Why would you take $220K from friends and family without being profitable? It's one thing to want to scale your business, it's another to just try an idea that you're not even sure makes money.
Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
131–140 of 229 posts
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
When did this community get so thoughtlessly cruel? What value does sadism have for you for them or even for the market? Shame on you.
The community isn't "thoughtlessly cruel" as evidenced by the immediate downvotes and comments not agreeing with parent. It is unwise to judge a whole community based on a random comment from an anonymous actor with no reputation whatsoever.
I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#133You're saying your fff investors are giving mixed signals and you're not sure what to make of them.
We're not your fff investors so we can't unmix those signals for you; our guesses are worse than yours.
So just do what you'll always have to do when you need to get alignment/resolve conflicting signals: get everyone into a room and don't let the meeting end until everyone agrees on the right way forward.
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
When did this community get so thoughtlessly cruel? What value does sadism have for you for them or even for the market? Shame on you.
Cruel? What about the other people with an actual useful project who didn't get a chance to raise money because OP was distracting the same investors with a silly idea. OP used their pitch presentation skills to divert opportunities away from other actual hard working people who might have used the money to do something useful for society.
Other people with useful projects probably didn't have access to the people OP used. You are implying that OP manipulated people to give him money while knowing that he had a bad idea, if this were true why would he want to give money back and why post here? If he were a conman he wouldn't ask for advice on how to proceed.
Even if you had a great idea there's countless ways to lose 100k. If you don't hire the right people you just lost money; if you're a toxic manager or just don't know how to assign tasks to people the whole startup will burn for it.
If you hire 3 people with a 5k per month salary you burn 45k in 3 months, idk where you're from but 100k isn't a lot of money for a startup in the US.
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cruel? What about the other people with an actual useful project who didn't get a chance to raise money because OP was distracting the same investors with a silly idea. OP used their pitch presentation skills to divert opportunities away from other actual hard working people who might have used the money to do something useful for society.
Other people with useful projects probably didn't have access to the people OP used. You are implying that OP manipulated people to give him money while knowing that he had a bad idea, if this were true why would he want to give money back and why post here? If he were a conman he wouldn't ask for advice on how to proceed. Even if you had a great idea there's countless ways to lose 100k. If you don't hire the right p…
I'm a consequentialist so the intention doesn't change anything for me.
All I'm saying is that this is really bad and OP should accept that they will have to suffer through the consequences.
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community isn't "thoughtlessly cruel" as evidenced by the immediate downvotes and comments not agreeing with parent. It is unwise to judge a whole community based on a random comment from an anonymous actor with no reputation whatsoever.
I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
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Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#137I hope you find the right answer.
Selfishly I want a start up to develop cheaper goods for offices, like desk lamps... why are those so expensive?
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your attitude isn’t helpful or welcome here. We all struggle with complex decisions from time to time; we all make mistakes, and most of us are far less perfect than we’d perhaps like to admit. Seeking advice from a peer group is a good step towards learning how to avoid the mistakes in the future. “You’re an idiot and so is everyone you know” is not advice.
It is advice. It means "You've had your shot, you failed, now let someone else have a go." Some people make it sound like raising investment is as trivial as buying a burger from Macdonald's. I haven't been to America yet but it sounds hard to believe.
No, but for the right people in the right place at the right time raising seed capital is about as difficult as applying for a job. It’s just that you have to invent and pitch the job.
In that context you could think of the post as “I got this job by saying I was going to help the company do X. Six months in I’m pretty sure that’s not going to work. I think I should just quit, but some of my coworkers think I should keep trying, or consider doing X’, since there are a lot of things at the company which could be better. What should I do?”
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
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If my comments can help to disincentivize just one future failed wannabe entrepreneur from raising money for their useless project then it was all worth it.
Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community isn't "thoughtlessly cruel" as evidenced by the immediate downvotes and comments not agreeing with parent. It is unwise to judge a whole community based on a random comment from an anonymous actor with no reputation whatsoever.
I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.
Donating it to charity wasn’t on offer. It’s not like OP stole the money.
Heck, I raised some of my seed capital from a venture fund that is mostly backed by an international charity, and apparently that charity thinks that a little bit of venture capitalism is a good use of their money. I actually get an annual letter from their LPs about the charitable work we are supporting, and share it with my employees.
Not everything people try works out, and the world appears to overall be a better place for the trying.