After four years of grinding and pivoting, we recently decided to wind down Launcher Labs (FKA Newzip). I wanted to share our journey so that others might benefit from our mistakes and lessons.

tl;dr

We pivoted dozens of times but failed to achieve PMF because we didn’t find and fall in love with a good customer and problem; we wasted too much time on low-frequency and unimportant problems and found that remote work sucks for startups.

Full journey

We started the company in the fall of 2020 and went through YC W21 to help people relocate during the pandemic by connecting them with local experts. We pivoted to crypto in 2022. Here’s what we built and learned.

Newzip

What did we build?

• Newzip — an online marketplace for neighborhood advice. Connect to local experts through on-demand calls and livestreams to answer questions like, “What neighborhood should I live in?” or “What school should I send my kids to?”

• We thought consumers would pay for local expertise, and we could build the next Airbnb by helping in-demand local experts monetize their knowledge. We acquired hundreds of local experts and influencers in dozens of cities and sold thousands of dollars in local advice. We ended up selling Newzip to friends at Realeaux Inc., who are doing great things with it.

What did we learn?

• Solve a frequent problem: The number of times a consumer has pain high enough to want to pay for this type of advice (moving cities, changing schools) is extremely low. And the amount of money they were willing to pay was low. This made it difficult and costly for both us and the supply side to find, acquire, and keep customers. Low frequency can work if it’s high margin (Airbnb), and low margin can definitely work if it’s high frequency, but low frequency + low margin is very difficult.

• Demand is the game: In a two-sided marketplace like Newzip, acquiring both supply and demand is critical. We got pretty good at finding and acquiring high-quality suppliers, but without strong demand, suppliers weren’t satisfied and churned. Driving demand is key to retaining the supply side.

• Don't be afraid to change your idea: We hesitated to pivot due to our attachment to our initial “YC idea” and sunk cost bias, resulting in a lot of wasted time. We should have pivoted months sooner when we lacked conviction.

• Take big swings vs. incremental ones: We wasted months exploring two slight pivots in this direction (On-demand local tours, Tiktok for locals). When we decided to pivot, we should've committed fully to exploring big, bold options rather than incremental SISPy ones related to our initial idea.

Offload

What did we build?

• Offload — Marketplace for excess building supplies. Save money buying doors and windows from wholesale building suppliers’ excess materials.

• While renovating my house, I discovered you could buy doors and windows cheaply from the back of the warehouse. We thought we could help suppliers sell their excess to home improvement buyers and professionals looking to save. We launched a simple MVP and helped one supplier sell $10K in doors.

What did we learn?

• Understand user incentives: Small, old-school building suppliers had no incentive to sell their excess material. They didn't want to cannibalize their primary sales and found it to be too much extra work. Local liquidators ended up being a better solution.

• No-code tools can take you far: We weren’t sure if these suppliers wanted to sell their excess building materials, and we didn’t want to waste time building a product until we saw some proof. We built the entire MVP using Airtable in a day. I'm still shocked at how far you can get with Airtable, Retool, and now with all the GenAI tools.

Maindrop

What did we build?

• Maindrop.xyz — Venmo for sending and receiving NFTs. Send NFT gifts to anyone with a wallet, email, or phone.

• Sending and receiving NFTs is a bad experience, so we thought a solution could be a wedge into the large greeting card and gift card markets. We processed thousands of transactions and provided users with fun tools for creating and sending NFT gifts.

What did we learn?

• Beware of fake vs. real trends: While I’m still a big believer of NFTs, the number of active NFT users at the time was very small. The number of them actively sending and receiving NFTs was even smaller. If you're solving problems around an emerging trend, make sure it's a real one.

• Find a frequent customer: We couldn't find a user type who frequently wanted to send NFTs. We explored NFT communities, traders, and crypto marketers. We learned that the largest greeting card companies get around low frequency by primarily serving retailers and getting good at marketing a few days a year (Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Mother’s Day).

• Avoid incremental solutions: Even though the experience was subpar, you could send NFTs using OpenSea, Metamask, Rainbow, Coinbase, etc. Our product was fun to use, but it wasn’t 10x better or different enough, making it difficult for even our most loyal fans to develop a habit around it.

