1889
8 min 37 sec

Failure Friday: “Something miraculous happened: I started making money…”

In this week’s Failure Friday segment, we hear from the founder of Birthday Buddy, an app that sends automated birthday wishes to Facebook contacts. His free service ran into problems, but he regrouped to improve the app AND turn it into a moneymaker.
Birthday Failure Friday FF

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What It's About

A failed prototype becomes a gift of this clever birthday reminder program.

Notes from Chris

Episode 1889
I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not more. It’s with this principle in mind that I offer you a weekly segment called Failure Friday: a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.

Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you’ll hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They’ll tell you a short story of something that went very wrong.

The stories will vary, but often it starts with an idea, what they thought would happen and what really happened—and of course, what they learned.

Today’s short story features Steven Braverman. He’s the founder of Birthday Buddy, a service that helps users automatically post birthday messages for friends on Facebook—even if those users were asleep!

We told Birthday Buddy’s story on Episode #1162. But as you’ll hear, an early free prototype stopped working, generating complaints—and also the inspiration for the paid version where Steven makes his money.

Listen to today's episode to learn more...

 
  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Thanks to Steven for sharing this transparent and truthful story. Check out Birthday Buddy at /BdayBud.com.

SEE ALSO:

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

cg-sig-newsletter


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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau