Another Birmingham-based tech startup is closing.
Founder Mikhail Kozorovitskiy said his startup Datalus, which aimed to give people the power to sell their own data to companies and make extra cash, ran out of funding and he was not able to continue self-funding the venture.
The news comes on the heels of Birmingham-based Fledging announcing its plans to close in late November.
"It’s been a good run, y’all! But with great sadness, it is now time for me to close Datalus. ... In the end, I failed because I was not prepared. We ran out of money a few months ago and to continue to self-fund it is untenable," Kozorovitskiy wrote in a final update on Dec. 6.
Kozorovitskiy, who worked in web development for about two decades, has experience in the startup, agency and enterprise realms and is the organizer of Birmingham Area Software Enthusiasts.
He noted some lessons he learned through the failed venture.
"There is a right way to do things and if you skip steps, it’s hard to clean up down the line," Kozorovitskiy said. "This is true for accounting, legal, market validation, tax and equity setup. Take extra precautions to preserve relationships when working with friends and family.
"Doing the difficult conversations and contracts up-front can help preserve those relationships when things go wrong. There is no substitute for shipping products, even a simple MVP. I only shipped the first MVP Datalus browser and was still working on the plugin and marketplace MVP."
Kozorovitskiy also said he regretted going it alone without a co-founder. His next steps include properly shutting down the business and determining his next venture.
The story of Datalus was one inspired by a passion to give users control of how their data is used.
"I was a consultant a couple years ago and was looking at how our data was being used, and it seemed really unfair," Kozorovitskiy said. "The big tech companies were using our data, mining it, making huge profits, and users, we got free services out of it, but we weren't really compensated."
That's where Kozorovitskiy felt he could make a difference. He knew user data was valuable, and that's why he created Datalus, a browser plugin that captures a user's data and allows them to monetize it by opting into partner offers.
With the exception of an investment from Velocity and an early investor, Kozorovitskiy took on contract work to fund the development himself during a volatile time for startups searching for early funding.
Kozorovitskiy, who came from Russia to Birmingham through a refugee program with his family in the 1990s, said opportunity and people are what appealed to him when he decided to start a business in the city.
"I knew I wanted to start a business here because the groundwork for the ecosystem had been laid here, with Innovation Depot running a velocity accelerator, with EDPA running Launchpad," said Kozorovitskiy, who went through Innovation Depot's Velocity accelerator program.
"I want to thank everyone who gave their time, effort, and money," he said. "My investors, advisors, friends and family that put up with a year and a half of disruption to their lives while I tried to get this working. This time, I failed, and I am sorry. This will likely be the last update from Datalus Inc."
