Ryan Angilly

One year ago today a startup was born

This morning, my roommate Jonathan Woodard and I woke up at 6:00a, and without many words, got dressed, walked out to my car, and made the drive out to Mapleton & 30th for our 6:30a workout at Crossfit Roots. The workout was especially entertaining: 100 burpees. Stand up straight, lay down on the ground so that your chest touches, stand back up, jump up in the air, and clap your hands your hands above your head while you’re in midair. Do that as fast as possible. 100 times. Jonathan and I both finished in just over 9 minutes.

We got back in the car and, still with few words, anxiously awaited getting back to the apartment to massacre some veggies, sausage, bacon and eggs. During the massacre, Jonathan speaks up (we had finally woken up), “Hey so 4sq & 7 emailed me this morning. It was a weird series of checkins a year ago today, and then I figured it out: It’s our 1 year anniversary.” One year ago today, Jonathan and I were at Walnut Brewery and discussed, for the first time, working together.

I arrived via U-Haul, Volvo in tow, in Boulder on August 2nd, 2010. Jonathan got here the day before me. We didn’t know each other. For the next several months, we kept seeing each other at events all over town. I would see him on Twitter and at Atlas. I would wonder who this guy was at BOCC being even louder than me. Eventually we met, started talking, and one night while out at the Walnut Brewery for dinner, I asked him if he wanted to create a startup together. In between staring at the cutie waitress, we decided to go for it. “Let’s see what happens.”

One year ago….

And with that, we were off. We looked at, and in most cases prototyped, a lot of ideas. I can think of at least 5, but I don’t rule out the possibility I’m forgetting one:

• an app to help plan ski trips
• an app to help buy consumer electronics
• a social widget that gave online retailers insight into the minds of their customers at the point of sale
• an omniscient browser extension that would monitor what you’re doing online and automatically let you know when those in your social circle had previously done something similar
• our current project, which isn’t exactly a secret, but not something I’m ready to blog about

A lot happened in the past year. We looked at raising money, met with VCs, had discussions about a potential merger with another fledgling (but better capitalized) startup. One product came to fruition (the 3rd one in the list), launched at BDNT and Boulder Beta, got some early users, but never panned out as expected. We haven’t given up on that social insight widget, but it’s on the back burner for now. The omniscient widget idea started to get prototyped, but after consulting with some very smart people around Boulder, we decided it just wasn’t something we wanted to pursue right now. We applied to TechStars twice, once in Boulder and once in NYC. Obviously, we were not accepted. We also never raised money, and never merged with anyone.

Throughout the year, we flirted with bringing on a third founder 5 times. The first four didn’t pan out, and we were lucky in that all the business relationships ended amicably and left the personal relationships intact. For us it’s turning out that the fifth time is the charm. Alec Uitti, a designer with a ton of experience, joined our team a few months ago, and we’ve been plugging along ever since.

For the entire time, Jonathan sustained himself as an independent contractor. I was working for Punchbowl.com until May of this year, and have been working as a contractor since then.

So one year later we have no revenue, we have no product, we have raised zero dollars, and while we’re incredibly excited about what we are working on now, there is as of yet no guarantee it’s going to work out.

So how do I summarize the last 12 months? Was it a waste? Have we been spinning our wheels? Are we stupid failures?

Hell no.

For starters, we’ve learned one of the most important things that founders can learn about a partnership: that we can work together. Jonathan and I share a lot. We work together. We live together (he moved into my spare bedroom in January 2011). We fly in similar social circles. We are both in the same ski house up in Vail this winter. We both hang out at Atlas Purveyors. And as mentioned at the start of this post, we workout together at Crossfit Roots. I’ve yelled at Jonathan. He’s been furious at me. I’ve apologized. He’s apologized. We’ve gotten very drunk together. I’ve tried to give him a haircut while he was brushing his teeth one morning. He’s videotaped me throwing up. We haven’t killed each other yet, and we (probably) won’t in the future.

We’ve both gotten a hell of a lot smarter and more pragmatic. There’s something to be said for biding ones time in search of the right idea. Any business takes a little bit of luck to work, but you can maximize for luck by being smart about how you select an idea, and we’ve gotten better at that. Any one of the ideas in that list above can be made into a successful business, but for one reason or another, none of them are right for us right now.

One of the most interesting things I’ve noticed is that we’ve ‘settled’ into Boulder. When I moved to Boulder, I didn’t know anybody. I was alone. I attended every event I could, I talked to people, and I reached out to strangers. But it took over 2 months before I ever got invited to go socialize on a weekend (thanks Chris Hough). Once I started to make real friends here, I wanted to make the most of it: socializing all over the place, never turning down an invitation or a public event, tweeting at everyone constantly, watching the Bachelor & Bachelorette at Alpine0210 every week (thanks Joni & Alexis!). Back in March, when I was finally about to give my notice at Punchbowl, I didn’t have much of a savings. I went out to the Mountain Sun with Chris Rosen (owner of Atlas Purveyors) and told him I was pretty scared. He looked at me, smirked, leaned in, and as he looked left and right around the room, said “Dude… you’re here.” He didn’t mean the Sun dining room. He meant Boulder. He meant the community; the family. In just a year, I really have come to feel like I’m a part of it. I feel safe here. And with that comes the ability to be comfortable putting my head down for 3 weeks and not socializing or trying to make new friends.

So now, after a year of doing what we’ve been doing, this is the state of things: We have a killer idea that fits us — and Boulder — perfectly. We have the skills to build it. We have enthusiastic early users with cash to spend. We have advisors that I trust in and that believe in us. We trust each other. We’re working our asses off.

For the past year, Jonathan and I have been working in a startup: a temporary organization built to search for a business model. After a year of doing that, I feel more ready than ever to turn this startup into a business.

So here’s to the next year, Woodard. Let’s go knock this out of the fucking park.