1000 Days Of Building Our First Company.

And still… it was worth it:

Because along the way, we learned how to turn ideas into real products.
We learned what founders actually mean when they talk about the emotional rollercoaster (spoiler: they’re underselling it).

We learned how much a team matters — and how fragile it can be. We learned how far you can push yourself when there’s no backup plan.

And most importantly, we didn’t do it alone.

Everything we built — every step forward — was only possible because of the people around us. Our team, our investors, our mentors, our friends, our users.

So why am I writing this?

Because we owe it to the people who were part of this journey.

And because we believe in a simple idea we tried (imperfectly) to live by:

Create more value than you capture.
— Tim O’Reilly

This is our attempt to do exactly that.

To share what actually happened behind the scenes. What worked. What didn’t. What we got completely wrong. And what we’d do differently if we started again.

If you’re curious how two clueless founders went from an idea to a funded company — building a product used by tens of thousands of people, forming 100+ partnerships across the world… and still managing to mess it up in the end —

this is that story.

Let’s start at the beginning.

Part 1: The humble beginning.

Day 1–100.

At the beginning, it was just the two of us — Olga and me.

We were young, recently out of university with a business degree, and had absolutely no idea how to start a company. We couldn’t code. We couldn’t design. We didn’t know how fundraising worked or what product-market fit really is.

But we had a very clear feeling about why we wanted to do this.

We had both spent a lot of time traveling, and we kept meeting people who had the same quiet frustration: they wanted to do more with their lives — travel more, experience more, push themselves — but somehow, they never actually did it.

Not because they didn’t care. But because intention rarely turns into action on its own.

We wanted to build something that could bridge that gap. Something that would help people not just dream about experiences, but actually follow through on them.

Epiclist started as that idea.

Not a business model. Not a market opportunity.

Just a belief.

The early leap.

Since we couldn’t build the product ourselves, we started looking for a technical co-founder. At the same time, we applied to startup programs, hoping someone would guide us — or at least give us a chance.

We prepared our applications with more enthusiasm than skill. We recorded a pitch video, wrote what we thought was a compelling vision, and sent everything out without really knowing what we were doing.

A few weeks later, we got accepted into the Startup Wise Guys accelerator in Estonia.

We didn’t have much money left, so we used the last of our savings to book flights —RyanAir, of course — and packed our lives into a car, leaving most of our belongings in a basement before heading to Tallinn.

It felt like a beginning.

Lesson learned: Build your values. Your “Why” will become the drive for your company. Why do you want to solve this problem? Why are you going to be different and unique? If you figure this out for yourself, being able to share it with others, people will support and help you.

We were the most inexperienced team with no existing traction, so we pushed lots of late-night working sessions, mixed up with coffee and lots of fast-food, and quickly burned all of our energy.

On top of this, my credit card failed, and we could not pay our rent. Our landlord got so pissed that he wanted to kick us out and call his brother to beat us up (…no kidding).

After about 6 weeks, we have launched the first version of Epiclist and started to gain some traction. The press picked it up and we got featured in Silicon Allee (thanks Dave!), VentureBeat and VentureVillage. Coming closer to the finals in London, we worked for several weeks on our pitch (thanks Jon and Mike) and went all in to sell our vision to more investors.

But when it came to raising money, the answer was clear.

No one invested.

And in hindsight, that made perfect sense.

We had a vague idea, a small number of users, no real engagement, no proven business model, and a team with no experience. There was nothing in our story that justified investment beyond belief — and belief alone doesn’t scale.

Then, not long after, our CTO decided to leave.

Suddenly, we were back where we started.

Lessons learned: Your team is your most important asset. Make sure you align diverse minds and skill-sets, who are sharing the same vision, the same values, the same drive to build what you want to build and why you want to build it. Even if your idea changes, your vision and your beliefs will keep you together.

Part 2: Stubborness

Day 101–400

There’s a specific kind of moment that comes after a setback like that. You don’t immediately react. You don’t panic. You just sit there, trying to process what just happened, while a quiet question forms in the background:

Do we keep going?

We did.

Partly because we believed in what we were building. Partly because we had already invested too much to walk away. And partly because there were people — mentors, early supporters — who had believed in us.

So we went back to Berlin, borrowed money from our parents to survive, and started again.

This time, we had to build everything ourselves.

I began designing a new app concept withKeynote, screen by screen, by reverse-engineering apps I liked. We stitched together prototypes, talked to users, and tried to make sense of what we were actually building.

Looking back, we made a classic mistake.

We asked questions that confirmed what we wanted to hear.

“Would you use this?”, “Do you like this idea?”

People said yes.

We took that as validation.

It wasn’t.

Lessons learned: Customer development interviews are essential, but tricky. Asking the wrong questions is easy, asking the right ones is essential.

Slow progress, real momentum.

Progress during that phase was slow — almost painfully slow.

Our team worked part-time. Everyone had other commitments. Weeks would go by with incremental changes that felt insignificant compared to how far we still had to go.

And yet, something important was happening beneath the surface.

We were learning.

Not in a structured, clean way — but through friction, mistakes, and repetition.

Eventually, we found new people to join us. A designer. Developers. People who believed enough to contribute their time.

And then, after months of uncertainty, we got our first investment commitments.

Not huge amounts. But enough.

Enough to keep going.

Enough to believe this could become something real.

Building Epiclist 2.0:

We moved to Chile as part of the Startup Chile program and, for the first time, had a full team working together in one place.

Six people from different parts of the world, united by a shared belief that we were building something meaningful.

