Opportunity Costs

I woke up 7 months ago to learn that my side project, a daily email of the top news items, had hit the front page of Product Hunt.

It was a crazy feeling seeing this at 6am:

The experiment went on to hit the #3 spot at its peak, ended the day in 5th, growing my email list by 25x.

However, with all the hype it got, The Brodown was just that — an experiment.

It wasn’t a start-up, it wasn’t a billion-dollar idea, and unfortunately it wasn’t something that I got excited about.

… So a couple months ago I decided to kill it.

But how did things start?

The idea started when my girlfriend began reading The Skimm (a daily news digest targeted at millennial women), and I kept thinking to myself “Hey, why don’t they do the same thing for guys? I would read it.”

I even emailed their team asking if they had any future plans:

(They didn’t)

So I thought about things for a day or so, and figured I would give it a shot for fun.

I signed up for MailChimp, threw together a quick logo, wrote the first edition, and emailed it out to some friends and coworkers.

A screenshot of the first edition

Shockingly, people liked it, and the list started to grow.

I became caught up in the validation of some form of success, and strove even harder to build what I was working on.

Each day around 3pm I’d start a list of the latest news, then at around 7 or 8pm I’d begin writing a first draft.

I’d build the final email in Mailchimp around midnight and then wake up at 5am in case I had to rewrite before I sent the email out at 7 (turns out breaking news has a habit of occurring while you sleep).

But the work wasn’t the issue — it was the fact that I was committed to something I didn’t truly believe in.

I had no plan for monetization (every business model I could imagine still relied on some sort of advertising), I never had a real interest in journalism, and I was missing out on all the other things I could have been working on.

So I pulled the plug.

I wrote a final email to my readers and offered a list of services they could turn to in my stead. Time for the next act.

Lessons Learned

I learned a lot from my experience with The Brodown, even though it was a ‘failure’ by most standards.

The top 5 lessons:

1. Plan things out, don’t just let them fall into your lap.
2. Always think of the opportunity cost. What other work are you giving up to do what you’re doing?
3. If you bring it into the world, you can take it out. (Note: not in all scenarios)
4. Users can be amazing. Thanks for all the support.
5. Don’t do something if your heart’s not in it. It won’t work after the initial excitement or once the going gets tough.

What’s Next:

I’m continuing to help expand the business at Givex, where I’m a marketer and product designer.

I’m also working on a startup called Hudyl to try and make it easier for people to connect, as well as a simple meditation timer called Om for fun.

Let me know your thoughts if you sign up for any of the betas 👍

This post was originally published on my personal blog.
You can follow me on twitter at @anderskravis