Saxon Baum, Cofounder of WeVue

"When people ask me to tell my story it always begins with the same thing, I always wanted to run my own business. Ever since I was young, I knew I never wanted to work for someone else. Growing up I had started several businesses such as JHSB Ebay, a company a friend and I started in middle school to sell goods on Ebay for people. Entrepreneurship was in my blood and I knew whatever I did, I was going to run my own company, and no one was going to stop me.

As time went on and I got older the idea of starting a business became very real due to technology. Right around the time I went to college, so 2009, apps were beginning to explode. So when the time was right, I jumped on the opportunity to start what I thought, was going to be as big as Instagram over night.

The original business that I started was a consumer facing mobile application that allowed people to crowdsource picture and video content around events. This idea began with concerts; I knew that there was an opportunity here because I was constantly going to concerts seeing people take pictures and videos throughout the shows. At the same time, I would go online if I missed a show, and could never find any picture or video content until days later. The idea of #hashtags was premature right around this time, so WeVue, our initial product was really an early player in the crowdsourcing space. The idea was brilliant and my team was confident that it would sell!

We raised over $300,000 to start the business and we were so eager to get going. We worked day and night for months to get the product ready for our big launch. We marketed everywhere. Online, offline, we even threw a launch party at our local coworking space.

The hype was huge and we were ready. One issue, no one showed up, and by that I mean no one came to the party, but even worse no one downloaded our app.

We scratched our heads, pondering why no one showed up and why they continually didn’t show up.

After about 6 months, countless hours of work, and that 300k running low we realized we were going to fail unless we changed something. All of us were so close to closing the doors, I even remember having conversations with my business partner about how we could slice and dice our app to sell the different pieces of technology.

I was ready to give up, I was ready to throw in the towel, because that’s what you do right? Your startup didn’t work out, no worries 9 out of 10 startups fail! We should embrace failure and learn from our mistakes.

Well, failure was never an option, and neither was giving up my business. I was not ready to give up and I knew my team just needed a new route. So what did we do? We went out and we pivoted.

We saw an opportunity to take what we had and create a business product that we could actually sell. So we were good to go, right? Wrong. We had no money. We could not even make next weeks payroll let alone pivot to start a new business.

We went out and started knocking down doors left and right. We talked to hundreds of investors and kept on hearing the same things:

“No one in a business setting will use this.”

“You guys are too young you do not even get it yet.”

“Maybe in a few years.”

“you guys do not have what it takes.”

It is hard to constantly hear no, but we were not going to give up. Finally, after months of work and some forceful negotiations we were able to raise a second round of funding from completely new investors under the new business model.

The money that we raised was able to keep us afloat and still to this day I look at the pivot as the best most terrifying decision WE have ever made. I had to first convince my team and then convince investors that this was a good idea. I had some serious help from my business partner who always sees the glass half full. Business is all about teamwork; this is something that really shows in the times of need. Who can be a team player and who can suck it up to make success a reality! Surround yourself with people that know how to win and lose because as good as the win tastes, it tastes better with a few loses in your mouth.

Together, as a team, we were able to keep chugging and now we have, in my opinion, the best business product on the market right now. Work hard, don’t take no for an answer, and knock down doors if you have too because not trying is worse than failing".

Written by: Saxon Baum

​Visit: www.WeVue.com