Post Mortem for Supplain

In April 2021, we assembled a team to build a supply chain blockchain that connects all parties and enables more interoperability.

By November 2022, we had failed due to focusing on the wrong things.

Since then, I've been fighting to keep the dream alive, but it's time to call it what it is and look towards the next steps…

What happened in the last two years?

After selling our previous supply chain startup in 2019, my father and I got introduced to the tech team of another logistics startup with whom we decided to build our next venture. Again, inside the world of freight, but this time utilising blockchain technology.

In the next 18 months, we managed to assemble a team, gather a community of Freight Frens via @WorldOfFreight, earn almost 1M of funds, create loads of content, write a white paper and start developing the Protocol.

Six months before our demise, we were on top of our worlds, ready to take on the whole industry. During that time, we contacted over 500 industry insiders and had calls with 100+ of them, learning that we're not completely nuts.

Then the macro environment changed, and we couldn't raise the needed funds to accelerate or even continue our development. This led us to slowly run out of cash within the next six months, followed by most of the team leaving the building.

What was our biggest mistake?

I've mentioned the macro environment several times, but this wasn't the main thing that would lead us to fail. Our biggest mistake was trying to do everything ourselves and focusing on the wrong things.

We started everything correctly - by the book - but after launching the NFT collection to build a community and earn the initial funds, our decision to also build the @WorldOfFreight game and start the BananaConf Global event led us to divide our super lean and small team's energy between too many things.

Don't get me wrong - both the Game and the Event played a crucial role in our strategy. We simply should have outsourced more and maybe hired faster.

But as we didn't, we became Game & Events first, Protocol second company.

By the time we realised our error and changed our focus to the Protocol, we got great results in business development, and the tech started to evolve - but as the macro changed, this last sprint didn't save us.

In the last moments, we tried pivoting towards a more straightforward supply chain solution or even starting to build infrastructure for other web3 games with the hope of attracting ANY investments. Yet this didn't work out either.

Even worse, this last change made us leave the Game and the Event with not enough manpower and essentially started to kill everything.

What has happened since?

By November 2022, our team had decreased from 15 to 4 people, with whom we continued trying to keep the lights on for the Game and the Event while looking to build some infrastructure or potentially set up a gaming studio.

Both new ventures had some chance for success but primarily failed due to us not having enough resources to support them with full force.

Ultimately, I knew that I had to shelf all these new projects and focus on the Event that already had inbound interest and started looking for a path forward for the Game.

Looking back, it was the only right choice for me as the Event became a huge success and led to the birth of the Banana DAO…

What's to become of Supplain?

I still believe in our initial mission.

But in reality, we can't raise the funds needed to build a new team and continue the development in this market.

Maybe once the market situation changes, we can try again…

Until then, we must find other ways to provide value to humanity.

However, if anyone wants to try their luck with this, I'm happy to hand over our materials & research, and I wish you good luck!

What's to become of the World of Freight?

World of Freight was created to build a community around Supplain, and with this failing, its mission has to change as well.

I love the Community we built - it's full of incredible people looking for opportunities to pour their energy within and with whom I'd love to keep hanging around.

Fortunately, we did build the strategic Freight Racing Game, and now another skill-based Freight Racing Mini-game, so it's not dependent only on Supplain.

But for additional development, it needs a new development team to support its growing needs.

Thus we're looking at setting up a WOF DAO or something that would continue building & managing everything.

Whatever happens, I plan to keep supporting it by involving the people in my following big projects and giving the WOF Community special offers, e.g. free access to NFT Tallinn.

…and what about me?

These last two years and the current bear market have led me to spend all my reserves - so now I need to focus my energy on printing cash to feed the family.

To be honest, the last six months have been super stressful!

In the lowest moments, I've even considered possibly applying to work with other remarkable web3 ventures…

But as a lifelong entrepreneur, I'm not ready to give up.

Fortunately, I know that in the worst case, I could sell my Yuga assets and buy myself another year of runway. Knowing that I will keep building…

So that's where I'm happy to announce that we're forming a new team with Nizzar Ben Chekroune and Armin ZadakBar to push boundaries with the Banana organisation.

Our mission: Help the Old Guards enter web3.

Our tools: consultancy, events, media and venture businesses built along with the members of Banana DAO.