This tiny team built this rich product with bootstrapped funds and a vision to enable the spreading of wisdom and experience around the world, 12 minutes at a time. 12ish received much praise, won a top voted position on Product Hunt, was one of the startups of the month on /r/startups, and was mentioned in various press outlets such as iDigitalTimes and entrepreneur.com.

You can view Colin's latest work (as of this writing) at Mailshake.

A parting note:

"Building 12ish was a thrilling experience. We fell in love with the idea of spreading human wisdom virally. Our dream was for perfect strangers to cross paths ever so briefly and leave a lasting impact on each other. We shipped our product early and iterated quickly based on calls we had with our customers, and what emerged was an incredible platform that we were so proud of. We believed in selling a product (not selling our customers through advertising), and in some ways that is a tougher road to travel. In the end 12ish wasn't able to gain enough traction to become self-sustaining, and we were forced to close operations. Personally, I learned an enormous amount from this endeavor, and I'm so grateful to everyone who supported us. It felt magical for me, taking so many 12ish calls as a host and a customer, and it was ridiculously fun to see (and meet) the awesome people who used our service! Colin Mathews

R.I.P.

Fall 2013 — Spring 2015