Bryce North: What a Failed Startup Can Teach Entrepreneurs About Starting Over

Bryce North raised more than $600,000 for TrapTap, appeared on Dragons’ Den and attracted national media attention. The startup still failed. His comeback offers a useful lesson for entrepreneurs: surviving failure matters, but changing how you build the next business matters even more.

Raising $600,000 in about 90 days sounds like the beginning of a startup success story. Getting featured by major media outlets and appearing on Dragons’ Den makes it sound even better.

For entrepreneur Bryce North, those things really happened. So did the part that usually gets left out of the polished founder story: the business failed anyway.

North’s first startup, TrapTap, grew from an idea sketched on a napkin into a smart driving product that attracted investors, customers and considerable media attention. Yet behind the momentum were problems that eventually became impossible to outrun. North says the company had six founders, ownership became diluted, an investment deal became more complicated than expected, and manufacturing and cash-flow problems took their toll.

>> READ: From $600K Raised to $1 Million in Debt: 8 Business Lessons from Bryce North’s Startup Comeback

By the end, North says he was around $1 million in debt.

His story is interesting not because he found some miraculous way to save TrapTap. He didn’t. What makes it useful for other entrepreneurs is what happened after the company was gone. North eventually realized that one of the skills he had developed while trying to make his first startup successful—telling stories that get attention—could become the foundation of an entirely different business.

Today, he runs the PR agency Don’t Be A Little Pitch.

There are plenty of lessons in how North marketed TrapTap, but the more important ones come from comparing the company that failed with the business he built afterward. The second time around, he made different choices about ownership, risk, what he sold and how the company grew.

Key Takeaways

• Startup momentum can hide problems with cash flow, ownership and operations.
• Raising money is not automatically a win; the terms attached to the money matter.
• Too many founders can create complications when ownership and responsibilities are not clearly defined.
• Failure can reveal valuable skills that were hidden inside the work of building the original company.
• A second business should reflect the lessons of the first rather than simply repeating the same risks.
• Storytelling can help a company get attention, but attention cannot compensate for a weak business underneath.
• Proof, client results and referrals can eventually become more valuable than hype.
• Bold marketing works best when it reflects something genuine about the founder or business.

Success on the Outside Can Hide Problems Underneath

TrapTap had many of the things startup founders are told to chase. It had a product people were interested in, media attention, investors and hundreds of thousands of dollars raised in a relatively short period.

North says he spent about 60 days creating anticipation around the product before it was fully working. When pre-sales opened, the company raised more than $600,000 in roughly 90 days.

There is nothing inherently wrong with building anticipation before a product launches. In fact, early demand can help entrepreneurs determine whether customers actually want what they are creating. The danger comes when strong demand is mistaken for proof that every other part of the business is working.

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s business planning guidance stresses that entrepreneurs need to think beyond the product itself and understand their costs, revenue model, market, funding requirements and financial projections. A business can have customers lining up and still run into trouble if the economics behind those sales do not work.

We have seen a similar pattern in other companies. In our look at what small businesses can learn from Revolymer’s failed nonstick chewing gum, the underlying technology was impressive, but technical innovation alone did not create a strong enough commercial market. The lesson is not that innovation or excitement are bad. It is that neither one removes the need for a sound business underneath.

TrapTap had a different set of problems, but the principle is much the same. Good publicity can help you get through the door. It cannot fix the finances once you are inside.

Raising Money Is Only a Victory If You Understand the Deal

One of North’s most expensive lessons came from fundraising.

His appearance on Dragons’ Den resulted in investment offers and, at least initially, the kind of validation many founders dream about. North remembers feeling like “an absolute genius” after getting offers.

Then came the paperwork.

His description of what he learned is worth remembering:

“Investors aren’t just handing you a check, they’re buying a permanent seat at your table.”

