Muun

Eelco was a serial entrepreneur and location-independent developer traveling across the world. During his travels, he visited numerous co-working spaces and noticed a pattern: most lacked basic processes to run smoothly, leading to missed new members and revenue. When he asked owners and managers directly, they confirmed these struggles and said they'd be willing to pay for a solution. That validation was all Eelco needed to start building.

Eelco had a significant advantage: six years of experience building web applications with the same tech stack, which meant he could reuse components, code, and marketing copy. He built a basic MVP in about a week just to see how owners would react. He set up a landing page outlining his vision and shared it widely, generating interest. He then interviewed interested prospects to understand the real pain points versus nice-to-have features—a crucial distinction he'd learned from 10+ years of building businesses.

He launched with a single plan at $29/month by notifying his interview list and mailing subscribers. The result was silence: visitors would land on the site, view maybe one more page, then leave.

After the quiet launch, Eelco tried several strategies. He sent cold emails to the same owners and spaces he'd visited. He wrote blog posts about co-working pain points like productivity and community. He created a product tour video to demonstrate ease of use. But he "did the bare minimum" on all of these—he didn't persist with content creation, didn't follow up on unanswered emails, and watched as minimal sign-ups converted from the blog traffic. The joy drained from the project quickly.

What didn't work: launching with a full-featured product into a market dominated by well-funded competitors years ahead in customer count and functionality. When Eelco persisted and asked more owners, a new problem emerged: many said they didn't have budget for software. He then discovered dozens of existing products solving similar problems—and doing it better and cheaper.

Eelco faced a choice: hire people, go free, or pivot. He chose to pivot, stripping the product down to just community-building features—member directories, email invitations, Slack integration. This focused approach helped him target customers more easily and acquire some paying customers. But even then, revenue peaked at around $200 MRR with crushing churn, because co-working space owners simply weren't making enough money to justify the expense.

After about a year, Eelco shut down Muun. The first iteration generated $0 revenue despite minimal hosting costs (Heroku, S3). The second iteration peaked at $200 MRR but couldn't sustain it. Though he covered the costs through another business, the opportunity cost was high. Eelco later launched a new product called Muna, a completely different product aimed at next-generation companies and teams, which already generated more revenue than Muun ever did.