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100facesof.me

Day 40 of 100

Bearded man in navy t-shirt pointing upward with one finger, tattoos on forearm, smartwatch on wrist, his shadow cast on wall behind
Day 40 / 100 Weight 349.1 (+1.3 lbs) Moderate Sony A7R5 50mm f/1.2 1/100 ISO100

“Something needs to change.”

My company had been growing over the past few years but not fast enough for our investors. People often don’t realize when they raise money the speed at which everything happens, growth, decisions, death happens much more quickly.

I was standing in my kitchen in Boulder, CO talking to the head of product and the head of engineering in Palo Alto, CA.

Both had told me that they needed to talk.

“It is clear that we have a business that can’t get as big as we hoped.” We were selling digital comic books before the iPad came out and IP licensing was insane. One comic company was signing deals with everyone, the other major company with only one company, not as an “exclusive” but as a “test.” Turns out that people don’t want to buy their Spiderman comics in one place and their Batman comics in another.

We had pivoted to independent comic book creators, and it was something we believed deeply in. Give anyone the opportunity to do what they loved for a living. Yet it’s really hard to make enough money to live when you are selling comic books at $1.99 to $2.99 each.

“We just aren’t going to get there selling to consumers.” What was clear was that the comic book space wasn’t big enough for multiple big players, and our competitor had deals with the two majors. We just couldn’t compete no matter how good the product was. But we had built some impressive technology. We could easily convert PDFs into all the ebook formats (there were three at the time), and major publishers were moving aggressively into the book space.

“It’s a different muscle.” We were comic book lovers. All of us were enthusiasts and it was hard to think about selling to enterprises. We had no idea if it would work, or if we would end up with a company we were proud to build.

After a moment of silence, I said “If you both believe strongly that this is the direction we should go, then I am all in. Let’s do it.” And at that moment knew I needed to move back to California and the three of us had to take one final swing.