We had raised around $200,000.

We had a product in development. We had momentum going.

Read on Medium: The New Epiclist.
Why travel discovery is broken and how we are going to re-imagine it.

Part 3: The peak.

Day 401–600

In early 2014, we launched the new version of Epiclist.

Apple featured us as one of the “Best New Apps.”

Within the first week, we reached over 10,000 users.

For the first time, everything we had been working on felt visible. We opened the app to see thousands of people using it in real-time, sharing experiences, and planning new adventures.

It was one of the most rewarding moments of the entire journey.

We have partnered with 100+ tour providers, allowing users to explore over 300 bookable activities and add them to their trip plans or send a booking request straight away — our business model has evolved as well, aligning user-generated content and mobile commerce.

No one has nailed it, so we were confident to build something truly amazing here.

Olga sent personal emails to thousands of users, welcoming them to Epiclist and gathering their feedback. During the next months we have shipped new updates, simplifying and improving the user experience.

Many loyal users later became friends and ambassadors. Our Facebook groups started to take off and connect people around adventures, organised by Ambassadors in San Francisco and Santiago de Chile.

We have celebrated progress with team dinners and drinks, and got our whole team on weekend getaways to the mountains around Santiago.

Creating an overall team culture with a strong interest in the outdoors and understanding the beauty of travel was something we really wanted to achieve.

Brett Martin from Sonar puts its very well: “Culture is your cofounder”.

Everyone at Epiclist worked hard to move our product forward, and we are truly thankful to everyone on the team for this commitment.

Lessons learned: Get out there. We all strive to make our products look and feel perfect. Simple truth is, it’s never perfect. To build something truly great, you have to get it in front of the people. Only then you can understand the gaps in your product and lacks in your business. Jump into the cold. Release. Gather feedback. Improve. Repeat.

Read more: Designing Epiclist from research to launch. The Case Study.

Part 4: New launch. New hunt.

Day 601–900

But success at the surface doesn’t always reflect what’s happening underneath.

While user numbers grew, engagement didn’t grow the way we needed it to. People loved the app — but they used it occasionally, not consistently.

At the same time, we were entering one of the most competitive and complex markets possible.

Travel is fragmented, seasonal, and difficult to scale. Building a product people enjoy is one thing. Building a sustainable business in that space is something entirely different.

I tried to raise another round of funding. I traveled back to Berlin and London and pitched 100+ investors. After long days, I was sleeping in hostels and friends' couches, and the next day I was pretending to be a successful entrepreneur in VC offices.

The feedback was consistent: “We really love the product and your team, but we need to see more traction as we are not ready for this commitment yet…”.

Investors liked the product.
They liked the team.

But they didn’t see enough traction, enough differentiation, or a clear enough business model.

Especially in travel, there are so many entrepreneurs driven by a big vision, strong passion and goodwill, but much of that passion felt gone when we chatted with these founders and investors. So many startups have failed, so much investment money has been lost. The reality of running a travel startup is very different from being a traveler or having a passion for an active or adventurous lifestyle. And investors know it very well.

Lessons learned: We have spent too much time hunting VCs. Our job was not to hunt for investors. Our job was to create an outstanding company and reach the product-market fit. Nailing this right, investor would hunt us.

Part 5: The last chapter.

Day 901–1000.

Around the same time, the internal challenges became harder to manage.

Team members started to leave — some for better opportunities, some because they needed financial stability we couldn’t provide.

Each departure felt like losing part of the foundation we had built.

And with every loss, the weight on the remaining team increased.

Especially on us as founders.

We tried to adapt. We explored partnerships, worked on monetization, and pushed new features.

We went to San Francisco to explore new opportunities.

But we underestimated how long things take — especially in B2B environments. By the time potential deals started to move forward, we were already running out of resources.

And at some point, we had to face a difficult truth:

We had built a good product.

But we had not built a sustainable business.

Lessons learned: Understand your market dynamics. Study your market history. Why did certain companies rise and fail? How did successful companies get started? What is lacking in the market and why now is the right timing to fix it (new technology adoption, behaviour change, etc.)

Letting go.

Telling our investors that we couldn’t continue was one of the hardest moments of the entire journey.

Not because they reacted badly — but because we felt responsible.

As founders, you carry the expectation that you will find a way.

That you will solve the problems, no matter how complex they become.

Admitting that you can’t is not easy.

For a long time, I thought of this as failure in a very personal way. Not just that the company didn’t work — but that I had failed.

We could still pivot, change everything, and see if it works. Start everything from scratch again. However, I simply did not have enough energy to pull this off. For the large part of the last 1000 days, only our energy and drive kept us both moving.

Over time, that perspective changed. Because building a company is not a linear equation where effort guarantees outcome. You can do many things right — and still not succeed. You can build something people love — and still not find a viable business model. And that doesn’t make the experience meaningless.

That summer me and Olga moved back to my mom’s place, trying to save the last money to run the company, paying freelancers, services and servers. Moving out from my parents at the age of 19 and moving back in at 27 felt really bad, but it was the only thing we could do. At least, my mom was glad to spend some time with me, after I had rarely talked to her and other family members during the last 3 years.

With the latest update we made sure to create a feature enabling our users to export their created and planned trips in .PDF files. Thankfully, there are many great startups out there working on a similar mission that you can join to keep your Epiclist stories alive. Check out Maptia, Exposure and Storehouse, as all of them have built incredible products for exploring and storytelling. In fact, this story was inspired by Maptia’s “10 things we believe after 1000 days of building Maptia”