It's hard to admit this

It’s hard to admit this.

My first solo founded company was amateur.

I started in 2010.

Medium didn’t exist, Reddit was (oft) a cesspool and wasn’t as dominant, and Facebook wasn’t public.

People thought social networks would democratize everything.

Kapuno was my community platform, a platform for a “community-driven media”

My goal was to give everyone a voice and to help people rise in their community without focusing on building their own audience.

The problem was social networks weren’t built to give everyone a voice in their community as much to allow everyone to engage with super users who build audiences. They required people to build an audience before they could leverage that to share new ideas.

It had community distribution like Reddit.

A cleaner post, conversation format like Medium.

Real user identity like Facebook or Quora.

I fell into several traps

• I tried to boil the ocean, and didn’t focus on any single community (no wedge)

• I built a platform without a clear pain or problem

• I didn’t listen to anyone and was obsessed with the idea that what was missing was features

• the platform assumed that incumbents (people on social with audiences) were team players and wanted to help their audience / community.

Five years, four iterations, nine custom servers, a completely custom event-driven javascript framework later

And…a slip up in my first funding round hit me hard so I couldn’t financially bare any more risk.

As a product person, I am extremely proud a lot of the innovative features and solutions that a few thousand people only experienced.

What I was building still should exist and doesn’t.

That doesn’t matter.

Hustle & crazy risks doesn’t inspire anyone until AFTER it works.

Until then, you’re just mad.

If you’re seeing this and need it or know someone who should consider moving on or pivoting; feel free to connect w me.