• Set test deadlines: Towards the end of this product, we got a lot smarter and set deadlines for our tests. This simple change forced us to face reality and find ground truth much faster. I think this is part of what makes Y Combinator's 3-month sprint so powerful.

Launchcaster

What did we build?

• Launchcaster.xyz — Crypto Product Hunt. Launch and discover the best crypto projects by simply mentioning @launch on Farcaster.

• Launchcaster was never meant to be a big thing; it started as a side project. Over time, we thought it could evolve into a Steam or App Store Connect for crypto apps. We grew Launchcaster to thousands of crypto projects and over 14K crypto builders. It continues to be a valuable public good.

What did we learn?

• Solve a venture-scale problem: Hacker News, Product Hunt, and Techmeme were not venture-scale. We quickly learned this when we started focusing on Launchcaster. The number of people interested in consuming this type of content frequently is very small, and finding an aligned business model for the community can be tricky. The best business model for these communities is often to have them owned by someone else (e.g., YC runs HN, Hyper runs PH).

• Kill your darlings: I’m so glad we launched this side project. Building the community and brand gave us a small edge in crypto and changed my life. The mistake we made was revisiting it multiple times after concluding we didn’t see PMF or a venture-scale path. We never got new information that changed the opportunity. It was more that we struggled to find PMF in a difficult crypto market, and Launchcaster was kinda working on a small scale. That “kinda working” state distracted us much more than it should’ve.

• It’s hard to find PMF on customers who haven’t found it themselves: We repeatedly tried to serve crypto projects with Launchcaster by offering App Store Connect-like CRM and analytics tools. We struggled to find a winning path due to the lack of crypto projects with real PMF. Every direction we explored felt like a house of cards.

Launcher

What did we build?

• Launcher.xyz — a platform for crypto mini-apps. Create and share a crypto mini-app on top of any smart contract by pasting a transaction link or entering custom functions.

• We thought the lack of things to do in crypto was a problem. To address this, we released two apps. The first was a progressive web app and token-curated registry where users bet on apps they wanted to be built. This violated securities laws and had some other flaws, so we pivoted to making it easy to build and remix apps on existing smart contracts. We thought this could become a Dune-like platform for crypto mini-apps.

What did we learn?

• Listen to what people do/pay vs. say: We spent weeks talking to hundreds of users and demoing the product. Everyone raved about it and told us all the different ways they wanted to use it. Come launch, we couldn’t get a soul to use it. Take what users say with a grain of salt. I like the advice that a potential customer’s opinion is not valuable unless they’re willing to pay you (financial capital, time capital, social capital), and there are lots of great lessons on this in The Mom Test.

• Avoid nice-to-have: The product didn’t solve a major problem for the users we talked to. They already had their interface, and they used Etherscan write features to fill in the gaps. While our product was cool, it was more of a nice-to-have than a 10x improvement on Etherscan.

Frameboard

I wrote a full post on Frameboard lessons here.

What did we build?

• Frameboard.com — A crypto Pinterest where you can earn on your curation. Curate anything in web2 or web3 via URL, image upload, or browser extension, and earn when users collect it.

• We thought crypto could empower higher-quality content curation and that users would support great curators by collecting (paying for) it. Since launching in March, hundreds of users curated over 6,500 posts to 800 boards, with thousands more consuming those boards on the web app, Farcaster, and XMTP.

What did we learn?

• Avoid SISPing: The first mistake we made with Frameboard was approaching it from "solution in search of a problem." At this point, we were out of ideas and desperate to figure out what to build next. We let impatience guide us, brainstorming crypto and web3 socical ideas instead of identifying a problem and reasoning from first principles. No surprise—we ended up with mostly bad ideas and a few that just sounded good.

• Solve the right problem for the right user: While cool and fun to build, Frameboard was the wrong product for today’s crypto audience. Active crypto users prefer text-based content, are time-constrained, and mostly driven by speculation. Frameboard was more visual, time-intensive, and lacked speculative elements. We didn't solve a real problem the market wanted solved and built something people didn’t need. Don’t make that mistake—be brutally honest about who your users are, what their behaviors are, and what they truly want.

