Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

sorry, I meant: why did my startup failed: I was pretty much working alone what did I learn: build a team

It failed because I was an idiot who thought he knew it all. It also failed because my co-founders were my best friends so the "partnering" wasn't based on skills or what you bring to the table, but rather the fact of us being friends. And finally I've fought my incubator/accelerator who were idiots enough to fight me back and it was almost a bullying tournament, I'm glad we solved that and everyone carried on with their lives.

I've learned a lot, to listen more and to choose wisely, not to spend any money before knowing what it will return to the company and also not to over promise. If I have to do it all over again I would but with the mindset of "I want to change my self first" before thinking about changing the world.

> The population of the U.S. is over 300 mil. How many people die or get sick every year because of our drinking water? It's got to be very small if any

All that means is “it’s very safe”. To call it “the safest in the world” is just blind patriotism. There might be long-term health effects caused by but difficult to attribute to water that are more prevalent in the US than other countries, for all we know.

> Just by you asking the question, highlights how well sales and marketing have worked when it comes to bottled water.

I’m not the person who asked, but no it doesn’t! All it highlights is how hyperbolic your statement was. It wasn’t an argument for or against bottled water at all.

So far I've had at least 4 failed side projects/startups, and one mildly successful product (so far).

Back in 2014 I tried to build a product recommendation service based on Reddit subreddits, where I would make money from Amazon referrals. I actually got to the front page of Reddit and Hacker News, but Amazon rejected my referral application, because apparently they don't approve any websites that have a grid layout of products (too similar to amazon.com.) I retried a few times but still couldn't get it approved, so shut the website down.

My first attempt at cofounding startup was a social network for skateboarders: http://hdwr.co. It wasn't a great idea but our team was pretty amazing. We set up a lunch with Tony Hawk (although nothing came of that), and were in talks with The Berrics (a big skateboarding brand) about a partnership, but couldn't work out a deal. In the end we didn't have enough users or growth, and after a few years everyone got bored and we shut it down. Never made a single dollar.

I had an idea for a mobile game that I thought would be fun: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/boops-boops-swoops/id1128234... It had an "AR" mode, a few years before that became a big thing. Anyway, I executed poorly and the game sucked. It just wasn't very fun, and I didn't make any sales. I learned that I'm not very good at making games, and even good games are a lottery ticket.

Second game: https://sudoblock.com I had a lot of fun building SudoBlock, and it was really good to learn React Native. It was awesome to build a single app that could run on Android, iOS, Windows, and web. I posted it on Reddit and tried some other marketing things, and I earned a total of $30 from in-app purchases. I learned that I'm still not very good at making games. I think the execution was a tiny bit better than my earlier game, but still pretty bad. And the game just wasn't very fun or addictive. If I ever do another game, I should probably hire a designer. But I probably won't, because I enjoy doing everything myself, even if it sucks. And maybe I'll get better at it eventually.

My current project is FormAPI (https://formapi.io), which is a B2B SaaS service that I've bootstrapped. I launched about 11 months ago, and I'm not really comfortable with disclosing the revenue, but it's doing really well. I'm excited to keep working on it for the next few years and seeing what happens.

I come from a coal mining region. For over a 100 years there has only been one mine in the area, a big mine. There is plenty of coal in the surrounding areas. This is Africa. An uncle of mine had the idea that we start a mine. He invited about 20 of us, all related. We started putting aside money to register a company, pay a geologist to prospect for the coal and get mining permit to mine the coal. We all contributed money on a monthly basis. All paper work is done in the capital city so we used to send the oldest uncle in the group to go process the paperwork. He had worked in government before and he was older. In my culture you respect old(er) people.

To cut a long story short we successfully registered the company, got a geologist to confirm there was indeed coal and got a mining license from the government. We then signed a contract with a sub contractor to come and mine. When the share certificates came instead of owing 5% I ownwed 0.00086% of the mine. Yes there were 3 zeros before the 86. Our elder the uncle we had sent to do the paperwork basically screwed all of us, including the uncle who originally came up with the idea.

Lessions 1. Never use your cultural beliefs in business. Stick to contracts. 2. Don't just trust family.