Thicket Labs: Anatomy of a Failure Part One

A brand asset from year two of Thicket Labs

“More Sales — Early and Often”

As many who know me will know, I’ve gone through a rough patch for a few years that started with the failure of my technology startup, Thicket Labs.

This is despite the fact that our technology and methods were actually instrumental in supporting the spread of innovation and learning to millions of people around the world. We applied NLP and social network analysis among other AI tools in building our platform, and we were hired across verticals by a range of clients with lots of amazing results and impact.

Not many people get to say that, and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to build a company from the ground up. On the other hand, we didn’t achieve our financial goals, and we were forced to shut down operations after running out of money. After many many many hours of mental gymnastics to answer the burning question: What did I do wrong? I finally have as simple of an answer as I think I’m going to come up with that I feel really addresses the issue.

The reason we shut down was because I didn't fill our sales pipeline at the critical time. We failed to sustain a level of business to fund more and more of our operations. So, instead of an upwards trajectory, we were always teetering on the edge. And instead of proving demand, we were always having to justify our existence. Ultimately, we ran out of money about five years in.

Now, I could go into a lot of other aspects of the sales challenge, since we tried a number of different strategies to build our pipeline over those five years. But, when it comes down to it, we landed our first client without any technology or proof of concept, even. Self-funding a business takes time, but the benefits, I’m guessing, outweigh the burdens — at least the first time around. I’ll let you know if that’s true if I ever successfully self-fund a venture!

I learned a lot through the experience and have taken sales, finance, and accounting classes since then to try and address the gaps I feel left me unable to figure it out at the time. Supply and demand, resource allocation, too wide of a focus, and lacking a phased approach — these are some of the key issues that got in the way of our success. There are all kinds of other pitfalls in the startup world, and I am grateful for some of the ones we were lucky enough to avoid.

But yeah, next time, more sales — early and often.