We Sold Our Startup & Filmed Everything!

let's go a fitness app that watches you while you work out a new fitness app uses computer vision the app is called Onyx onyx [Music] hi my name is Assaf and three years ago my friend James and I left our jobs to start our own company we decided to document every step of the way from our terrible early ideas to getting acquired last year so we can give you a raw and unfiltered view of what it was like here's the story of how we built and sold our first company hi my name is Assaf I'm 24 years old and a few weeks ago I left my job with the goal of starting my own company I decided that in order to make this experience a little more fun I'm going to document as much of it as I can so that I can remember all the awesome steps along the way and more importantly so I can share that experience with you so here it goes all right James are we making it official all right yeah something's happening all right it's happening are you ready James are you ready are we doing is it official no it's official nice butt so our current idea basically involves putting sonar fish finders on drones so you can asynchronously search a far greater area around the boat so it looks like technologically this is actually quite impractical they always say go talk to people before you build anything but doing a little bit of technical due diligence before you call a bunch of people is probably a good idea so now we're looking into solving the problem of knowing whether or not a piece of clothing will fit you when you're buying online foreign [Music] I think this is a milestone worth noting do you agree [Music] hi I'm James and I'm a soft and we're trying to answer one of the internet's biggest questions what makes videos go viral we are now really interested in Social video so we're curious if we can help companies better understand what makes videos succeed by analyzing what's going on inside the video you have repeated um was it it's each sentiment is also where there's a sentiments off of work and glacier.ai is available we are totally going to buy it [Music] I am learning how to use sketch basically learning how to be a designer James has just sent his first ever cold email this is our first slide deck James how does that make you feel [Music] stressed just pushed my first code after three months of this guy doing all the code there's some exciting times for me we're finally starting to get some responses to these cold emails tomorrow I have a couple calls with people at Wall Street Journal and Mashable and on Friday I'm speaking with the head of video growth at Vox well this is it tomorrow we will be moving from this quote-unquote office into the new office my sister's room we are about to find out if a function exists in the SDK that basically determines if this entire product is possible or not oh it is it's the sequence and not the sequence ID [Music] I just got a reply from an executive director at time Inc so I'm a little bit intimidated to say the least and we're still doing some research and don't know exactly what the product will look like we're taking a design school class yeah and we need arts and crafts building the most generic website that has ever existed yo happy birthday to you he brings me a gift on his birthday I'm on my way to my first investor meeting right now uh the goal is not to raise any money or pitch but it's time to start making some friends so I just spoke to two top level Executives at different online Publishers and both of them are incredibly interested in what we're building I am starting to realize that what we are talking to people about actually resonates I can't really explain how pumped I am right now I have some level of hope that we are going in the right direction and that we can actually build something super cool so today was interesting we got on a call with a major online media publisher and they didn't seem to really understand what we were doing and I think that was slightly our fault um but yeah they literally hung up on us mid-sentence it was quite frustrating it's all part of the learning process so I have not recorded anything in quite a while we've kind of taken a step back in hindsight I think we jumped a little too quickly into one of the first ideas we had the best thing we can do right now is continue to do our research and meet the right people and to increase the likelihood that the right opportunity actually comes up so we have an idea that we actually kind of like basically we think it'd be awesome to use computer vision to track your workouts in real time today we can measure things like speed distance and heart rate with wearables but those things are basically limited to just running and cycling and a few other exercises if we could truly understand what you're doing uh how good your formula is how many reps you've completed we could build this sort of virtual personal trainer that actually understands you and changes what it says based on your performance now James and I both really like Fitness which is why we're so excited about it we are seeing if the iPhone's depth data is good enough all right so what's on the left the iPhone Handler right next okay so the only thing that I know o is my only variable so this is a constant baby looks great damn look at that moves so segmentation is significant ly worse this is possibly the first ever decently successful estimation done on the phone and it is all thanks to James The Mastermind [Music] that actually looks like you sort of we are counting squats boom nine do it again it's working dude we are applying to YC and we are drinking the Soylent can you get any more startup in this game hello James hello hello I've got my microphone my audio interface and my Ableton are you excited of you and you should bend down to 90 degrees on each rep get ready go [Music] is there an onyx and today we've got a two to three minute intermediate level that sounds great 10 out of 10. you're starting to bend your waist down towards the floor I want you to bring your butt back up and keep your body straight good okay so we are so excited about this we have a demo that is fully functioning uh the tracking is working we can count your reps we can give you