That becomes particularly important when founders are so focused on getting funded that they pay less attention to what happens after the money arrives.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission advises businesses preparing to raise capital to maintain a clear capitalization table showing who owns what and to have a firm understanding of the company’s financial position. For later-stage capital, founders also need to consider how an investment could affect voting rights, board representation, ownership dilution and future rounds of financing.

North says TrapTap eventually had six founders, and his description of that decision is characteristically blunt: “Six founders. Six.”

The lesson is not that every company should have a single founder. Many excellent businesses have been created by complementary founding teams. But bringing someone in as a co-founder is different from hiring an employee, contractor or adviser. Equity given away at the beginning may still matter years later when investors arrive, disagreements emerge or someone wants to leave.

North’s takeaway after the experience was simple: read the fine print.

The number on the check matters. So does everything written around it.

Publicity Helps, but the Story Has to Lead Somewhere

One thing North clearly did well at TrapTap was getting people interested.

He did not start with an established PR agency or an enormous media database. What he figured out was how to turn the company into a story that journalists could quickly understand.

His conclusion after dealing with the press was that “a good narrative will outrun a spec sheet every single time.”

That may sound like a PR lesson, but it is really a broader business lesson. Entrepreneurs know their products too well. They understand every feature, update and technical improvement, and it is easy to assume everyone else will be equally fascinated.

Usually they are not.

Customers and journalists want to understand why something matters. That requires context, a problem, a point of view or a human element that makes the product easier to remember.

Apple became famous for this kind of communication. In our discussion of the innovation principles associated with Steve Jobs, one of the recurring themes is that strong companies do not simply explain products. They explain what those products allow people to do or experience. Jobs understood that even a technically impressive product still needed a compelling story around it.

North eventually arrived at a similar lesson from a very different direction. He discovered that getting people interested in the story was one of the things he was actually best at.

The problem was that storytelling was supporting a business with deeper problems. With his next company, storytelling became the service itself.

Sometimes the Most Valuable Part of a Failed Business Is the Skill You Leave With

After TrapTap collapsed, North did not immediately move on to another ambitious startup.

He moved back to Winnipeg. He returned to his childhood bedroom. He got a serving job at Olive Garden and managed to get fired from that too.

It was not exactly the cinematic entrepreneur comeback.

The turning point came when he picked up contract work for a PR agency, initially because he wanted extra money. He began writing pitches and developing media angles for other businesses. The work started bringing in roughly $10,000 a month, and he realized something that seems obvious only in hindsight.

“The skill I’d been using for free my whole entrepreneurial life was the actual asset.”

This is one of the most useful ways to look at failure.

A failed company may be gone, but the founder who comes out the other side is usually not the same person who started it. Building a company forces entrepreneurs to learn things they might never have deliberately chosen to study: sales, negotiating, hiring, marketing, product development, fundraising, customer service and financial management.

Some of those abilities may be more commercially valuable than the original idea.

That is why recovering from failure should involve more than figuring out what went wrong. It is also worth asking what you became particularly good at while everything was going wrong.

LearningFromBigBoys has looked at this kind of reinvention in our examination of major brands that came close to bankruptcy and eventually recovered. Apple, LEGO, Marvel and other companies survived in different ways, but their turnarounds required them to identify what remained valuable and become more focused about where to put their resources.

A small entrepreneur obviously does not have the resources of Apple or LEGO. In some ways, however, that makes the question even more important. When you cannot afford to rebuild everything, you need to know what is actually worth carrying forward.

The Second Business Should Not Be the First Business With a New Logo

One of the most striking things about North’s second act is how different it looks from TrapTap.

He did not immediately build another physical product. He did not recreate a six-person founding team. He did not build a company that needed manufacturing, inventory and substantial capital before it could generate revenue.

Instead, he built around something he already knew he could do.

North describes the difference this way:

“The second time around I made the story the actual business.”

That meant a much simpler operation. The core asset was expertise rather than physical inventory, and clients could pay for a service the company was capable of delivering immediately.

