In 2010, I partnered up with a a close friend of mine, who was a co-founder of a prominent sneaker blog in New York, to launch SneakerWare. SneakerWare was a mobile, social network for sneaker enthusiasts (aka “sneaker heads”). It was a place where collectors can snap and upload photos of their collection and show it off to others. The platform allowed users to create profiles, follow one another, like or share photos, and consisted of every other expected mechanism of a modern day social network. We saw an opportunity to create something extremely social (and fun) for a niche that saw little to no innovation for years, yet it was a market that was growing exponentially. SneakerWare was curated as part of the Complex Media Network of sites targeting a demographic of young men aged 18-34. The platform grew from a few hundred to just shy of 20,000 registered users before we shut it down.