feedback on your form we're basically ready to take it to VCS and try to raise some money so we can really quickly get this out to Market we're definitely at that point where like we know we have something amazing and we want to do this before anybody else does I'm about to go talk to the head of marketing at the company that I used to work for he's super connected in the valley hopefully he'll be inclined to help us out and make some introductions and maybe even invest some money of his own so I just finished the meeting and he said that he not only really loves the idea but he is very interested in possibly advising us maybe even investing anyway I'm ridiculously excited like this is the first time that it feels like something's like happening I don't even know how to put it into work foreign meeting with a few friends who have already raised from VCS hopefully they can make some really good intros all right we're starting to raise money tomorrow are you prepared cheers um dude you're ruining our demo dude we're off to our first pitch foreign we are trying to put together a Beta app in about a day so we can start having our friends use it it's very difficult to go to VCS and make certain claims without any data you're getting about two-thirds of the way down try to bang down lower to 90 degrees all the way are you ready to make some low budget content get it oh one more time go you look like an idiot foreign he's tired so James is about to upload our beta to the app store for the first time and I'm about to click a button that officially incorporates our company this is a big moment some pictures of the upcoming iPhones have supposedly leaked according to this they will all have IR depth cameras things are looking very good for us who are we fishing today work in Bloomberg it is uh it's 11 o'clock you can't even see us we just got back from a full day in San Francisco we pitched three firms going to sleep and then waking up in the morning and back to San Francisco right so today is probably our most important pitch yet and I feel absolutely terrible um so hopefully we can get our together and still give a good presentation because we want to work with these guys uh this sucks so we've had a few firms already pass on us but today we got a rejection from one of our top choices and this was somebody who said when we met that it was the best demo they'd seen in years but unfortunately they think the market is a little too early not enough people have the sensor and we completely disagree with that but um someone will say yes we just need one rejection and another Rejection it is another no nope Hey look it's another rejection we have now been rejected by almost every VC that we've talked to as of right now it looks like we might not be able to get funding it's pretty depressing I must say we finally just got our first check it's not even that much it's 25 000 but we finally have something to start with we got our second check today our second Angel check from the head of growth and Strava we just got an offer from a four Capital to lead the entire round can you describe to the camera what has happened this week from nothing to having a commitment in like three days yeah so we're gonna have money now so we're real company we're gonna go all the way have a real company not that we didn't have a real company before the term sheet is signed for our precede with a four Capital it's pretty crazy because nine days ago we had no money committed we were kind of starting to lose hope and then yeah now here we are all right time to build a company here I am today meeting with four different law firms so it's pretty crazy how fast things are moving it's also exciting I want to show you another one because I stopped by the push-ups then the next one is jumping jacksept [Music] we got a backpack for seven thousand dollars for how many thousand dollars eight eight he said seven oh my God [Music] it's working time to shoot some content look at that camera man okay now the other direction [Music] I feel like those work better now yeah let's see let's see where the shirt over let's see just you doing a push-up so so this is what it looks like there it is let's build a startup first paycheck is in after a year and a half it feels good so we are about a week and a half away from when we want to launch a video for our beta the app is not done yet the design is not done yet the technology is not ready yet and there's no content and all of that needs to happen in the next 13 days so um yeah let's go [Music] so James and I put a little video together uh that shows off our Tech and we posted it yesterday on Facebook and it's starting to get a little bit of attention a lot of our friends are sharing it and then today just a few hours ago we posted it on Reddit and it actually started blowing up and we're getting a ton of sign ups for the beta through that hopefully soon we can actually start to learn about our users and to iterate towards a real product [Music] foreign [Music] okay we are officially approved for the App Store dude what a time to be alive we're here for like our fourth investor meeting and we still haven't launched yeah we promised January and it's late February no it's mid February [Music] what happened today what happened today James we are on the App Store how are we celebrating uh James is going on a Valentine's Day date tomorrow look at that cheese man it's been about a month since we put Onyx on the App Store and we're learning a lot about what's wrong and what's broken but we are making progress this is a huge moment for our company because our number one user of all time has responded to my email oh Jeff this Jeff this is Jeff there are a million things happening right now James and I are moving to San Francisco we're going to get a new office we made our first offer last week to an engineer we've been in the App Store now for maybe three months our investors are starting to question what's going on we are starting the question what's going on we're getting a little bit stressed but that's okay because we're gonna crush it [Music] so I'm in Chicago right now I gave myself a weekend off to relax and have a great time and the second I land my friend calls me and