As an entrepreneur, we constantly encounter challenges from various aspects. Sometimes, our product may not be the ultimate solution for our customers, and other times, people might be unwilling to pay for a product even if it partially solves their problems. However, it is easy for us as an entrepreneurs to become attached to our product and believe that what our team is creating will satisfy customers.

When I embarked on my entrepreneurial journey, I found inspiration in the quote, “Steady diligence leads to constant self-esteem.” This quote resonated with me and solidified my personal mission: to bring happiness to everyone’s lives. Throughout my college years, I struggled with procrastination and faced difficulties establishing a healthy routine, despite my strong intentions and ambitions. These challenges often left me feeling unhappy and plagued by imposter syndrome. Consequently, I realized that I wanted to help people build healthy habits in their everyday lives and contribute to their happiness.

021 began as a habit-building app with a competitive reward system. Users could choose a habit, make a bet on themselves, and participate in a 21-day challenge. If they completed 100%, they would receive a full refund, along with additional rewards from users who failed to complete more than 85%. Given the widespread problem of habit-building and the potential to make money, we received significant interest. Subsequently, we developed our MVP and launched our first beta in November 2022.

Initially, we held high hopes as the individuals we interviewed during the customer discovery phase expressed enthusiasm about trying our product, leading us to believe they would “love” it.

However, reality turned out to be quite different.

In the first week, most of our users actively participated in the challenge. However, as time went on, the number of daily active users decreased, eventually dropping to less than 20%. The average completion rate was only a third of our initial expectations.

To understand the reasons behind this regression, we made a concerted effort to meet with as many users as possible and father their feedback. What we learned was that despite the eventual reward, users couldn’t perceive tangible progress beyond submitting a verification photo. As a result, they quickly lost motivation and struggled to maintain consistency.

This revelation compelled our team to start from scratch. We went back to day one and reevaluated our mission and value propositions. We delved into our customers’ problems, examined their existing solutions, and identified the frustrations and gaps in the market. After engaging with users for weeks and conducting countless brainstorming sessions, we finally redefined our value propositions: incremental progress and sustainability. We discovered that what truly kept people consistent was not an uncertain reward at the end, but rather the feeling of making progress every day and the hope that setbacks were acceptable as long as they got back on track the following day.

With this valuable insight, we developed a completely new reward system, Every user would receive a specific amount of reward or penalty based on their completion or failure of the challenge everyday. With this updated approach, we launched our next beta, which achieved an impressive completion rate of over 91% and a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 8.1.

While we successfully addressed the major problem we faced at that time, we continue to encounter different issues and challenges daily. We are still in the early stages of our journey, and there is ample room for improvement and learning. 

After being accepted into SVF, I set personal and team goals focused on embracing failure and making gradual improvements until we can consistently provide significant values to our customers. Currently, we are working tirelessly with the guidance of our mentors and coaches. Instead of being disheartened or discouraged by the challenges we face, we are excited to witness our team’s progress. Most importantly, we are committed to prioritizing our customers’ feedback over our own intuition or attachments to the product.

Being an entrepreneur requires accepting failure, resilience, and perseverance, You will encounter numerous hurdles that may seem insurmountable at times. Some of the steps your take may be rejected, leaving you feeling like you’ve wasted your time. However, in the long run, every failure becomes a stepping stone and an opportunity for growth, both for you and your team.