Did we fail? Maybe. But we created something awesome, and no one can ever take that away from us. It was one hell of a ride.
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By the strictest definition of the word, we failed.
We were a startup that had an idea and raised money. Tech bloggers wrote about us. We signed deals with major partners. We built an app that let people predict the outcome of baseball, football, and hockey games while they watched on TV. We’ve been working at this for five years.
- Developers
- Designers
- Product managers
- Community managers
- Business development
- Quality assurance
All working toward one thing.
It wasn’t perfect. There were outages. There were crashes. There were agonizing nights where we felt powerless. There were times when it would have been easier to give up. There were setbacks. There were sacrifices. There were disagreements.
There was also a lot more good than bad. We learned together and grew together. Both as a company and as individuals. We built games that people spent thousands (if not millions) of hours playing.
It’s tough for me to come to terms with this because we grow up thinking that life is linear and if we make something great, it will be a success.
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But on Friday night, the last guesses were pushed and the last predictions were made.
That really feels like failure. But I know it’s not that simple, and I know it’s not really true.
Even though we succeeded in building something awesome, it ultimately didn’t guarantee we would be successful in the long run. It’s tough for me to come to terms with this because we grow up thinking that life is linear and if we make something great, it will be a success.
That’s an oversimplification of the way the world works.
As I continue to process that the PrePlay apps are no longer running, I keep coming back to the age-old paradigm of trying to balance something fun and something you’re passionate about with something that can grow into a sustainable business.
But for the last few years, as the Director of Quality Assurance, I was so entrenched in the game and making sure things were working properly that there wasn’t much time for anything else. I know that things must have been incredibly difficult for the people who were tasked with making sure the bottom line added up so we could keep running the business, and I don’t envy their position. But I sure do admire the hell out of them for keeping PrePlay running for as long as they did.
The nature of my job always had me focusing on things that were right in front of my face. It was so easy to get into work and dive into the app for 9 hours and then look up and wonder where the day went. But there were times when I was able to take a step back and look at the broader picture.
Those were some of my favorite times of the last few years.
I’ve failed at things before, and this doesn’t feel like failure is supposed to.
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I would suddenly look up and I was at the US Open working next to people from IBM and the USTA. I would find myself at a castle in the French countryside having a company-wide conference with our New York and Paris offices. I’d be sitting in a room and 95% of the conversation would be in French, and it was perfectly normal. When people asked me what I did for work, I would basically tell them “I get paid to watch sports and play an app.”
My 12-year-old self would have thought that was the coolest thing ever. My 29-year-old self agrees with my 12-year-old self.
I’ve failed at things before, and this doesn’t feel like failure is supposed to.
We built something that worked. We built something that was fun and engaging. What we built and subsequently spent thousands of hours to fine-tune and perfect was 100% in line with the original idea and goal of PrePlay.
That’s the weird part. Shutting the game down would be more disappointing but at the same time easier to accept if we were never able to get it right.
If we were never able to get the guess timing to match up with the TV broadcasts. If people played the game and just didn’t like the concept. If our games didn’t run like a well oiled machine for the better part of 3 years.
That wasn’t the case.
There was once a time, early on, when we never really knew for sure if our app would work when that first pitch was thrown or that first puck was dropped. But there was also a time, a few years after that, once we hit our stride, where we knew the app would be rock solid night after night.
That’s the funny thing about becoming accustomed to the amazing technology we have at our fingertips every day. We start to take it for granted.
Those victories were some of the sweetest moments of the whole experience, and I’ll carry them with me for the rest of my life. Whenever I feel like something can’t be done, I’ll look back at everything we accomplished at PrePlay and know that we’re capable of doing much more than we think.
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We’re holding something in our hand that would have blown our mind five years ago, but today we get frustrated when it takes longer than three seconds to load. It’s like Louis CK said: “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy.”
We poured years of our lives into PrePlay. And it was amazing. We were able to create something we were proud of, and we were able to share it with people around the world.
Before starting at PrePlay I worked a lot of jobs I didn’t particularly enjoy. I worked at restaurants, bars, hotels, and a number of other smaller odd-jobs that ultimately left me feeling unfulfilled. Not that there’s anything wrong with working in the service industry, it just wasn’t something I wanted to do my whole life.
So when I started at PrePlay, I viewed it as an incredible opportunity that I was privileged to have. An opportunity that I would be a fool to give anything less than 100% of my blood, sweat, and tears to.
So that’s what I did. Every day.
There were times when I legitimately thought we were aiming too high and that we wouldn’t make it. And more often than not, we managed to find a way.
We created something awesome, and no one can ever take that away from us. It was one hell of a ride.
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Those victories were some of the sweetest moments of the whole experience, and I’ll carry them with me for the rest of my life. Whenever I feel like something can’t be done, I’ll look back at everything we accomplished at PrePlay and know that we’re capable of doing much more than we think.
All of the people I met and got to know. All of the things I learned. All of the skills I acquired. All of the places I got to visit. Everything we did these last five years has been flooding over me as I write this, and it’s overwhelming. But in a good way.
We created something awesome, and no one can ever take that away from us. It was one hell of a ride.
It doesn’t feel like we failed, but the game is no longer around. I guess sometimes life is a little more nuanced than things either succeeding or failing, and it’s a good thing that’s the case. I can’t imagine anything that happened here during the past 5 years being characterized as a failure.
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Originally published in another form on Medium.
Photo: Chris Potter/Flickr
I wish Preplay would come back . Even if you had a small fee with the app