Let's get real. We all screw up. What's the dumbest thing you did in your first startup? Share your epic fails so others can learn from your mistakes. Let's help each other avoid disaster!
Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
1–10 of 60 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#2Luckily it didn't get far - co-founding with a fantasist...
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#3We tried to compete on price in a market that really wasn't as price sensitive as it claimed to be. Yes some people wanted to "pay less" but in reality the big players were happy to pay the "industry standard" rate. Many of those big players we would later find were happy to pay far more even. For every player who wanted to "pay less" there were easily 10 that would pay more to get the opportunities their competition wasn't willing to pay for.
Looking back I feel totally stupid about it.
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#4Luckily it didn't get far - co-founding with a fantasist...
How did you realize they were a bad fit?
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#5We tried to compete on price in a market that really wasn't as price sensitive as it claimed to be. Yes some people wanted to "pay less" but in reality the big players were happy to pay the "industry standard" rate. Many of those big players we would later find were happy to pay far more even. For every player who wanted to "pay less" there were easily 10 that would pay more to get the opportunities their competition…
Did you pivot your business model after this realization, or did you continue to compete on price?
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#6We tried to compete on price in a market that really wasn't as price sensitive as it claimed to be. Yes some people wanted to "pay less" but in reality the big players were happy to pay the "industry standard" rate. Many of those big players we would later find were happy to pay far more even. For every player who wanted to "pay less" there were easily 10 that would pay more to get the opportunities their competition…
Did you pivot your business model after this realization, or did you continue to compete on price?
We did pivot to add a more premium, high touch offering and it sold very well. Thats how we came to the second unhappy realization: Despite having what we considered a very nice TAM the industry didn't really want to be scaled. This meant that our clients who paid for our premium offering were very difficult to service and create value for.
Our business was in a sense connecting buyers with sellers for a fee, and there just weren't enough sellers to satisfy the industry of willing buyers eager to pay for value. A fine boutique business and a solid way to have a $12M/year company focusing on BIG DEALS. Not much of a play to scale with tech and profit by reducing costs and friction. Nobody cared about costs and friction was oddly desirable for our customers as it meant "we're in the game - things are happening!".
Had we not "raised money" and encumbered ourselves with investors we'd have continued operating. As it turned out, we more or less took on a bunch of debt to operate the same business we could have made with no tech at all.
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#7Luckily it didn't get far - co-founding with a fantasist...
How did you realize they were a bad fit?
Because they repeatedly demonstrated a very poor grip on reality: they seemed to think that inventing a bland two-word phrase (a) gave them all rights to all interpretations of that phrase and (b) made my part as prospective tech/CTO easy to conjure that up as spec and reality.
Me still bitter and twisted? Never!
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#8Taking 7 months to figure out the build problem in Python when we only had 6 months.
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#9Forming a partnership with a salesman who couldn't sell and who worse kept me from selling work I could have sold myself. Boy did we get a lot of calls and we learned a lot about the industry we selling into, competitors, etc.
Re: Ask HN: What was your biggest startup fail?
#10Taking 7 months to figure out the build problem in Python when we only had 6 months.
woah thats sad