Max Denevich

Yeah.

And the second thing was like, was beacon technology.

It was iBeacons, little slow, low energy technology.

This was the hyperlocal marketing, proximity marketing, the early Internet of Things types.

So the idea was to connect brands, advertisers with the audiences of different mobile apps by detecting them and those users walk past the store or something like that and pushing them relevant offers in real time.

It was very ambitious, very complex.

It was like three different audiences to serve at once.

It was like brands, app developers.

physical retail locations.

We had some pilots, had zero commercial sales again, three years in, money burned out again.

So the pattern across both great product thinking, broke and go to market.

I learned earlier that beating around technology instead of around the problem is almost always a wrong starting point.

So actually, the Beacon startup is actually how I met Vas, our founder at Loyalty Plant.

At the time, he was running early versions of Loyalty Plant.

It was some kind of multi-brand loyalty app startup, and they were using QR code scanning for customers checking in the restaurants.

I went to pitch him, why are you making customers scan a QR code, just put an iBeacon in the store, and customers just tapped their phone, done.

Much smoother experience.

He said, nah, interesting idea, wrong moment, blah, blah, blah.

But that conversation stuck.

A couple of years later, then I was looking at what to do next and noticed that mobile apps were really becoming a real thing.