Vango on the Bazillion Dollar Club
Site going down. A lackluster pitch. Uneven growth. Employees that need more money. All while the team is trying to grow their product.
Sound like typical startup problems? This is what Vango dealt with on last night’s premiere episode of the Bazillion Dollar Club.
What did I really think about their performance? Read on.
Vango is the first team featured in Syfy’s Bazillion Dollar Club. They’re trying to make an art marketplace for everyone. Dave McClure and I work with them while they’re in the 500 Startups SF Accelerator. In this episode we see them trying to raise money to keep the company going and growing. Along the way, they face a number of common startup issues. As I can see from their new poster in SF, they’re using their funding to get new users:
The show filmed them for several months in the spring. What challenges did the Vango team face?
Building the Marketplace
Vango is a two-sided marketplace: they’re trying to bring together art-buyers and artists while making money on the transaction. Right now they have to make sure that they have artists their users want to buy from, but because they don’t have that many users, is it really worth it to the artists? They might be better off listing on Etsy or their own site. Someday, if Vango gets big, it’ll be obvious to artists that Vango is the place to be, but that’s not the case right now.
When Google first launched the Android App Store, they offered developers up to $50K for each app. Once Android was a major platform, Google dropped that offer. Right now, Vango needs to figure out how to make their platform attractive — that means making artists money. Hopefully that billboard starts bringing in art-hungry users.
Keeping Employees
Mo was right to watch out for herself and her bank account. Doing a startup is a gamble — it can pay off well (a la Twitter). However, if you’re not at the helm, it’s hard (and not necessarily smart) to put yourself in debt for someone else.
That Pitch
That was probably Ethan’s last Demo Day (with Vango anyway), but it’s not the last time Ethan will have to pitch. If Vango is successful, Ethan’s going to have to speak at tech conferences and user conferences. Ethan is going to have to keep working on this. Events are a mainstay for lots of tech companies.
The Site Going Down
Vango needs to hire more devs. Having your site go down in the middle of a big promotion costs money. It’s pretty amazing that Win, Vango’s CTO & only developer, has built and maintained their app & site singlehandedly, but if they’re going to start selling millions of dollars of art, then they need a full team.
Now that Vango has taken VC money (as you can see on Angel List it totaled at $2.2M! — quite a bit more since the show was filmed) they’ll have to start growing. That’ll require the team to at least double in size. Their artist community will have to grow. Vango is just at the beginning of their journey.
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This is the first in a series of posts about the startups of The Bazillion Dollar Club. The “docu-series” is going to follow 6 startups; I am an investor in half of them via Highway1, SF-based hardware accelerator. My companies are connecting fishtanks, making amazing coffee and using robots to make dinner. The show will be airing Tuesdays on Syfy for the next 5weeks. It was produced by ZPZ (the folks behind the Emmy-winning Bourdain shows).
In addition to my work at Highway1, I cofounded and shepherd Ignite Talks, a global talk series on 6 continents. I co-authored The Hardware Startup. I help arts organizations via CAST in SF. Previously, I cut my teeth at Microsoft, Khosla Ventures and O’Reilly Media. Most years, you can find me on the playa.
