The Phone Call That Almost Ended Everything
Nikita Bier was done. Fifteen failed apps. Team members quitting. Bank account drying up. He picked up the phone and called his lawyer.
His question: how do you dissolve a company? That was the week before TBH went viral.
He called his lawyer to dissolve the company. Days later, he sold it for $30 million.
15 Apps. 15 Failures. 1 Process.
Bier and his team launched every kind of app imaginable. Mapping apps. Chat apps. Event apps. Meetup apps. Nothing worked.
But they got fast. Their first app took a year to build. Their last one took two weeks. And they built something more valuable than any single product: a testing process.
They went from one year per app to two weeks. Speed was the real product.
The Process Matters More Than the Idea
Here's the insight that separates Bier from every other failed consumer app founder. He stopped betting on ideas and started betting on process.
Consumer products are unpredictable. You can't know what will work. So the only way to reduce risk is to take more shots. Faster. Cheaper. Smarter.
We pivoted 15 times. Our lawyer called and said — you should dissolve the company. We said no.
40% of the School in 24 Hours
When they seeded TBH into one school, 40% of students downloaded it in the first 24 hours. It spread to neighboring schools on its own.
Bier looked at the numbers and did the math. They'd be number one in America in six days. Then he looked at his AWS bill: $120,000. Bank account: $150,000.
$120K AWS bill. $150K in the bank. And the app was about to be #1 in America.
From Dissolving to $30 Million
Bier scrambled to raise money. Told his team to hold on for two months. The app turned into a competitive bidding war. Facebook bought TBH for $30 million.
The team member who put in their two weeks notice? Bier convinced them to stay. The lawyer he called about dissolution? Never had to make that filing.
Two weeks from shutting down to a $30 million acquisition. That's startup life.