{"id":43293,"date":"2023-10-20T15:27:32","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/why-i-decided-to-shut-down-my-award-winning-startups-app-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T15:27:32","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T15:27:32","slug":"why-i-decided-to-shut-down-my-award-winning-startups-app-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/why-i-decided-to-shut-down-my-award-winning-startups-app-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I decided to shut down my award-winning startup’s app – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This week I turned off the life support for Backpack, my three-year experiment into bettering K-12 education through consistent communication between students, parents and teachers.<\/p>\n

You won\u2019t find much on the internet about the app – it only gained substantial traction in the last eight months of its life.<\/p>\n

Backpack received a grant from the University of Sydney Union\u2019s startup incubator, it won the inaugural Lenovo Choice Award for student-led innovation, it was listed on Product Hunt, received media attention locally and internationally, multiple VCs asked me to pitch them and I ultimately raised funding from Telstra’s muru-D.<\/p>\n

The consequences of my decision to shut down are large (at least, for a startup). Backpack was beyond the MVP stage\u200a\u2014\u200ait was already generating revenue from real customers, and stopping now means I am throwing away more than $100,000 of secured contracts and pipeline opportunities.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to mention the financial and technical debt incurred during the product\u2019s late-stage development and the company\u2019s now-damaged reputation with former customers.<\/p>\n

Backpack didn\u2019t fail because the problem we were chasing was non-existent or because the idea was stupid. There are plenty of parents that have no idea what their sons and daughters are doing at school.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t due to lack of resources or market demand. It wasn\u2019t even because I had lost two founders in two months, bringing the app\u2019s development to a major standstill.<\/p>\n

I pulled the plug on Backpack because I wasn\u2019t doing it for myself anymore.<\/p>\n

I started Backpack as a high school student, building an iPad app that helped me organise my studies. This is a very simple premise; one that can be easily understood by many.<\/p>\n

By the time I entered muru-D, Backpack was no longer the student-led, student-focused app it once was.<\/p>\n

Now I was promising continuous reporting for parents, integration with other tech systems for teachers and automatic notifications for school administrators.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t even know what I was selling anymore.<\/p>\n

My time was being spent developing B2B relationships that I hated working on and trying to deliver value to stakeholders that I share zero empathy with.<\/p>\n

I was trying to please everyone except for the one group that I actually gave two shits about: the students.<\/p>\n

During the first week of muru-D, I was asked the following questions:<\/p>\n