Founder Scraps Favorite Feature for Interactive Donor Wall

My defining moment came when I decided to scrap our failing feature that I personally loved and bet everything on an interactive donor wall nobody was asking for. We were bleeding money at Rocket Alumni Solutions, and I had to choose between my ego and our survival.

I killed a product we'd spent months building and redirected our entire development budget toward touchscreen donor recognition displays. The risk was brutal—if this flopped, we were done. But I noticed schools kept mentioning how outdated their physical plaques looked, even though they weren't directly asking for digital solutions.

That pivot became our flagship product and drove us from near-bankruptcy to $3M+ ARR. The interactive displays increased repeat donations by 25% for our partner schools, and 40% of new donors at one school first heard about giving programs through our digital testimonials. We went from scrambling for survival to scaling nationwide.

My advice: Kill your darlings before they kill your business. The market doesn't care about your favorite features—it pays for solutions to problems people actually have. Sometimes the boldest move isn't building something new, but having the guts to destroy what isn't working and pivot everything toward what could work.

Chase Mckee, Founder & CEO, Rocket Alumni Solutions - Digital Record Board