7/ The next few months were spent holed up in a 3’ x 5’ office in Brooklyn trying to salvage the future of Dubsmash. We called it the glass case of emotion. We knew great product = great process + great people (unsexy, I know). We set out to find the best talent (& we did).
6/ We’d gone big, and now we were going home (to the kitchen table). We reset and reconsidered. Then we moved the company across the ocean to New York.
5/ After trying our hardest to do anything but, we were left with Plan Y: We shut down the company, without shutting down the app. We moved out of our massive office in Berlin & parted ways with folks. It was as bleak as the photo depicts.
4/ But then we realized the numbers everyone purported to care about weren’t telling the full story. As the creators of a viral hit app, we suddenly realized we were hanging on by a thread--and the future was bleak.
3/ We were on TV and in the newspapers. We had slick offices in Berlin. Celebrities were Dubsmashing, @FallonTonight was using it on the show regularly, and millions of people downloaded the app every month. User growth was incredible. We were destined to be the next big thing.
Went super viral in 2015-2016, never figured out retention, moved the company from berlin to nyc, restarted with a brand new team, relaunched @ the end of last year as a US teen app & now #2 to tiktok by DAU in US. Quietly raised $. Staying quiet but full crazy story coming soon
