--- title: "Wisertag, another startup attempt" slug: wisertag date_published: "2019-03-01T18:06:00.000Z" date_updated: "2020-07-08T01:15:27.000Z" tags: ["Side Hustle", "Startup", "Job"] draft: false summary: "Validate soon. Sell more." images: ["/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--6.jpg"] --- ![Wisertag Logo and Banner](/content/images/2020/07/wisertag-logo.png) I am a stubborn to-be entrepreneur. I am always looking for potential ideas to build and try. This is a quick reflection over a side-hustle that unfortunately didn't succeed. ## Getting excited One day, I went to buy some sushi at a Wasabi franchise. What was my surprise when they asked me to scan a QR code after paying to collect reward points. At that exact point I thought, QR and NFC are cool, and I should facilitate the access to these technologies lagging behind in the west. ## Pivot #1: Loyalty cards It sounded like a great idea to have loyalty cards where a cafe/restaurant customer would scan a QR/NFC code and collect stamps to get discounts. #### Time invested: Not that much. #### ROI: £0 #### Customers: 0 #### Take aways: - Built a product before actually having any customers. Only based on some existing competitors in the space and the franchise Wasabi using a similar product. - It is CRITICAL to find customers as soon as possible. Motivation will quickly drop, specially if all your effort building something is not valued by anyone. - Tried cold door selling the product once. I was scared because I never did sales, and it took real courage to enter a cafe and pitch my idea to a random waiter there. They pretty much kicked me out (with good manners). That was a terrible experience, but I learned that sales was important and difficult to master. - **Validate soon. Sell more.** ![](/content/images/2020/07/parallax-slides2-phones.png) ## Pivot #2: Smart plant label Given that I usually struggle with patience to stick to a non validated idea, I decided to explore something else that interested me. I love plants, and I have tens of them at home (seriously, my house is like a jungle, greenery all over the place :)). I would like to build something that helped customers to keep their plants alive, giving them care details. A simple label that plant shops could put on the plant and assign to a specific species. #### Time invested: A lot #### ROI: £500 #### Customers: 2 #### Take aways: - Invest less time on MVP. - Better SaaS than physical products. - Manufacturing in China is unreliable. They make a lot of mistakes and it is difficult to communicate unless you have a big budget. - Sales is critical. I should invest 50% of time on sales, at least. This time around I did better than earlier and managed to sell something, but it was not good enough. This is a challenge for Engineers-Entrepreneurs. - Sell before building anything to validate the idea early. ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--2-1.jpg) Final manufactured product in China. ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0957.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0774.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0763.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0652.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0585-Edit.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_0703.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plant-1.jpg) First batch (initial and hand-made MVP). Sold 40. ![](/content/images/2020/07/parallax-slides-plant-center.png) The plant UI when the QR code is scanned ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--8.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--7.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--6.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--5.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--2.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--3.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--4.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/Wisertag-Plants-Ttag--5MP--1.jpg) Manufactured smart labels in China. ## WebSummit 2019 We applied to WebSummit 2019 in Lisbon (Portugal), and we got accepted to participate in it as an Alpha company (less than 500k investment). This is a great experience and we met a lot of interesting people, even some potential investors and partners. ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_20191106_173106.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_20191106_163024.jpg) ![](/content/images/2020/07/IMG_20191106_163124.jpg) Wisertag at WebSummit 2019. Lisbon (Portugal). ## The motivation decline After WebSummit, I found a new role at Bloomberg and I also started working at another startup (InPractise.com). This, along with the lack of potential customers and partners, meant that Wisertag was forgotten and parked to the side. Eventually... I took the executive decision of throwing away all the plant label stock, which was taking valuable space in my small London apartment. That was a sad moment, but also a liberation, and it proved that I'm ready to move on and face a new challenge. ## Pivot #3: Dead cat bounce, COVID-19 restaurant menus After the COVID-19 pandemic started, I had too much time to think. I then decided to reuse the name and try selling a simple product to create restaurant menus with a QR code the restaurants could print. This time around, I wouldn't build it first. #### Time invested: Not much. #### ROI: £0 #### Customers: 0, but multiple prospects. #### Take aways: - Changed the landing page to accommodate the new idea (checkout image bellow). - Built a TripAdvisor email scraper for restaurants and collected around 20k emails for restaurants. - Sent email to 2k restaurants in Spain, and got a few prospects. - I got the feeling that it was not resonating that much, and I decided to drop the project before wasting any more time. - I am happy that I didn't spent much time on this, this time around. This was a quick way to validate the idea, before building anything. ![](/content/images/2020/07/www.wisertag.com_-Laptop-with-MDPI-screen--1.png) Landing page after Wisertag.com latest pivot ## Lessons learned - **Don't build before selling.** Only allowed to build a landing page to sell and pitch the idea. - **Minimise time to validation**. Wasted effort should be minimised. - **Get at least 10 actual customers interested in the product before building anything.** - **Validate soon. Sell more.** - Physical products are hard. Manufacturing adds an extra complexity layer to the build process. Wisertag was a great experience for me. It was an attempt to build a business. This time I didn't succeed, but there will be other opportunities.