sell sell

lessons learned
panda in
a coma
GUARANTEED FIXED RATES
FOR BOTH PARTIES
Fintech Week was an awesome success, international visitors, the launch
of the Fintech Times paper, and one of the highlights was closing night
drinks and canapes at Level 39, beautiful view, exciting companies, free
flowing wine, delicious morsels, and Chris Wallis, who told us a story
about a Panda in a coma.
Chris: The idea was brilliant. A website, where people who lived in
shared houses could go to split their bills. Never mind that three or four
such sites already existed, this one would be different. This one would
cater to the specific scenario of when people moved out, and you didn't
know how much of the gas bill they should pay! In short, it was a stroke
of genius.
Disrupts: So where did it all go wrong?
A SOLUTION FOR LENDERS
AND INVESTORS
TO PUT THEIR MONEY
INTO LONG-TERM DEBT
FUNDING FOR HOME BUYERS’
MORTGAGES IN THE UK
Chris: Well for a start, it might just have been too small of a market. My
one incredible feature may just have been something people didn't
need. But instead of trying to test it in a lean way, I went ahead and
built a whole web application around it, with Facebook integrated
logins and fully fleshed out UI, which would have been great, if it hadn't
taken me about six months (I was working part-time as a cyber security
consultant).
Other mistakes included - trying to run a design competition for a new
logo, only to be petrified on the last day that I had included in the T's
and C's that one entry would definitely be chosen to win the cash prize
(to encourage entrants). Having had zero entries, this caused me quite
a lot of stress on deadline day. Luckily no-one applied.
Since its launch in 2012, billsharingpanda.com has only had 33% of its
active households abandon the site. However, having only had three
active houses, I have never really celebrated this statistic.
The venture taught me many things, but the main one was, stick to what
you know.
REGISTER YOUR INTEREST:
WWW.ROBINHOOD.MORTGAGE
Disrupts: Chris now runs a successful cyber security company, Intruder,
which helps businesses protect their internet-facing systems from cyber
attacks. Ahh, no more pandas.
40