Eventloot

Justin Anyanwu was running an anime lifestyle brand selling graphic tees and posters when he realized the business wasn't scalable. The profit margins were slim and managing inventory was a constant headache. After meeting people making sustainable livings from software with much higher margins and lower operational costs, he became convinced that SaaS was the path forward. The idea for Eventloot struck him during a casual conversation with an event planner who mentioned she was still managing everything via spreadsheets and email. It was an "aha" moment—if he could build a cloud-based platform to replace those manual tools, he'd create the recurring revenue business he'd always wanted.

Justin and his partner spent three years building Eventloot. They started by trying to do everything themselves, stitching together UI from other websites—a mistake Justin emphasizes he would never repeat. After their first "disastrous version," they got smarter and outsourced the UI design to a Fiverr freelancer and hired AngularJS developers for the frontend. They coded at Starbucks and leveraged Microsoft Bizspark credits to access Visual Studio Enterprise and free Azure hosting. The platform ultimately looked good—prospects repeatedly commented on the contemporary design, though some wished it had a more feminine aesthetic. But good design was where their execution ended.

Justin and his partner spent roughly $600 on Facebook Ads with virtually no results; the conversion rate was terrible and targeting wedding planners proved nearly impossible. Switching gears, Justin began sending personalized cold emails to planners he scraped from WeddingWire and theKnot. This was far more effective. The emails opened doors to conversations and feedback—though not conversions. They settled on a $20/month pricing model (a compromise between $30 cost-plus pricing and $9-$10 undercutting competitors). By the time they shut down, their MRR was only $80.

Cold email to qualified prospects worked dramatically better than Facebook Ads or in-person meetings (one-hour sales calls for a $20/month product were obviously uneconomical). But the core problem wasn't the marketing channel—it was the product itself. Justin and his partner had made fatal assumptions about what wedding planners needed. They assumed planners wanted a calendar, contact management, and email capabilities. In reality, the average wedding planner had assistants and employees and desperately needed multi-user collaboration and role-based access. They also hadn't thought through data import, which was crucial since most prospects had years of accumulated contact information. Users would sign up and immediately leave because the product didn't solve their real problems.

After three years of development with nothing to show, losing $20,000 in designer and developer costs, and watching a better-funded competitor update their platform with contemporary design patterns, Justin and his partner felt the momentum shift irreversibly. Closing Eventloot was actually a relief—they'd known for a while it was over. Justin's biggest regrets are building without consulting customers first, not planning on paper before coding, and marketing too early with a product that didn't work. He's since moved on to other projects including Lazyjar (a fitness app) and Grub Jar (a budgeting app for grocery spend). The lesson: talk to your customers before you write a single line of code.

Justin's candid reflection on the failure highlights three critical mistakes: (1) failing to consult with target customers before and during development, leading to building features nobody wanted; (2) using a heavy tech stack (.NET) that made development slower and more complex than necessary; and (3) spending money on marketing when the product wasn't ready, wasting resources on a broken product. These weren't product decisions—they were process decisions, and they proved fatal.