We just passed the end of our first year of business. I’ll never forget the Peek launch for the rest of my life. I was so damn tired, I stumbled across the finish line like one of those classic Ironman crossings:
me on launch day at Peek
I remember I kicked it up a notch and started doing really long days in early July… thinking we were in the final 2 week sprint. We had a hard date from Target, they re-shelf their stores for Christmas in September and if you miss that date… kaput… you’re waiting until the next year! Here was the scenario if we missed the date:
1. Don’t launch
2. Sell no devices
3. Run out of money with no sales
4. Go raise money in the pit of the worst economy in 50 years
I woke up having panicky dreams about missing dates every night. Soon day and night were the same meld of “were we going to make it? were we going to make it?”. Everything was so close except for a few last performance related bugs in the 1.00.00 build…. argh.. why couldn’t we solve them!!!
Well, as you all know, we made it! Peek launched! I went on vacation the next day for two weeks of gloriousness nothing.
Starting a business is mind-blowingly, exhausting. But let me tell you this, the first year thereafter is gutwrenching emotionally. The highs and lows of sales, reviews, customers, staff…. wow! There are so many firsts and so many new things you do. Your first big bugs, your first angry customers, your first bad reviews, problems with your model, sneaking costs, your first disaster/outages, these are all real things that come up that you don’t think about in the starry-eyed days of launch.
So what will year 2 bring? Well, you’ll probably see Peek in some new countries, you’ll definitely see some new features and services from Peek, you’ll even see us in some new stores. We’ll still keep it real – simple, affordable, easy to use… thats the Peek motto.
PS – we also passed the one year anniversary of this blog!
Mark B | 22-Sep-09 at 8:47 am | Permalink
Congrats Dan! I’m curious – if you had a time machine to go back within the past year and do one thing differently/better/easier – what would it be?
Peek looks back on first year | Gadget Nomad | 22-Sep-09 at 1:32 pm | Permalink
[...] email-only cellular handset, has been in business for a year. Dan Morel, Peek’s chief geek, looks back on how close they came to doom, right from the outset: Starting a business is mind-blowingly, exhausting. But let me tell you [...]
James G | 22-Sep-09 at 3:00 pm | Permalink
Congratulations for releasing a brilliant product and for making it through the first year. I’m very much hoping you bring Peek to Canada sometime soon, because I’d buy one in a heartbeat.
Peek looks back on first year | Tech Newz | 22-Sep-09 at 3:11 pm | Permalink
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Brian | 23-Sep-09 at 2:17 am | Permalink
Congrats! I moved out of the US a year ago, but really wanted to get a peek and I’ve been keeping up with it since I left. But I’m doubting you have any ideas to bring the peek to South Korea?
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dan | 23-Sep-09 at 12:23 pm | Permalink
@mark – I would undo our offshore server/application development. We initially offshored, and then brought it back here. Offshore did not save us money – in fact we spent more as we needed more resources and much more project mgmt.
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