Edit: We raised $8M in Series A, 8 months since launch.
From working at Facebook, Uber, and Tesla to quitting my job and making $1M in the first three months of our new mission of boosting productivity, the last few months of my life have been wild. So how did it all happen?
Let’s start at the beginning.
Inspiration: 2016
One of the best ways to spark your imagination is through travel. I traveled home to South Korea in 2016. Koreans are the embodiment of work hard, play hard. The average Korean consumes 14 shots of liquor per week. So how does an entire population cope with heavy drinking?
After an amazing night out in Seoul, my friends and I stumbled into a convenience store at 3am. The elderly man behind the counter gave us an empathetic smile and nod toward a shelf near the front of his store: 숙취음료 aka the recovery drinks. All different shapes and sizes, an age-old remedy Koreans have been using for centuries to avoid a rough next morning.
I woke up the next morning and was operating at 110%. I needed to understand what had just happened to my body and bring this to the world.
Exploration: January 2017
I started geeking out, diving deep into white papers and patents. The magical ingredient I found was a compound called DHM, found in the Japanese raisin tree (Hovenia dulcis). Before I knew it I found myself talking alcohol science over dinner with Dr. Jing Liang, the leading researcher behind DHM. It was becoming clear to me that DHM was not only powerful, but had real market potential.
The Korean market alone for alcohol recovery drinks is $200M, with an alcohol market of $9B. The USA has a market for alcohol 24x the size of Korea’s, but no one has solved the recovery. Hangovers destroy $170B worth of productivity each year in the US alone.
The market statistics were compelling but I needed to confirm my hypothesis about demand for this product. I put together a landing page with a clean bottle design at thehangoverdrink.com and collected email leads. Is this a real problem for people? We ran Facebook ads to drive traffic. I woke up the next morning to 200 emails! Game on.
Back to Korea: February 2017
I knew how to build software, but where was I supposed to start building an edible product? I had little exposure to manufacturing, supply chain, and operations, especially for beverages. I knew that plethora of Korean alcohol recovery drink brands worked with co-packers, so I started reaching out to them, but I was still working a full-time job and this required a ton of time that I didn’t have.
This is where Fiverr kicked in. I posted a $30 ad looking for freelancers to help with research and the pay-off was phenomenal. A week later, I had a list of 20 factories in Korea and Vietnam that I could work with.
I narrowed down the list to 8 factories, and got them started on creating samples based on the product specifications I had compiled through my research with Dr. Liang (now our advisor). I booked vacation days and hopped on a flight to Asia. I knew sweatpants and a hoodie wouldn’t be received the same way in Asia as they are in Silicon Valley; they needed to believe that I was the real deal. They needed to believe that there was a fast path to high-volume production to take the risk and work with me. I arrived at every factory in a freshly-pressed suit, with business cards in hand and tales of my vast distribution channels in the United States.
In hindsight, it was probably a bit much, but hey — fake it ’til you make it, right? My new persona was doing well for me — I spent my nights getting drunk with Korean businessmen, investors, and celebrities who wanted to learn more about the Silicon Valley engineer who was bringing Korea’s miracle drinks to America. I ended each night by testing a different factory sample. Two weeks later, I flew back to California with larger orders of the best samples from three factories on their way.
User Testing: March 2017
Not long after I got home, my samples arrived. March was a blur. I was on a mission to get as much feedback as possible on the samples. I went on what felt like a never-ending spree of drinking adventures with friends, sending each and every one of them a survey the morning after to understand the effectiveness of their samples. I needed confirmation that I wasn’t crazy — did it work and would they pay?
Build your MVP quick and dirty. Validate your idea fast.
March was full of laughs, great memories, and empty bottles. While my mornings were better than they should have been, there were real consequences to my shenanigans. A couple weeks in, I started having chest pains and an irregular heartbeat due to excessive alcohol consumption. I had to be admitted to the hospital and was given a heart monitor. This is a lesson that I’ll take with me through this journey and reinforce to our customers. It’s incredibly important to always drink responsibly.
But on the bright side, the survey results were extremely positive and the product was working even better than I imagined. I ended the month with a winning factory and blend.
