On failing to launch PlateShare (and why I’m not done yet)

The idea was so deceptively simple: round up your restaurant and grocery bills to the nearest dollar and donate that change to help feed the hungry. “Why hasn’t anyone thought of this already?” was the most common reaction I received when discussing my idea for a micro-giving mobile application aimed at ending hunger.

The issue wasn’t that no one had thought of it; round-up for charity certainly isn’t a novel concept. The issue is that the simplest ideas are the most difficult to execute, a lesson I’ve learned the hard way over the last three years.

I started working on PlateShare when I was completing my masters in nutrition, volunteering at Second Harvest food bank and wrestling with the clash between what I knew about healthy food and what I saw being donated to those in need.

An all-volunteer sorting team at Second Harvest carried the responsibility of tossing out dented cans, scanning for recalled Spaghettios (tainted with bad meatballs) and separating foods by type. I spent my volunteer hours sorting through piles of damaged, expired and highly processed food I considered unfit for consumption all the while reminding myself: “Get off your organic high horse. It’s better than nothing.”

To be clear, Second Harvest Metrolina does tremendous work to feed people with the hodgepodge pile of food donations they receive. They are an army of angels tackling the impossible task of sustaining an at-risk population on everyone else’s leftovers with a tiny staff and a tinier budget.

Despite my respect and appreciation for what Second Harvest does, I couldn’t shake the feeling that, contrary to popular belief, donating food is an inefficient way of addressing hunger. So I started thinking of ways to convince people to donate funds instead of food so that donating change would become as second nature as donating canned goods.

My idea was that the monetary equivalent of a canned good in the hands of a centralized hunger relief organization could be used to purchase healthy food in bulk at volume discounts and ultimately feed more people without the hassle of sorting through unexpected (and often undesirable) food donations.

But how would I convince an entire population to give small cash donations instead of cans?

My plan was to layer small-change charitable giving into a mobile application that leverages an already existing buyer behavior (eating in restaurants and buying groceries) into an opportunity for food-loving, tech-savvy, young social philanthropists to end hunger every time they eat with a simple one-touch PlateShare round-up.

Easier said than done.

Despite an overwhelmingly positive reception and wildly successful performance at local business competitions (PlateShare was a finalist at Startup Weekend Charlotte, the grand prize winner at Shape Charlotte and the grand prize winner at Seed20), I as a leader have failed to get my message across and to get my solution off the ground.

It’s been an agonizing, humbling and honestly heartbreaking experience to say the least. Here are three invaluable lessons I learned about failing to build something big and why I’m not done yet.

Go slow and be quiet.

I threw PlateShare into the limelight too early in its idea phase infancy. I won prizes that established and proven organizations should have won, and I got media coverage that created hype I couldn’t validate.

I underestimated and rushed timelines for everything: how long it takes to file paperwork, how quickly a mobile application can be built, how immediately users can be convinced to adopt a new behavior. If I had it to do all over again (and I do and I will), I would quietly execute off the radar until I had a viable product and proven process that works. Slow and steady and silent.

Be the authority.

Entering so many competitions put me in rooms with brilliant and powerful mentors and judges and other business owners that I assumed were smarter and more qualified to execute my idea than I was.

This self-doubt was paralyzing and led me to sway with every new critique and comment, causing me to rebuild my model until I no longer stood by it and it no longer stood on its own. It’s certainly true that people know business and tech and nonprofit better than I do, but looking back on it now, no one was a better authority on the unique intersection of social media, nutrition and hunger. I forgot that and it was a huge miss.

Ask for help.

Somehow I thought I could do this whole thing myself. The end result was exhaustion, disappointment, frustration and ultimately failure to launch. The saddest part is that so many people wanted to get involved; I just didn’t know how to delegate.

Not all was lost. We won two big competitions, piloted our receipt round-up at two Charlotte restaurants, launched an Android beta and helped fund the build out of a kitchen and a lunch program at a school in Tanzania. I suppose the fatal flaw in all of it was that I thought it all had to be executed perfectly or not at all.

So I suppose that leads me to my fourth and final lesson on failure: don’t give up.

This isn’t the end of the road for PlateShare. I stepped back to let the dust settle on all the commotion from the competitions, but I stand by the concept and see more clearly than ever how to execute it. The question is: am I the one to do it? Perhaps my role at PlateShare was the genesis of the idea, generating funds and buzz and then quietly getting out of my own way so someone else can take it all the way. Nothing would make me prouder than to see the project succeed, whether my name is on it or not.