tells me um that the investor that almost invested in us and then completely disappeared is apparently leaving uh his VC firm after seven years to build exactly what we are building we spent a lot of time talking to this person telling them a bunch of information we thought maybe he didn't actually like what we were building but apparently he liked it enough to just leave his job as an investor and try to build it himself slightly frustrating but um your own office our last day at the office where are we going next San Francisco home sweet home dude dad mom I have too much stuff to do why am I moving Echo this is the wework on 6th and Market what do you think of this one good it's better than we were yeah our first employee is joining and we're gonna be three people and we need two effin execute so we just learned not to celebrate too early uh the guy that we got a verbal commit from ended up taking him back and it's very frustrating but this is the process so it keeps on going it has been signed we are now three people congratulations I've looked at the documents in the Google Doc what did we do yesterday we pushed monetization our first Revenue we're making money we're making another video this is my brother thinking hard [Music] this video is gonna change everything [Music] what is today James this is lunch today everybody let's go Twitter is ready LinkedIn is ready Facebook is scheduled we've launched congratulations oh it's a handshake kind of video all right this is like the third one so it's been a very interesting few days since we've launched we somehow ended up going viral on LinkedIn and I have almost a hundred thousand views there we ended up the number one product on product hunt uh we've gotten a lot of Outreach from different um VCS and angels and then this morning Apple reached out for possibly featuring us on the front page of the App Store and we have 48 hours to submit the assets for that it is September 2019 we're gonna get apple best of 2020. knock on a Soylent box yeah it's made out of wood it's not made out of wine it's made out of cardboard Apple event 2019. we got featured on the app store today for the first time it is an exciting time I'm talking to the head of mergers and Acquisitions at in one minute I have no idea what this is going to be about or what to expect well wants to make us an acquisition offer which is pretty wild um we're gonna have to think about it and get back [Music] the focus on your roadmap oh God this is gonna be so disturbing you somehow look more manly [Music] we are discovering that our whole company is and we're gonna fail and we can't do paid acquisition and we'll be dead in 10 months yay we are building challenges like who can do the most push-ups or hold the longest plank we're also building highlight videos so you can show off your performance and then hopefully help us to grow the product organically thank you [Music] so San Francisco has just announced a required quarantine and I still have not gotten my groceries so I need to go prepare and it's gonna be a long work from home saying goodbye to the office until coronavirus is gone we're stuck here yeah Alejandro it takes a coronavirus to get your friends to finally use your app oh snap on your first workout we are seeing quite a spike in new signups this week I highlighted in yellow now it's um we've been talking to basketball players and then we've been doing Fitness Tech the barber at work there we go [Music] challenges have officially launched the Onyx push-up challenge oh he is up faster revenue is officially growing like crazy the fitness app that watches you while you work out and it even creates a little highlight reel you can then post to social media [Music] these six onboarding screens that we just added have almost doubled our purchase conversion we are about to pass half a million in Revenue it's official we are the app of the day in the United States we've been dreaming of this moment and now it's happening we're gonna get apple best of 2020. you're pitching a16z tomorrow Sequoia on Wednesday and probably 10 other firms this week and that is what app of the day looks like we are in the top 1 000 free iPhone apps in the entire App Store [Music] so I got an email a couple weeks ago from the m a team at curefit the leading health and wellness company in India they have expressed interest in either Strategic investment or acquisition we'll see where the conversation takes us and we'll go from there well we officially have a verbal offer from purefit congrats on our first verbal acquisition offer how do you feel about the fact that you just signed a term sheet to sell your company for two years so what would the slides be we have our technical kickoff tomorrow and we are trying to figure out exactly how much information we should share at what point we're committed to trying to make this happen now oh God are we at the end of the road oh you clever man you're a clever man I think I think oh so are we diving in the deep end we've gone through legal due diligence and it seems like everything's good just got off the phone with four or five different lawyers um cure fit our team we have a hundred percent commitment but this is going to go through look at this man look at this model look at those shoes [Music] what are you signing James I am sorry I was Finding away the company this is it good yeah it's naturally click finish [Music] congratulations [Music] enabling your phone camera to track your movement [Music] [Applause] [Music] and that is a wrap the last few years building this company have been nothing short of incredible getting to build such a unique product that I'm truly passionate about with one of my best friends and so many other incredible people thank you to our investors advisors our friends and family and most importantly the 32 people who are involved in building this company as for what's next we've probably got another company up our sleeves in the future so stay tuned [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you

Channel: Asaf Avidan Antonir

Views: 273,524

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Id: akqcQezTZPA

Length: 26min 9sec (1569 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 20 2022