I’ll be quick to get to the point: When COVID-19 hit, I got a great idea to start a beauty influencer network with AI beauty services. After careful planning and research, I decided on my approach, aiming to make $5,000-$20,000 monthly effortlessly. I hired freelancers to build an app, website, and design elements, which cost a lot, wiping out my savings and forcing me to borrow money. We even got a domain name – zuryx//com.
The business name was Zury, meaning “Princess,” “white,” “pretty,” “beautiful,” “beauty,” and “red rose” in Mexican/Swahili origin. (By the way, I’ve put the name up for sale at brandable market, not caring much about it. I have to erase it totally. I can flip it for few hundred bucks on Dan//afternic//godaddy. I don’t care).
Unfortunately, the freelancers turned out to be scammers, and I lost tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not tech-savvy, so it hit me hard.
Later, unwillingly, I asked my childhood friend, who knew about tech and apps, to help me out. He lived in Spain. He did most of the work, and I paid for it. But when it was almost done, he died from cancer, which I didn’t know he had. We met once in early 2021 after covid-19 subsided, to finish things. After about a year, I think, he stopped answering my messages and calls, and I thought I got scammed or feeling that my business has been hijacked.
Later, I found out from his cousion that he was in a coma for long and later died of cancer. Ever since then, I lost interest and gave up.
I will go back to making YT contents. It felt really bad ever since then because my friend’s death was a big hit to the project.
I learnt a big lesson personally about starting a business from it. It’s not easy without a good structure and workable and accessible agreements.
Anyone interested in taking over or exploring the idea can do so at their own risk.
Here’s the model:
Name: Zuryx (Beauty Influencer Network)
Business Model: Create a network of beauty influencers and content creators. Connect them with brands seeking product endorsements, sponsored content, and beauty collaborations.
* Charge brands for connecting them with influencers. Take a percentage of payments made to influencers for sponsored content and collaborations.
Additionally, introduce:
Zuryx AI-Powered Beauty Advisor:
Business Model: Develop an AI-powered virtual beauty advisor. It will analyze users’ facial features and suggests personalized makeup and skincare routines. Include augmented reality for virtual try-ons.
* Offer the AI advisor as a premium subscription service. Collaborate with beauty brands for sponsored product recommendations within the AI platform.
Virtual Beauty Academy for Gold Members: Provide exclusive content and resources for gold members.
That is why am quitting.
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Read this to my girlfriend and told me she’d never use an AI to ask for beauty advice. She loves talking to the professional stylists that work at the shop she usually buys beauty stuff.
Do you have any big learnings for others?
Perhaps starting with a prototype in Figma or something, and doing UX testing to see if it is viable at all,
Starting small with a small set of features and future promises, to get the ball rolling and some early fans and users, and using the money from that ti fund future innovations
Getting a strong and clever technical co-founder that you trust entirely, or learning to be technical yourself and build it, so you fully understand the limitations?
These are just a few ideas that I had, but i’d be curious to hear anything anything that you agree/disagree on, or anything else! Also, what was your marketing strategy?
It sounds like a fantasy. You were trying to make a tech product, the AI element of which you didn’t even know if was possible, without any tech knowledge or serious plan of how to make it work. Although you were unfortunate I think you would have ended up here anyway. Maybe these events just saved you some time.
Sorry to hear about your experience though and I hope you bounce back strong and create something great in the future.
I don’t get it, why would you start a technology company or business, when you have no experience with tech? It simply doesn’t make sense to me. Especially if the technology is central to the business model. Unless you would partner with someone who is tech savvy and split the responsibility.
First thing is you hired wrong people to do stuff you don’t understand and I’m pretty sure you even didn’t do a mockup plus UI/UX tests. Right?
To be fair, I’d say that same risk factor/concept would have been present if the user had to work with an accountant or tax professional for the business too since the user may not have known how to do those either.
I’m not sensing what the issue is here. It would be like me reaching out to an accountant or tax professional since I’m not seated well on that stuff, they could take me to the cleaners and cause my project to goi under…
I think you lack persistence. Not to sound harsh, but shit happens. Only a minor few will succeed in business, because shit always happens and most give up too early. You’ve given up only after two rounds of adversities, doesn’t seem like you’re committed at all. The project didn’t even launch so you’ve given up before day one.
There were a couple of cases I’ve given up the projects in short time, I’m not perfect myself. But most of the time I stuck with the projects for years, or at least months. Don’t quit too early. Quitting is always easy. If you quit easily, better to stick to a niche or a stable job.
You could go to upwork.com. I hired plenty of freelancers that completed the projects.
This, upwork is awesome