Today it's Wigadoo's turn to say "That's all folks". With heavy hearts we are announcing that we will be closing down the site over the next few weeks.
You may be wondering "Why?". The short answer is that we ran out of time and money (money to run the business that is, all event account money is not handled by us - so it's all safe).
A longer answer would probably say that we underestimated how long it would take to get Wigadoo off the ground. Marketing Wigadoo required both building awareness of the site, and convincing people to use it (nothing new there). However, since Wigadoo was designed to only be used 3 or 4 times a year, the transition through "I could use it" to "I would use it" to "I will use it" to "I used and love it" was longer than we could afford. We would have needed significantly more time and money to grow a large user base and get to profitability. Unfortunately, although understandably, the current investment environment has little appetite for consumer facing internet companies that will take time to get to scale and profitability. We managed to prove that Wigadoo was something that people wanted, we just couldn't demonstrate a cost effective way to get millions of people to use it in a feasible time frame.
We fully expect to see the Wigadoo vision realised by someone else in the next few years, and wish whoever takes up the challenge the best of luck. For those of you who used and loved Wigadoo, we hope you don't have to wait too long for this day to come.
We would sincerely like to thank all of you, who as early adopters helped to introduce Wigadoo to the world. Your willingness to try out new and innovative products is key to making the world a better place. Please, please, please keep up your good work.
It's been a heck of a journey for Wigadoo. It started off in late 2006 as three people with an idea. We then raised an early round of angel financing off the back of a business plan that let us build a working prototype. The first year was all about building a beast of a financial platform (and persuading MasterCard and other financial partners to go with it), a website and raising a second round of angel financing. After finally gaining all the necessary financial approvals we then went live last summer. The site got better and better and we managed to get a good number of partner sites to add Wigadoo links to their sites, including lastminute.com, Merlin Entertainment and Lucky Voice. We're proud of what we achieved and would like to thank everyone who contributed along the way, whether working with us or just sharing our belief.
Wigadoo represented the love, sweat and tears of many people. The site was built mainly by the 4Es (Eva, Evtim, Erik and Ed) with support from Tony, Krum, Marianna and Sia of
Melon Tech in Sofia. The design started in Chile and finished in Battersea, with inspiration along the way from Anna, George, Jack and finally in the very capable hands of Damon at
Pynk & Fluffy. The site was well marketed by Nick. Allen and Larne deserve special mention for their work on all the financial stuff, and Peter at Elavon helped light the spark that made it all work. Thanks to all the partner sites that believed in us, especially Fleur, Sophie and Jane at
lastminute.com, Alex at
AKA UK, Gill at
Merlin and Emma at
Lucky Voice. Thanks also to
Bindi at Microsoft for all her support and encouragement.
Super special mention goes to all our investors. They belong to a small yet incredibly important band of people who live in support of the new. In this case it didn't work out, but we hope that they, like all our early adopters, will not be dissuaded. For our own part, everyone here at Wigadoo is looking forward to the future.
Thank you again to everyone who supported, advised and helped us over the past years (and just in case we forget, an enormous thank you to our families, partners and friends who've listened to us talk about nothing else for so long.)
Andy, John and Uma
P.S. If you'd like to contact us, you can reach us at ideas@wigadoo.com.
Featured photo courtesy of Dane Brian on Flickr
