👎 Interview with a failed startup founder: building a nutrition B2B SaaS that no one demanded
Not every idea hits the market, even if it is innovative and worthwhile. Keep this in mind so that you don’t end up spending too much time and money trying to start such a business to no avail. Today, we'd like to share with you Alex's story, who walked this path and reflects on it.
Alex started WePlate, the nutrition startup, looking for a way to keep a healthy diet while on campus. Instead of tedious calorie counting, his app recommended specific meal items and portion sizes for each user’s unique dietary needs. After 8 months, he shut it down.
«Most nutrition labels are next to useless because unless someone can know exactly how much food they eat, they would not be able to calculate their nutrient intake.
We solved this by simply converting every nutrient by the recommended portion size and building an indicator that told users whether they were eating too much or too little of every nutrient for their body and health goals.»
«We tried to sell our technology to college dining teams by adapting our algorithm to become an analytics tool to help set cafeteria menus and making our app available to their students.»
«If I had to start over, I would talk with more customers instead of building the product first. I spent months building a product that solved a problem few wanted. »
Share @Business_Idea4
Not every idea hits the market, even if it is innovative and worthwhile. Keep this in mind so that you don’t end up spending too much time and money trying to start such a business to no avail. Today, we'd like to share with you Alex's story, who walked this path and reflects on it.
Alex started WePlate, the nutrition startup, looking for a way to keep a healthy diet while on campus. Instead of tedious calorie counting, his app recommended specific meal items and portion sizes for each user’s unique dietary needs. After 8 months, he shut it down.
«Most nutrition labels are next to useless because unless someone can know exactly how much food they eat, they would not be able to calculate their nutrient intake.
We solved this by simply converting every nutrient by the recommended portion size and building an indicator that told users whether they were eating too much or too little of every nutrient for their body and health goals.»
«We tried to sell our technology to college dining teams by adapting our algorithm to become an analytics tool to help set cafeteria menus and making our app available to their students.»
«If I had to start over, I would talk with more customers instead of building the product first. I spent months building a product that solved a problem few wanted. »
Share @Business_Idea4