Eighteen months. Twenty people. Ten time zones. A Symphony of Storya
Published on: November 29, 2024
Storya wasn’t just a startup; it was a dream. Paolo and I set out to build a platform where writers and readers could connect. Competing with Wattpad and Amazon Kindle seemed impossible. But we believed in impossible things.
Paolo posted a job on Upwork with “Storya” in the footer. I knew applying the regular way wouldn’t work, so I found him on LinkedIn and sent a message. That message turned into a Google Meet, and then into a journey of 18 months and beyond.
Adalo, a no-code tool. It worked, until it didn’t. The app became too slow, even for us. So we rebuilt it using Flutter, creating a scalable app in just one month. Our small team, 2 developers and 1 project manager, all worked part-time, yet got it done.
The vision was simple: to help writers. Traditional publishing pays authors very little. Storya aimed to change that. By the time we shut down, we had over 700 authors and 1,300 readers.
In Early 2022, we used AI for features like cover art and translations. But we made a big mistake: not charging writers. This limited our revenue and hurt our chances of survival. Generosity doesn’t mean doing everything for free. It also means providing quality at a fair cost.
Running a startup takes more than ideas. Paolo pitched to over 100 investors. Most said, “Come back when you have traction.” Traction, in VC terms, means revenue. And revenue x unknown variable = valuation, which determines how much they can invest.
We tried everything:
- Added subscriptions.
- Built a web app.
- Sold NFTs and raised funds.
We even created virtual galleries to showcase authors' work. But nothing was enough to keep us afloat.
“We were building cool stuff. We were enjoying it. That felt like enough. But we didn’t plan to charge the customers. We couldn’t float, so we sank, deep into emotional instability. We decided not to break ourselves. So we stopped.”
(Shared thought of Praveen & Paolo)
Even though we closed Storya, it wasn’t a failure. We learned so much along the way:
- How to manage a team of 20 people across 10 time zones.
- How to rebuild an app in just a month.
- How to work with people from different cultures.
Here’s what I took away from the experience:
- Talk to your customers before you build anything.
- Start small and grow step by step.
- Don’t depend on volunteers, they often lack commitment.
- Get paid early. No revenue means no funds, no runway.
- Build momentum with small wins.
- Don’t chase investors. Make money, and they will come to you.
To make it easier to understand, we had a great vision, we had people with skills, we had resources, but we did not meet the required amount of incentives. People slowly started to slack, which affected our action plan, which later affected our resources, in turn our skills, which led to the fall.
To make a change, it is important to have:
- Great Vision
- Skilled People
- Decent Incentives
- Ample Resources
- Continuous Action Plan
Missing even one in the list just makes the others get affected easily. You should be constantly checking and fixing these holes. In my perspective, the start of the fall was basically not having ample incentives, not just money, but the dopamine hits that happen when:
- Authors join our platform, write a chapter, and publish it.
- Readers join our platform and appreciate that content.
Unfortunately, we had metrics, but nothing to verify if we were getting these incentives correctly. Figuring that out would have got us to have good action plans. Fixing these two out of five would have helped us to get back on track with the right resources for people with the right skills to achieve our vision. But, by the time we were getting to realizing that, we were out of fuel already and we haven't yet reached the escape velocity.
Note: This is a reflection of the past, nothing conclusive here. We all live a life of constant learning. When we learn something new, we try to relate that with our past, make connections, figure out reasons why something went wrong or why something went well, because we believe in "knowing the past helps us predict the future better."