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For April Johnson, the best part about being a real estate finance attorney in Washington D.C. was the happy hour culture that came with it.

A self-described food and drink enthusiast, Johnson spent most evenings after graduating college with friends and coworkers exploring happy hour deals at various venues around town.

"We were always talking about happy hour, but we had no way to actually find happy hour, so I thought, 'why is that?'" says Johnson. "I was the friend people were always asking that question to, so I decided to be the one to build the platform."

It was 2009, and because the technology just wasn't there yet, Johnson decided to put her idea on the shelf. Instead, she enrolled in law school, eventually writing a business plan for her start-up idea in her final year at school. When she graduated, Johnson didn't feel like she had the resources to actually build her app and launch her business.

But she couldn't get the idea out of her head.

A few years into her career as a real estate finance attorney, Johnson was surprised to learn that the platform she envisioned still didn't exist, despite what she saw as an obvious need.

"About 80% of restaurants and bars in D.C. have happy hour; its definitely not required, but unofficially, the way consumers speak about it, it is," she says. "One of the biggest issues with happy hour is that it changes all the time, there is no set rules a venue has to follow, so they can change the days, they can change the times, they can change the menu at any time."

Johnson began putting together some of the foundational pieces of her online platform, Happied, which would launch in 2015, providing users with information about a venues' offerings and happy hour deals. She built a website in 2016 and a mobile app in 2017, all while working full time as a lawyer.

By 2018 the time commitment had gotten to be too much, so she decided to cut back her hours at the firm to 60% of her previous schedule.

"The problem is that at a big law firm, 60% is never really 60%," Johnson says. "What ended up happening is I was working the same amount of hours, but I was only getting paid 60%."

After four months of "part time" work, Johnson quit her job in July of 2018. That year, Happied launched a new subscription product. At participating venues members could extend happy hour, which typically ends at 7 p.m., by an additional two hours.

As Johnson explains, for restaurants and bars this meant reaching a prime audience

"A lot of the time as you progress in your career you're not getting out of work until happy hour is over," explains Johnson. "This is a demographic that restaurants and bars want in their seats." Which helps explain why over 100 have signed on as partners.

But success didn't happen overnight.

Even with the company gaining traction, a year after quitting her job it still wasn't profitable, and Johnson was running out of money.

"In my head I always thought we'd be profitable so quickly, and that's just not the case with most start-ups," she says. "I had a bit of savings that I thought would take me through at least initial profitability or a first round of fundraising. But as my savings bucket continued to dwindle and Happied was still not profitable, I was faced with what has been, by far, the most challenging period of my life."

To survive, Johnson had to move quickly. She began by bringing in a co-founder, who split expenses and helped relieve some of the financial pressure.

From running Happied, as well as earlier marketing gigs, Johnson had years of marketing experience that she realized she could tap into as another source of income. "I started a side hustle doing digital marketing and social media for local and remote clients," she explains. "My Happied co-founder also has a separate company that focuses on growing small businesses, so I joined forces with him on that to leverage a full suite of web development and marketing services for my clients."

Johnson says the time before Happied achieved profitability was the most challenging period of her life. After pursuing a side hustle, bringing on a co-founder to split the expenses, and investing in the digital presence of the app, the company finally took off. And Johnson hasn't looked back since.

Happied now boasts almost 5,000 registered users, despite a nearly nonexistent marketing budget and a team of only three. The company has also managed to onboard over 100 restaurant partners, 30 of whom participate in the extended happy hour program.

"The organic growth we've had has been a huge success," says Johnson. "It's constant affirmation that this is something that people want, and that they're using. That's what keeps me going."