By: Luke Moberly, former CEO and Founder

Date Published: August 15

Est. Time to Read: 12 minutes

I started Bumper as part of the NMotion Accelerator Studio, a 3-month program designed to incubate and grow start-ups. The program was different from traditional accelerators in that it selected the founder before they had a company. In other words, it aims to find people who have the traits necessary to build a successful company and help them find their idea during the program.

I was 19 when I was picked for NMotion. I had just finished up a data science bootcamp in London and was in my gap year before starting at Stanford. NMotion provided a $100k pre-seed investment, and I ended up raising $500k one year after the program. I had released a mobile app and a few websites, but had never run a venture-backed company before.

After spending most of my gap year and freshman year at Stanford building Bumper, I am now in the process of closing down and returning funds to investors. I learned many lessons while building and running Bumper, and I wanted to take some time to condense my reflections - cue this post-mortem. I’m dividing this into three sections, one highlighting the successes we had (because although it eventually failed, I think it’s important to acknowledge what came from the hardwork of our team), one discussing the reasons why I think Bumper failed, and the third discussing my biggest takeaways from this experience.

Bumper’s Successes

  1. We acquired 17,000 users and processed tens of thousands of investments. Thousands of teens learned how to invest responsibly on our platform.
  2. We didn’t waste cash - we kept burn low while we figured out what worked. We never got to that part, but that’s for sections 2 and 3.
  3. We were the first team out of the new NMotion Accelerator Studio to raise outside funds.
  4. I was the first freshman to be accepted into the StartX program in its 11 years at Stanford.
  5. I believe we were open with why we were shutting down, and we tried our best to be transparent and honest during the wind-down process.
  6. I met hundreds of founders, investors, and mentors and built strong relationships with many of them.