In 2018, I launched a newsletter and podcast about wine. It tracked by own discovery and learning process with wine, and that community soon grew into the thousands.
In June 2019, I founded Wine List – a product based on everything I’d learnt about wine and how to teach others. The idea evolved into one that wanted to cross Duolingo with Masterclass with Naked Wines.
By September 2019, I got to £3k MRR and 100 customers while running Wine List alongside my full time job as head of growth at Thriva. In September 2019, I started fundraising a £150k SEIS pre-seed round. With a very limited network of rich friends and family, I raised the majority of this from cold outreach. I closed that round in February 2020.
From March 1st, I went full time on the business and began these investor updates. March 2020 was in hindsight a very lucky time to go full time on an experience-based drinking product. Our revenue went from £3k to £50k in a short space of time. We raised a seed round of £500k off of the back of the growth towards the end of 2020.
2021 by contrast to 2020 was a tough and downward ride. As the world returned to normal, it became clear we didn’t have product market fit. We iterated on the product, both digitally and physically, with some minor pivots. But ultimately, nothing worked in time. We tried raising a round in mid 2021 to pivot the business towards an app. By September 2021, we had ran out of money and failed to raise a follow-on round. The business went into liquidation.
These are the raw investor updates I shared at the time. The only edits made have been if there was information that on reflection I’d consider sensitive. I have commented inline if I have done so.
I hope they provide you with some value
Josh Lachkovic
Former founder of Wine List. Current founder of Amphora.
P.S. I wrote a reflections post in November ‘21, which you can read here: Seven lessons learnt from failing my first startup