Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

I suspect that's because HN doesn't make it clear that your email isn't publicly visible on your profile.

Most times there are shades of the true answer spread across multiple HN comments. That isn’t true here. This (the comment I’m replying to) is the only realistic way of looking at it. You need raw grit. My brother hit his tendon with a hatchet an 8 hour hike from civilization deep in the Canadian wilderness. He hiked back. Every step hurt. Sometimes you just need to move forward step by painful step. If you don’t you will fail. Sometimes it’s ok to fail. Sometimes it’s not. If not, just keep moving forward.

I'm on year 2 of my startup, and around month 9, I felt similar to you, so I can relate. Real traction began around month 20, and its still modest. Here are a couple of issues I see:

1. 9 months isn't long enough, as others have said. There are exceptions, but those are the exceptions. I can't think of any startup in recent history truly reaching product/market fit within its first couple of years. Facebook, I guess. It's not abnormal for it to not happen years out. pmarca's material on it suggests this, as well.

2. You not only raised money very early, but you raised it from non-professional investors, as far as I can tell, so you're un-nerved about losing their money, while they want to push you to turn their thousands into millions. Raising more money at this point is only going to exacerbate everything you're going through.

3. High-touch sales are absolutely the norm in B2B. Your efforts are a good thing. If you take a lot of the typical YC advice at face value, you'll be lead to believe that you should be measuring your conversions, etc, and having a nice hockey-stick shaped growth curve. This is absolutely not going to be the case for a B2B company on month 9, unless they've struck platinum. There was a startup school segment where Kevin Hale (IIRC) advised the founders not to measure sales, since they'd likely be in the single digits for the first year and not yield anything meaningful. Instead, you should be measuring your own outreach. Any other metric is going to be close enough to zero to be meaningless at this stage. Your product is going to be crappy, your presentations and pitches are going to be awkward and sloppy.

At the end of the day, you have the best idea of your chances for survival. With what you've mentioned so far, there's promise, but it'll be up to you to make it happen. Even if you stick it out for a year or two longer, the odds, of course, are still against you.

1. I think giving up at this stage is the the easiest thing to do - and I think it common due to the uncertainty about the future

2. Check that you can imagine yourself spending next few years doing what you are doing, just even more harder

3. If so, double down, as suggested above ask why, why and why. If needed, pivot.

Events and tradeshows are in a category of their own, but anything that goes wrong in front of an audience comes with a large emotional burden. In events, there is never such a thing as perfect, but learning to execute well means less surprises. If you're burnt by recent catastrophes, know that there is also an amazing feeling that comes when things do go right. If you like/trust the people you are doing it with then stick with it until you can get a win, then decide if you want to keep at it.