Kopely
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Kopely was a stress-relief health app founded in 2019 by Andrew Laux, who came from a decade of training and coaching and identified stress as one of his clients' main issues. He partnered with an external development company to build the app while he handled marketing.
02 / Kopely FAILURE REASONS
Failure analysis
The failure was a classic dependence-on-others case compounded by COVID-19. Marketing was gathering momentum - Laux had built a good list of interested people - when the pandemic hit the US in mid-March 2020. His worldwide development team went silent for weeks; the owner of the dev company then called to say Kopely was officially done, since COVID-19 had forced him to furlough part of his team and he could no longer commit developer time to a project that wasn't driving revenue for his own business. Laux could not fund development personally, no one was investing during the uncertainty, and the planned July 2020 launch was cancelled - the app was put indefinitely on pause.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Started
Andrew Laux started Kopely, a stress-relief health app, partnering with an external development company to build it while he led marketing.
- Killed by COVID-19
When the pandemic hit in mid-March 2020, the development team went silent; the dev company's owner officially ended the project after furloughing part of his team. The planned July 2020 launch was cancelled and the app was put indefinitely on pause.
- Record event year
The record marks 2022 as the event year for Kopely's reported failure.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Andrew Laux founded Kopely as a stress-relief health app, outsourcing development to an external dev company.
- 02
Marketing was gaining traction with a growing list of interested users.
- 03
COVID-19 hit in mid-March 2020; the worldwide development team went silent for weeks.
- 04
The dev company's owner officially ended the project - he had furloughed part of his team and could not commit developer time to a non-revenue project.
- 05
Laux could not fund development personally; the planned July 2020 launch was cancelled and Kopely was put indefinitely on pause.
- 06
No audited loss figure was disclosed.