This does not mean service businesses are easy or that entrepreneurs who fail with a physical product should automatically become consultants. The larger lesson is that experience should change the way you evaluate risk.

If your first company nearly collapsed because of inventory, you should understand inventory risk better the second time. If co-founder disagreements consumed the company, you should approach ownership differently. If cash flow repeatedly left the business scrambling, financial planning deserves much more attention in the next venture.

A second business built exactly like the first suggests that the founder survived the failure without learning very much from it.

North did the opposite.

Growth Became Less Exciting—and That Was Probably a Good Thing

TrapTap’s early story involved fundraising, publicity, television and rapid pre-sales. North describes the growth of his PR agency in much less dramatic terms.

Once the agency began producing recognizable media placements, clients had something concrete to evaluate. Referrals began bringing in business. The company did not need to sell an exciting vision quite as aggressively because it could show prospective clients what it had already done.

North summarizes the change neatly:

“The agency scaled off proof instead of promises.”

There is a lesson here for businesses of almost any size.

During the early stages, entrepreneurs often have to ask customers to believe them. There may not be years of sales history, hundreds of reviews or a long client list. The founder is selling a vision of what the business can do.

The goal should be to replace that promise with evidence as quickly as possible.

A successful project becomes a case study. A satisfied customer becomes a referral. A measurable result becomes a selling point. Gradually, the company needs less persuasion because there is more proof.

That kind of growth may produce fewer dramatic startup stories, but it usually creates a much stronger foundation.

Bold Marketing Still Needs Something Real Underneath It

North’s current approach to marketing is not exactly conservative.

One of his more memorable LinkedIn posts featured an AI-generated office building for Don’t Be A Little Pitch. The building did not exist. Neither did the man with his pants down in the window.

North committed to the joke without explaining it away, and the post attracted exactly the kind of attention he wanted.

But his explanation for why unconventional marketing works is more thoughtful than the post might suggest.

“Bold marketing survives as long as there’s something true holding up the joke underneath it.”

That distinction is important, especially now that businesses can generate outrageous images, videos and campaigns more quickly than ever.

Being strange is easy. Being memorable for the right reason is harder.

North argues that the fake headquarters joke worked partly because it played with something recognizable: founders often present a cleaner, more successful version of their companies online than what is really happening behind the scenes.

The joke had an idea underneath it.

There is also an important practical boundary. According to the Federal Trade Commission’s advertising guidance, advertising claims must be truthful, non-deceptive and supported by evidence when appropriate. A brand can be funny, provocative or absurd, but creative execution does not eliminate the responsibility to be truthful when making claims about a product or service.

Small businesses do not need to copy North’s style. Most probably should not. What they can copy is the willingness to have a recognizable voice instead of producing marketing that sounds exactly like everyone else.

The Bigger Lesson: Failure Should Change the Way You Build

What makes North’s story useful is not simply that he failed and later became successful again. There are plenty of comeback stories that offer little more than encouragement to “keep going.”

The interesting part is that the failure changed his behavior.

He became more careful about ownership. He paid more attention to contracts. He built a company around a skill he had already proven. He reduced some of the operational complexity that came with his first startup. Then he allowed proof and referrals to gradually take over some of the work that hype had once done.

For a more detailed look at those lessons, including North’s experience with six founders, fundraising, Dragons’ Den and building the PR agency, read our companion PowerHomeBiz article, From $600K Raised to $1 Million in Debt: 8 Business Lessons from Bryce North’s Startup Comeback.

North’s story also belongs alongside the comeback cases we have covered on LearningFromBigBoys. The scale is different, but the underlying principle is familiar. Companies and entrepreneurs get into trouble when they continue doing something simply because it once looked promising. Survival often requires figuring out what is genuinely working, dropping what is not and being willing to build differently.

North lost the company he thought he was building. What remained was an ability he had been developing the entire time.

It took losing the first business for him to see it.

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