untitled map app says goodbye

how a startup with fantastic traction collapsed overnight

Hello friends! I’ll share what I’ve been working on for 1 year, and how a startup with fantastic traction collapsed overnight

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In July 2022 I spent many hours walking around Berlin, and at a certain point I realized that I for the life of me can’t recall where exactly I have been and where I haven’t: on the one hand it feels like you’ve been everywhere and there’s nothing new to see; on the other, sometimes you find a new unfamiliar back alley literally around the corner

From these long walks — and a childhood spent in the fictional worlds of video games — a brilliant idea came up: take a city map, put the so-called “fog of war” on top (think Heroes 3), read phone’s location 24/7 — and you end up with a very personal map of the city which shows, unambiguously, where I’ve already been and where I haven’t

This idea, in the shape of a brief description and a rough sketch, was instantly validated on Twitter: it turned out that I’m not the only one who dreams of a personal map of the world. It’s quite incredible when other people instantly get your idea and want to download an app that does not yet exist. I very much wanted to make it happen — especially considering that similar existing apps felt rather mediocre, and had download count in tens of thousands regardless

Soon after two internet friends reached out, a designer and an engineer, who both shared my enthusiasm and who were both looking for a side project. In September 2022 we started building a prototype

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In a year, we’ve done quite a bit of great things:

• We built an MVP, a very real iOS app which was tested in the wild by about 200 people in Berlin, Paris, London, San Francisco, New York City, Moscow, Yerevan, and many other places. I personally talked to most, and all the imperfections of it notwithstanding, the core emotion I kept hearing was thrill and willingness to keep using it; the metrics confirmed that most people opened the app every day, for weeks

• I developed the silly name of “untitled map app” into a legitimate brand, got over 1000 people on the waitlist, and met dozens of bright talented people in Europe and the US — founders, designers, technologists, researchers, artists — who work with technology and aspire to build new, cool, different things

• The app concept evolved far beyond the simple original idea. We did a ton of research, and the core problem we worked with is the contemporary loneliness crisis/epidemic, so prevalent in this post-covid world. I came up with a bunch of ideas how to turn the city into a playground, how to create new incentives to go outside for those who work from home, and how to find new ways to meet new people where you live, find friends and build local communities offline

• Of course, voice messages were at the heart of it all. I thoroughly researched and experimented with modern tools for speech recognition and built a proof-of-concept of an internal communication tool which significantly improves remote work and confirms, once again, that voice memos combined with on-the-fly automatic transcripts is a far better way to collaborate than texting could ever be

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As my cofounders worked on the project alongside their full-time jobs, everything was moving much slower than we all wanted to. When it became clear than this setup is exhausting and not sustainable, I started looking for investments which would have allowed us all to commit to the project full-time and bring our vision to life. Throughout the summer of 2023 I’ve been speaking with dozens of investors. It was scary and stressful — I never did fundraising before — but also exciting and fun. Plenty of investors appeared enthusiastic about the project and were very open to conversations, but ultimately none were willing to write a check. Later it turned out that it was probably for the better

By September ’23 I finally got completely burned out. 16-hour work days without weekends took its toll on my health, both physical and mental. Over a year, plenty of conflicts and frustrations and disagreements piled up internally. We all were too tired and stressed out — so we were left with no choice but to stop the collaboration and end the project

For me this turned out to be a much harsher blow than I could expect. It’s hard to lose something you put one year of your life in; it’s even harder to accept that reality didn’t live up to your expectations and that a year of work didn’t convert into financial rewards; and even harder still to come to terms with a loss of a project in which you invested not just your mind — but also your full heart

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Today, seven months later, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s very clear to me that I’ve made a ton of mistakes and errors of judgement, and so I’d like to share what I’ve learned first-hand — perhaps my experience would be useful to someone else:

1) Building a startup is hard; building a startup when your cofounders live in different cities is even harder. Remote would never come close to working together in the same room. Just as any long distance relationship, remote inevitably comes with a price and creates a lot of extra issues and makes the communication harder, no matter how expertly you’ve mastered all online collaboration tools available. In the early stages, physical proximity is just crucial

2) If you decide to work together, combining the project with a full-time job, you have to find a clear agreement upfront: how long do you plan to work like this, what are your mutual expectations [from the project & from one another], and how do you see the future. Without clear agreements, everything will keep stalling, things will get messy, and the motivation will be waning

3) You need to explicitly discuss and agree on areas of responsibility and “who does what” before the work begins. Lack of clear agreements and boundaries creates space for uncertainty and varying expectations, and that’s just not where you want to end up

4) If you run into communication issues with your cofounder and you can’t resolve them through an honest direct respectful conversation within several attempts (say, three), it’s best to immediately stop the collaboration than to keep working together and regularly running into mutual misunderstandings and conflicts

5) It’s best to avoid doing business with close friends and getting too close with your business partners. I’ll insist that it’s impossible to combine these inherently conflicting social roles, and so this unstable setup will sooner or later massively backfire

6) Fundraising is a huge stress and you have to be well-prepared for it. Looking for investment while under enormous pressure and full of anxiety is let’s say not the wisest/safest strategy

7) Venture capital is not the only possible source of cash. If your goal is not hypergrowth at all costs but rather one year runway to verify hypotheses, start making money and get closer to profitability, you should consider and explore alternatives

8) Under no circumstances should you neglect your physical/mental health and prioritize work above your well-being. The burnout is real, and it isn’t pretty

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For a workaholic, seven months off work is an awful lot of time — which was, however, necessary to do some thinking, and I did a fair bit of thinking indeed. I went into a three-week hike along the Portuguese/Spanish coast (the famous Camino de Santiago), recovered my health, wrote a handful of short stories, composed some music, and made my first short film. I have plenty of ideas, energy and enthusiasm to start working again, and to find ways how technology can improve the way we communicate with one another. More on that later

I have to add that for me personally this project isn’t over. I still want to have that little personal map of my own world in my phone, and I still want to develop all the ideas that I had. But that requires capital, and capital is not that easy to come by, as it turns out. I’m certain that sooner or later I’ll get to that level of financial freedom that will allow me to make projects on my on terms, with full creative freedom. But right now I’m not there yet

Thank you for reading! If you want to chat, just send me an email: eugene.kudashev@gmail.com