking my way through a new career populated mostly by men and millennials. Fear of looking out of place in a market surrounded by new (and usually lactating) moms of newborns. I did encounter every one of those - and other - obstacles along the way. I was almost always the only woman on the conference call. I was consistently a decade older than any other founder or developer at the conferences. I was ALWAYS the only woman without children at the convention. Social media never slowed down long enough for me to catch up on the absolute latest apps or trends. In the end, it wasn’t any of these fears that signaled the end of our app. It was just a business decision faced by 95% of the apps out there – make lots of money in the short term, or shut it down. As I learned in the Lean Startup method – fail fast. Well, we succeeded in that one! Where does that leave me? Back at the start of a new journey, I guess. I don’t have it mapped out yet, but I do have the confidence to know that I’ll figure it out. One of my strongest assets is that I’m a problem solver. Looks like I have some work to do. |
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