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What Went Wrong: How one entrepreneurial great idea couldn’t quite get off the  ground. . .

The Story of FreePrint, the Startup that ALMOST could.

Today, CareerMee is speaking with FreePrint founder Gus Murray. Whoa, that’s a lot of links for the first sentence. Anyway, we’re here to tell Gus’ story, about his great startup idea FreePrint – the challenges he faced, the good choices and the bad, and what led, in the end, to pulling the plug on a great idea.

Not all ideas that make it to the market are good (please see link about KFC introducing a sandwich that had no bread and instead two pieces of fried chicken holding it together) and not all ideas that falter are bad. Gus speaks from his experience, and hopefully startup entrepreneurs can learn something from his journey. Be sure to leave any additional questions or thoughts for Gus in our Comment Section below so he can get back to you.

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CareerMee: Pitch Freeprint in 100 words or less:

Gus: Freeprint is a new print media, where targeted messages are printed ‘on demand’ on the rear side of student prints. Companies can segment the student body based on their online profile, gender, education, degree, interests and location, and in ‘sponsoring’ the rear side, students can then print for free. A win-win!

CareerMee: How far into development were you before pulling the plug?

Gus: After completing a trial at one of the business schools, we had the software developed for the backend of the system, raised $250,000 USD, and installed our printers in two schools.

After running the system, and bug fixing, over a 8 month period we redeveloped the concept to be a web based system that would be allow for students and individuals (non-students) to print over the web and at various print kiosks i.e. Starbucks, 7-eleven, airport lounges, etc.

CareerMee: What were some of the things that went wrong?

Gus: The new system would essentially allow anyone to print for free, with sponsored messages, over the internet, at any of our print kiosks. This posed several challenges. First, we required additional funding to redevelop the software and create a web based printing solution and an API that allowed people to print from heavily printed web pages -  i.e. Google maps, Gmail etc. Second, it would be encouraging people to print more and therefore increasing the volume of pages printed – not so environmentally friendly. Third, to attract advertising dollars we would need to build a large users base – i.e. students, business people, individuals etc. Finally, the advertising and recruiting market is, as most people know, at the moment quite depressed.

All-in-all, one of the greatest challenges we faced was managing the different stakeholders and in the end, this proved to be our undoing. For Freeprint, our stakeholders included: Customers (paying advertisers), Users (university students), Software Partner (product), Investors (cash), and Distribution Points (business schools). One of our misjudgments was the time it would take to form, engage and develop each of these different stakeholders with their various interest and incentive points. However, it was the software company that ultimately led to our undoing.

CareerMee: What are some things that you might have done differently?

Gus: If I had a magic wand or a time-capsule and could change things again, I would have made sure that we did all the development internally and had better control and input into the project. The project management, cost structure and general inflexibility of our software partner caused massive problems for us, so if we had recruited some developers and had them in-house, I believe we would have been on much better grounds for success. Additionally, we would have better prepared for the amount of time taken to deal with all stakeholders mentioned above.

CareerMee: Any other advice or wisdom that you learned from the venture?

Gus: As business students playing with an IT related product, one of the things you can’t know when you start out, and go down a path like the one we did, is how little you actually do know. So make sure you surround yourself with good people. What I mean by this is people that have good energy and burn for your idea -  i.e. they’ll give you unsolicited advice, help and constructive criticism.

Lastly, I believe that one of the things that we did really well was tell other people our idea. What we realized, as we told more people, is that the more people we told the better the idea became through feedback, input, contacts and referrals / recommendations. This helped us immeasurably – free access to conventions, cash from business angels, publicity, an auditor, a huge amount of fans and many other costly items for nothing.

So for everyone thinking of becoming an entrepreneur or in the process or saving the world and becoming the next Facebook or Google, tell others what you are doing, what your product is, what model you think you should use and ask people for their thoughts and advice. Nine times out of ten people will offer their advice and services for free and you in return will at best receive validation of your idea and at worst practice pitching and communicating your product / service or technology. Good luck!

Thanks for speaking with CareerMee, Gus. We look forward to hearing more from you soon, about any future business ideas! MBAs, looking to work for a startup? Think you have what it takes to make a company run? Then head over to CareerMee.com and get you resume online in front of our over 125 recruiters, many looking to hire for small businesses and startups.