The Inflection Point — Product Hunt: April 2017
I was now confident I had a solid product, but I needed more guinea pigs. I asked my good friend Misha to join and build a slick website and bottle design to give us some more legitimacy. I knew this was holding me back from getting more testers beyond friends and family. We created a form for sample requests and posted on Facebook — thank you early adopters!
While this was a great step for us, it wasn’t enough. A few days later, our friend Ameet posted our product on Product Hunt. That’s when we hit our inflection point. We became #3 on Product Hunt overnight and our inbox was exploding with emails — excited consumers, journalists, and potential investors who wanted to learn more and join the ride. It was just what we needed — a concentrated and influential community of early adopters.
The demand was overwhelming, with tens of thousands of sample requests. We had to end the free samples and created a waitlist until we could figure out how to handle the demand. Our waitlist continued to explode in the coming week from the Product Hunt exposure. It led us to our first round of media coverage in over 20 different outlets as well as conversations with our first investors. Even today, six months later, it is our website’s third largest traffic source.
Product Hunt made us go viral. It’s the place to get your product discovered early on.
Leap of Faith: June 2017
It was time to make a decision. I had an effective product, an overwhelming amount of demand, and not nearly enough time to take it to the next level. I gave my two weeks notice at work so I could focus on this full-time. But it wasn’t that simple. I had two major challenges:
1) Visas: I’m Canadian, and starting a business under the new Trump administration had its challenges. Under Obama, the International Entrepreneur Rule allowed foreigners to start business in the US. When Trump stepped in, that got put on an indefinite hold. I couldn’t work in the US. I scrambled with help from my lawyer to figure out how to apply for the E2 Visa. I put together a 50 page, 5-year business plan, hired two employees, and found willing investors from our Product Hunt traction to invest $450K in the span of two weeks. All done before making a single dollar from my new venture (which was illegal to do until I obtained a visa). It was nuts.
2) Real Product: While we tested our proof of concept at a small scale, it was time to put our learnings towards creating a real product. We on-boarded Dr. Liang as our advisor, and started to develop Version 1 of our product that we called Morning Recovery. We hired two law firms to help us navigate FDA regulations. FDA is king when it comes to consumer safety. We had to learn all the details of FDA regulations (21 CFR Part 111) to ensure that Morning Recovery was both safe for consumption and compliant in its advertisement. Once we got to a good spot, I filed to incorporate under “82 Labs, Inc.”. Why 82? It’s the area code of Seoul, where I was first inspired to begin this journey. It also sounds very similar to the word “party” in Korean, and kept my young company’s options open to diversify our product line down the road.
Launch: July 2017
It was time to convert our early traction into our first paying customers. We worked with a branding agency called Launchpop to prepare an Indiegogo campaign. They helped us take our marketing to a whole new level with slick content and launch video.
Looking for a marketing/branding agency? Convince Launchpop to work with you.
We also had a POC, Ilan, from Indiegogo who helped us strategize our campaign end-to-end. Together, we hit 1000% of our initial funding goal and sold over $250,000 in product during the month-long campaign. We couldn’t have done this without the support from Launchpop and Indiegogo.
Indiegogo is another tool like Product Hunt that really levels the playing field for new products. A couple tips:
Keep your funding target reasonable. People are more comfortable backing projects that are close to their target.
Launch after you have gained momentum. Don’t launch a campaign unless you have a large, engaged waitlist. You want your community to come in on the first day to share and skyrocket your campaign.
$1M Milestone: October 2017
A lot can happen in three months. We moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles, hired a local team of four full-time employees, and started working on the next version of our product with higher DHM solubility and efficacy. It means V.2 will be even more effective than V.1. We continued the momentum from Indiegogo and hit $1M in revenues through our own e-commerce store, setting us up well to start exploring retail distribution.
While we’re not a traditional software startup, we experienced the same growing pains that many young companies face. Finding product-market fit, developing a brand, marketing, figuring out operations, and an endless list of other challenges.
So what’s next?
We’re hiring! We need rockstars in marketing, design, and content production to scale our brand awareness. We need scientists in a related field to continue to iterate on our product.
That’s it for now! If you’re interested in following our journey, subscribe to our blog. Our next post will uncover how we built our e-commerce to generate over $15K in sales daily; reaching $1M in the first 3 months of operation.
And don’t forget to order Morning Recovery with a promo code of HUNT to save 15%.
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