Startup project

graph.me was my first „real“ startup project, an online tool for quick market research. You could start polls within minutes, spread the word and filter the results by all kinds of demographic criteria to add some underlying figures to your assumptions and decisions. You could use the graph.me platform – later also mobile, which was kind of emerging at that time – or you could generate a fully customizable widget to integrate into your site, blog, shop, whatsoever. Besides lots of other options you could get the results as a handy pdf summary or as an excel sheet. It was not only the typical multiple choice polls, we built several other question types into graph.me, e.g. 1-5 scales or numbers.

The idea was born in 2008 shortly after university as project „Social Benchmarking“, then financed by a government grant (EXIST) and supported by the LMU Munich’s Entrepreneurship Center. So the four of us got started, with some serious tail wind! And made lots and lots of mistakes. In retrospect we could have started much, much earlier and leaner, should have forgotten our perfectionism and way too long feature lists. Should’ve just built the product, tested the product, adapted the product. We should have thought about a solid business model, about earning real money much earlier. We did it when we relaunched the whole thing. It kept running for quite some while until we realized that it’s probably just not the product to make huge amounts of money, to scale up.

Nonetheless, it was one of the best times in my life, though there were times when I was worried whether I’d be able to pay my rent in a month or two. I couldn’t have learned so much, wouldn’t have had all these great moments when I had started a normal career path. There was TechCrunch Munich 09, a 3 minute pitch – and we won! And celebrated! Then there was TechCrunch GeeknRolla 2010 in London, where startups from all over Europe had THE opportunity to launch their product right on stage. And we did it and won the audience’s hearts! And a prize! Even after our flight was cancelled due to Eyjafjallajökull (yes, I googled it), which meant, we had to drive all the way up there and had hardly any sleep.

Before I get too sentimental, I’d better stop here. What was my role, by the way? I did all the product management and product design. And I did most of the marketing & PR, as well as doing those pitches and presentations I mentioned. Together with our CFO I spent nights and lots of Red Bull and pizza working hard on our business plan. Yes, it was a great time. But the times, they are a changin‘.