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20 / ENTREPRENEUR.COM / March 2020want—sightseeing!
This is how we developed
a company called Nowaday,
which launched in New York
this past November. Our first
offering is a private tour of the
city, given in a gorgeous 1920s
vintage car.
Tours like this are hard to
plan; New York can throw a lot
of unexpected things at you.
If there’s a traffic closure or a
parade, Nowaday still has to
deliver a 60-minute experience
without being stuck in traffic.
That was a challenge, one that
would require 24-7 monitor-
ing. But here, the experience of
The New L served us well. We’d
already learned how to coordi-
nate thousands of commuters,
so doing it for private tours was
much easier.
Within months, we’d devel-
oped Nowaday’s MVP. We
bought our first car, put it onI
n 2016, New York City
made an announcement
that locals had been
dreading: Starting in
2019, the L train subway
tunnel—a major con-
nection between Man-
hattan and Brooklyn—would
shut down for 18 months of
repairs. It would be so disrup-
tive that people actually moved
to different neighborhoods in
order to be closer to a function-
ing subway line come 2019.
Then, just four months
before the shutdown was going
to begin, New York’s gover-
nor sprung a surprise. He
announced that the L train
wouldn’t shut down after all.
(The repairs would happen on
nights and weekends.) Some
people were elated. Others
were annoyed. And me? I was
shocked...because I’d spent
the better part of the past year
building a business designed to
serve people impacted by this
closure.
Suddenly, all my work was
destroyed. Or so I thought.
I eventually came to learn an
important lesson in entrepre-
neurship: Even when plan A
fails, it can set you up for a bet-
ter plan B.
Back in 2016, I was one of
the 200,000 commuters whoseroutes to work would be dis-
rupted by the subway closure.
I wanted to stay in my beloved
neighborhood, and I eventually
decided to build a solution for
people like me. After months of
ideating, I had it. My startup,
a carpooling service and plat-
form, was called The New
L. I assembled a small team,
partnered with a fleet of driv-
ers, collected data from nearly
5,000 interested customers,
signed corporate contracts,
generated interest from large
buildings and companies that
wanted to subsidize our service
for their employees, and got a
lot of press coverage.
We were ready to go...until,
of course, the city blew up my
plans. I was happy for the com-
muters whose lives wouldn’t be
disrupted. But now what?
I’d caught the entrepreneur-
ial bug, and I wasn’t ready to
give up that dream. A coworker
from my day job and I started
brainstorming new ideas, and
we realized we were already
partway down a path. My com-
muting company was dead, but
building it had taught me a lot
about urban mobility, efficient
systems, and destination-based
travel. What if we took those
lessons and applied them
to something people alwaysthe road in early 2019, and
delivered hundreds of rides in
beta, collecting instant feed-
back from customers. Then we
went to investors to enable us
to build this company the right
way. We raised $3.5 million
and bought a fleet of 12 vintage
cars, working with a team in
Detroit that helps with sourc-
ing and restoration.
The rides have been a quick
success, but we have much
bigger plans for Nowaday.
We are more than a touring
company; we’re an experience
company. We plan to uncover
and narrate every city’s most
fascinating stories, from food
to entertainment, for locals
and tourists alike. The logis-
tics of this are tough, but I
feel prepared. No matter the
challenges, I found a far more
sustainable business than The
New L ever could have been.“My First
Business Died—
and Set Me
Up for Success”
My buzzy New York startup was dead on arrival.
Here’s how I learned to build a new (and
far more sustainable) operation. by JAIME GETTOIllustration / ZOHAR LAZAR