Phase 1 - Build a Team

This was the hardest part. Starting from scratch, with just a prototype in hand, and finding good people willing to invest their time hoping the company takes off and is worth something, someday to someone. I was lucky to find Lori and Ejiro, who played such a crucial part in making sure RentHoop happened.

Phase 2 - Launch the App

The day we launched, May 2nd 2016, was one of the happiest days of my life. There were many times I thought it would never happen.

Because development took longer than anticipated, I had many months to develop a marketing strategy that included Quora, Reddit, Twitter, guerrilla marketing and so on. I was a one-man-marketing wrecking team.

I got fully ingrained with awesome tools for ASO, SEO and app analytics. There was no company or person telling me what to do or how to do it, but my curiosity led me to finding the best way to do some of these things. I leaned on GrowthHackers.com and Andrew Chen for ideas on building marketplaces and "hacking" growth.

Phase 3 - Headlines

Having secured press for the Corgi Race and a failed startup in college, I knew that getting headlines was attainable, even if only at a local level. As I recommend to most people who wonder how a small operation got big time features, we started small. We weren't aiming for TechCrunch off the bat. No, I was more interested in my hometown newspaper and my college newspaper. If they weren't going to write about us or me, who would?

Press is like a snowball. You start small. Naturally, validation from almost anywhere builds and at some point does a lot of the work for you. That's what happened to us. We had a great story, some traction and made the journalist's job easy. When people ask me about press, I always say that you must remove as much doubt as possible as to whether it's a story or not.

Article in a school newspaper flipped into a local television station. That flipped to a regional tech blog. That flipped to a national story on USA Today. And holy shit, I'm on the front page of NBCNews.com, Mom!!!

It felt like a movie. This dream that I had, that could have fallen by the wayside so many times is national news.

Phase 4 - Silicon Valley

Following our ascension into the mainstream, the next logical step in my mind was to raise money. So I cold contacted a number of VC's on LinkedIn. Surprisingly, a few very well-regarded VC's were receptive and agreed to meet with me. I flew down to San Francisco and quickly realized we were not even in the realm of raising from VC's. This was a hard lesson to learn.

Rather than focus so much on raising money and pitch-decks, the best course of action would have been to focus on what VC's are really interested in.

Phase 5 - Innovate

Our product was still very MVP-stage despite the press. VC's were seeing through that and asked questions that, frankly, I just didn't have the answer to at the time. At the core of it, we had no metrics supporting product-market fit. I was so focused on distribution, where we had done so well, I saw that as our competitive advantage. It still was and is, but that can only take you so far. Do people accomplish what they need to at a higher level because of your product? That should have been my main focus. So, we have made that our priority knowing the benefits compound over the long-term.

Phase 6 - Flourish

The time we spent focusing on product has made a drastic difference to our users. We've seen a number of key metrics improve significantly because of changes we've made to the app. As we undergo another re-design, one in which we collect more data points, create rich and dynamic user profiles, improve our sorting algorithm, and offer additional features that allow for monetization, we are on our way to building one of the best roommate-finding apps.

Phase 7 - Relegate to Side Project

It's bittersweet to put RentHoop to the side. We've improved our app in a number of ways that make me proud. However, there's a number of challenges that make solving this roommate problem really, really tough. I've spoken to founders in this space who have sold their companies and they can all agree. Big problem, big market, terribly difficult business. Will this be a lucrative startup at scale? I think so. However, the money it will take to get there exceeds my fundraising capabilities.