Episode 1: Calibrating the radar

This is the first of our “cockpit diaries”; short posts where we want to keep you posted on the “behind the scenes” at Wingle and our learnings as we build a startup from the ground up. If you want a quick re-cap of what is Wingle and why we’re launching it, read the first comment below 👇

This 1st episode, things “started to get real”; Wingle now feels like a real company. We accelerated the speed of everything, developed personality disorders from juggling all fonts of the business and realized that there are always things we had underestimated. But we also realized how sometimes, when working “normal” jobs, we don’t unlock the full potential of our personal networks. When you jump into the “deep end” and are forced to be creative, you realize the power of them.

On a personal level, we felt the ups and downs, realized the importance of having a co-founder with whom to navigate the process and keep stability, and began building a work/life routine that works, gauging what feels right and what doesn’t. This is still WIP by the way.

Keep reading below for what we’ve been up to…

🛫 The ups:

✅Secured advertising agreement with an European airline for summer; +160k passengers will see Wingle as soon as they board their flight

✅Built a super team of creatives, content creators and social media partners to drive the launch campaign

Pablo Amade

Cursiva

Alberto Miranda

✅Applied for certification as “emerging company” by ENISA

✅Finalizing 100k EUR investment round (last couple of tickets remaining)

✅iOS app is live and working; Android version is WIP for summer launch

✅Evolved technology using mesh networks to cover wide-body airplanes

✅“Wingle Meeting Points” concept in development (stay tuned for more ;))

✅Began developing a B2B value proposition. Wingle is born with a B2C aspiration, but we cannot close the door to a B2B offering

🛬 The learnings:

💡 Always have a plan B. We thought we had the best team member ready to join Wingle, but it all fell apart last minute. Thankfully we had plan B in place with our external partners

💡 Things move painfully slow: while our decisions and responses take hours at most, many of the partners we talk to operate in slower dynamics and take long to answer (if they do at all). We need to have option 1, 2 and 3 in parallel. Option 2 is better than no option

💡 Block time to think: there’s so much to do, so many things to execute, that we sometimes forgot about blocking quality time to think about the product, direction and bigger picture

💡 Get rid of the fear of rejection. After +200 cold emails where we’ve been left as “read” in most, the fear of rejection and (incorrect) expectation that most people will be willing to talk to you has disappeared. There is no shame in sending follow-up emails and reaching out to whoever can help; even if it’s a long shot

Stay tuned for Ep.2, where we’ll be almost ready for summer launch 😉

On LinkedIn