BeerAnyone reached 11,400 social followers.
We still closed the business.
I could tell this story through the audience growth, the platform we built, and the funding I raised. But the ending is the part that most influences how I approach website and product decisions today.
Building the company
I founded BeerAnyone in January 2015 as a craft beer discovery platform combining original content, events, membership, commerce, and a directory that eventually grew to nearly 5,000 international brewery listings.
I initially worked with a development team in Pakistan. After securing external funding, I hired an in-house developer and continued building the product and the operation around it.
I hired and managed writers, photographers, developers, and social media staff while remaining responsible for product direction, fundraising, partnerships, marketing, and business development.
As the audience grew, I brought in a social media manager and shifted more of my attention toward customer acquisition and partnerships—including lifecycle email campaigns, lead outreach, appointments, events, and direct business development.
We had built a platform around a growing audience. But we had also built ourselves into an expensive problem.
The redesign we couldn't afford
The product had not accounted for the mobile experience early enough in its development. Correcting that later required substantially more than adjusting a few screens. It meant redesigning a platform we had already invested significant time and capital into building. And by then, the additional investment required was more than the business could support.
The followers were engaged.
The brewery directory was growing.
The funding, team, and development work were in motion.
None of that changed the economics of the decision in front of us.
I was responsible for the product direction.
The lesson belonged to me.
We had reached a core product requirement too late—and could no longer afford to rebuild around it.
What I learned
The expensive mistake was not simply that the platform needed to work better on a phone. It was discovering a fundamental requirement after too much had already been built around other assumptions. Someone deciding which brewery to visit might be standing on a sidewalk, sitting in a restaurant, or already traveling through an unfamiliar city.
The conditions in which they would use the product should have influenced the product requirements from the beginning.
That changed the questions I ask before committing resources to a build.
What does the customer absolutely need to accomplish?
Where and how are they likely to do it?
What has to work first?
What can wait?
And which assumptions become expensive to change once development is underway?
Those questions are less exciting than adding features to a roadmap. They are also much cheaper to answer before the build begins.
Why this matters to your website
Your website may be considerably simpler than BeerAnyone, but the underlying risk is the same.
Decisions made during planning become progressively more expensive to rethink once design, development, integrations, content, and internal processes have been built around them. That is why we examine the customer's essential tasks early.
For a service business, that might mean testing the experience of requesting an estimate, booking an appointment, or calling from a phone before committing to the wider site architecture.
We also challenge what actually needs to be built. Some features deserve to be part of the first version while others can wait until there is enough evidence to justify the additional complexity and cost.
That conversation can mean questioning an idea someone is excited about or recommending a smaller first step. Although we would rather have that conversation while the plan is still inexpensive to change.
BeerAnyone taught me a great deal about raising capital, building a product, managing people, and operating a company.
Closing it taught me something just as important: question the expensive assumptions before you build around them.
What would be expensive to discover after your website launches?
Talk With Joseph
