The Failed Not Boring Club That Became Not Boring
The Story
After quitting Breather, Packy McCormick tried to raise money for what he described as “Soho House meets college extracurriculars,” a physical place for people building things to convene (Source 1).
“A few people talked me out of raising, other people talked me out of building before having a community — thank God,” he laughed. “And my wife was saying, ‘it’s a dumb idea,’ but in much nicer words” (Source 1).
Then the pandemic hit. The physical club concept was dead on arrival. But the name survived: “Not Boring” had originally referred to the physical “Not Boring Club” that COVID killed. It became the name of the newsletter instead (Source 1).
McCormick’s initial newsletter name had been “Per My Last E-mail.” On April 2, 2020, he officially renamed it to Not Boring.
Lesson for Creators
The name that defined one of Substack’s biggest newsletters came from a failed startup idea that never got off the ground. The concept was wrong, but the brand was right. Sometimes the best thing about a failed project isn’t a lesson learned. It’s a piece that survives and gets reused in a better context. Don’t throw everything away when something doesn’t work. Some parts may be exactly what you need for what comes next.
Related
- The In-Laws Basement with a Baby on the Way — same period, the personal stakes behind this pivot
- The $48M VC-Backed Failure That Powered the Comeback — Yossi Levi: a much larger failure that became the foundation of the next venture