• Don't forget about demand: Like many web3 ideas, Frameboard sounded great from the supply side (i.e., the curator) but was weak on the demand side (i.e., the collector). Every creator wants more money and control—that’s a given. The real question is: why will the demand-side users spend their time and/or money in a meaningful and frequent way? We struggled to answer that. Without demand, supply-side users—whether content creators, platform developers, marketplace sellers, or service providers—won’t be satisfied and will churn. As I mentioned above, demand is the game and key to providing a magical experience for the supply side.

• Take your time pivoting: In hindsight, we didn't spend enough time between pivots. We were eager to build and ship (always be launching), and didn’t like waiting around. Looking back, I wish we had taken a little more time to research, understand users and their problem, and develop a strong hypothesis that we were going after a big, important market and be missionaries about it. I think in crypto, more so than other industries, teams really need to be grounded in truth and mission-driven to navigate all the skepticism and market swings.

Other lessons

Fall in love with a customer and problem

Ultimately, we failed to reach PMF because we didn't find and fall in love with a good customer and problem. I never forgot the advice from Michael Seibel as we were pivoting: "Who can you give a shit about for a long time?" We struggled to get excited about serving real estate agents and infrequent movers. When we pivoted to crypto, we enjoyed serving crypto users and builders. But over time, we realized most current crypto users just wanted to passively own digital assets, while the active ones wanted to speculate. We weren't drawn to the speculative use cases. We loved (and still love) helping crypto builders, but few have PMF, making them not the best customers. The experience drove home the importance of falling in love with a problem and serving good, rich customers.

Make sure the team fits the pivot

I got into crypto in 2014 and NFTs in 2017. When we decided to pivot to crypto, I was the only one on the team who actively used and owned crypto and NFTs. The team was excited about it because I was, not because they believed in or used it. In hindsight, the team probably wasn't the best fit for crypto. I think this hindered our ability to find PMF and ultimately led us to shut down instead of continuing to pivot into crypto. If you're pivoting to a new problem space, make sure the current team is a good fit for it.

Remote work sucks for startups

Our team was fully remote. We got pretty good at it, but I have mixed feelings about remote work. It can work well when everyone knows what they're doing (post-PMF), allows you to recruit more and better talent, and works ok during COVID. But I question if it's the best path for finding PMF and building a great, enduring company. Our team tried to address this by meeting regularly, working out of the same office or Airbnb, and living in the same city for a few months. When we did, it was magical, and you could feel how much faster we moved. Looking back, I wish we met monthly and pushed my co-founder or myself to move to the same city. I'm certain this would have increased our odds. If you're pre-pmf and working remotely, I recommend stopping and doing whatever it takes to be in the same room as much as possible.

Build in public

When we pivoted to crypto, we got frustrated with the fragmented audience. I wanted to control our destiny and committed to building our own audience. I posted on social media daily for years and built an audience across Farcaster, newsletters, X, and Telegram. This audience gave us such an advantage when acquiring users, getting feedback, fundraising, recruiting, and more. I can’t recommend this enough — it’s not hard, and you already have more content than you think.

Always be launching

For years, we shipped weekly and often daily. We became good at announcing those launches, no matter how small. This habit allowed us to gain traction quickly in everything we did. It made the team feel like we constantly had momentum, which made us ship even faster. It helped us build trust with users and gave us endless feedback.

Get good at the marathon

We got really good at sprinting and making a ton of progress in a short period with limited resources. However, startups are a marathon. No matter how good you are at sprinting, you will lose if you sprint in the wrong direction. Before you sprint, make sure you’re heading toward something important that you care about and can have conviction for a long time.

Thank you

Of everything we built, I’m most proud of the team and community. Huge thanks to everyone for your support over the past four years.

What’s next?

I want to start another company in crypto. I've never been more determined to build great products and make an impact — I made so many silly mistakes over the past four years. I'm excited to get back up and build on all these lessons, but I'm taking my time. Startups are a grind and, if you’re lucky, a 10-20 year journey. Whatever I work on next, I want it to be mission-driven and commit for a decade and beyond.

In the meantime, I just want to be helpful. Don’t hesitate to reach out if there’s anything I can help with.

Farcaster: @Jayme

X: @JaymeHoffman