I built a startup on £500, now what?

6 points

10 years ago

After the crippling failure of the last startup (Lynker) I needed a new project to get into as a sort of rebound. At the time was at the time playing around with this idea of a content discover platform based a mockup for a new social network I found on dribbble. I started messing around with some code before I knew it I had come up with the prototype for what is now known as Grado. I fed it to a few friends and found that I got a decent response. People liked the idea that content on the platform was based on merit in a similar format to reddit rather than which of my friends 'liked it' and as one friend put it ‘I had succeeded it getting rid of all the social noise’

So I continued to develop it while working as a freelance dev. I gave my self a deadline of 5 months and I was more or less broke I had a budget of only £500.

Long story short I did it in 4 months on less that £400 and launched it on the iOS AppStore. (it can be downloaded from here if your interested https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grado-the-worlds-noticeboard/id1090719110?ls=1&mt=8)

I started this project as a bit of fun but I seem to be on to something, the app now has around 100 users without any promotion what so ever (I know thats tiny but it’s a start). The problem is I am a product guy and have no idea on how to move forward. I have been looking into raising a seed round and hiring a co-founder but I known nothing about either. My question is for you good people is what now? What advice would you offer to somebody in my shoes? Should I move forward, if so how and what should I focus my time on?

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