HN is often filled with success stories, which can give a false representation of the overall success that people are having. Instead of your biggest success, what is your biggest failure? How much did you lose? How did you rebound (if applicable)?
Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
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Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#2I bought a pizza shop. Invested 100k from credit cards in it to prove I was committed. I work full time as a developer so, I needed someone to run it. Got sales to over 40k a month in sales and still couldn't turn any kind of profit. Bought a second shop pretty sure I was robbed blind. Sold both never got paid for either shop. Not sure how to proceed now. Getting garnished so huge chunk of my pay is lost to paying back debt. Learned many valuable lessons. I consider it my ivy league of the real world education. I flipped a house paid 85k with a loan fixed it up sold it for 128k, still broke even took to long to fix up. Bought a rental property tenants destroyed couldn't get it re-rented. Owned a mortgage company market collapsed.
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#3I bought a pizza shop. Invested 100k from credit cards in it to prove I was committed. I work full time as a developer so, I needed someone to run it. Got sales to over 40k a month in sales and still couldn't turn any kind of profit. Bought a second shop pretty sure I was robbed blind. Sold both never got paid for either shop. Not sure how to proceed now. Getting garnished so huge chunk of my pay is lost to paying ba…
Wow, that's brutal! Have you considered bankruptcy?
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#4I bought a pizza shop. Invested 100k from credit cards in it to prove I was committed. I work full time as a developer so, I needed someone to run it. Got sales to over 40k a month in sales and still couldn't turn any kind of profit. Bought a second shop pretty sure I was robbed blind. Sold both never got paid for either shop. Not sure how to proceed now. Getting garnished so huge chunk of my pay is lost to paying ba…
How did you not get paid when you sold them?
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#5$40k in '09 on a food focused web app - split with my brother. $2k last year on an education web app my wife worked on (that was our share, there were 3 other participants).
The real killer is the time, not the $s out of pocket. My estimated hourly rate varies a lot based on what I'm doing - but it would lead to a significant increase if included.
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#6Not me, but a friend of mine works at Google and she has poured some £ 64,000k into building a live tv streaming service that didn't come to anything. The developer responsible eventually just went off radar and didn't even give SSH keys to the server, or and copies of the source code. I feel really sorry for her, and have been helping in any way I can...
When I heard the 64k figure I nearly had a heart attack! Jiminy Jillikers thats a lot of money.
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#7I bought a pizza shop. Invested 100k from credit cards in it to prove I was committed. I work full time as a developer so, I needed someone to run it. Got sales to over 40k a month in sales and still couldn't turn any kind of profit. Bought a second shop pretty sure I was robbed blind. Sold both never got paid for either shop. Not sure how to proceed now. Getting garnished so huge chunk of my pay is lost to paying ba…
Have you ever considered forming a company through which to take on these investments and projects? The company can declare bankruptcy independently, which should limit the (future) impact to your credit score and finances. (Obviously, wouldn't do anything for your past ventures.)
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#8I bought a pizza shop. Invested 100k from credit cards in it to prove I was committed. I work full time as a developer so, I needed someone to run it. Got sales to over 40k a month in sales and still couldn't turn any kind of profit. Bought a second shop pretty sure I was robbed blind. Sold both never got paid for either shop. Not sure how to proceed now. Getting garnished so huge chunk of my pay is lost to paying ba…
wow man... You should stick to working and give your money to someone else to manage...
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#9$40k in '09 on a food focused web app - split with my brother. $2k last year on an education web app my wife worked on (that was our share, there were 3 other participants). The real killer is the time, not the $s out of pocket. My estimated hourly rate varies a lot based on what I'm doing - but it would lead to a significant increase if included.
Just curious, what was the idea behind the food focused food app? (I also launched a failed food focused web app).
Re: Ask HN: How much money have you lost on side projects/businesses?
#10Ah those are really sad stories.. I hope you all are recovered from it.