Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn? • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by bsenftner » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

ttoinou wrote: post #181

bsenftner wrote: post #128

Too early with a ML product back in '08, people were not ready to believe such a thing was possible: basically a working VFX pipeline for what are now called "deep fakes", but I targeted inserting consumers into brand advertising TV commercials and music videos. First people simply could not grasp the concept, then they did not believe it was possible, and then because I wrote it alone and had no team VCs and partner…

Sell it as an After Effects / OpenFX plugin to begin with

It is as big if not larger than After Effects - it's an entire VFX pipeline: servers as render nodes, as compositor nodes, and so on... All extremely high speed, to the tune of 150,000 30 second clips per minute. It is/was a globally scaled on-demand VFX pipeline. Not even the VFX industry has such pipelines.

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

#272

Post by beh9540 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:15 PM UTC

Right out of school, another person and I had a startup building a managed VoIP solution.

We didn't start selling early enough, and underestimated the amount of time closing our first sale would take. That lead to my business partner taking another job to make ends meet, and not able to meet obligations to our company. Since he was managing the relationships and I was doing the tech, I basically was left trying to manage the relationships from scratch, many of whom weren't interested anymore. I very quickly ran out of money before we could sign a contract.

Lessons (probably too many to list): 1. B2B sales is a lot harder than the tech. Make sure you have the runway to compensate for learning how to sell. 2. Make sure your business partner(s) are as committed as you are. 3. Don't use your own money, or at least have multiple sources of income. 4. Have a good advisor. I feel like if I had someone I could have asked questions to, I would have been more successful, or never would have taken the risk. 5. Probably most importantly, don't look at it as a failure, but a learning experience. I was pretty depressed when everything came crashing down, but I learned later that it was a valuable experience that put me ahead of a lot of other people just due to the sheer amount of work it was.

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

#273

Post by justaguyhere » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

dragandj wrote: post #200

thanatos_dem wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Luckily, nothing too exciting happened. We were operating in the financial tech space in Mexico, trying to make lending less comically predatory (a standard small business loan in Mexico can have close to the same interest rate as a payday loan in the US). With that goal in mind, we were targeting areas in Mexico that needed the most help. Cities with a decent small business sector, looking to grow, and having diffic…

Shouldn't that be a common knowledge in the area and work out as their competitive disadvantage? Provided that there are at least some competitors that are better for the customer?

This is Juarez we are talking about. Maybe this motorcycle gang was scary enough for the competitors, maybe they have cops/politicians in their pockets... There could be any number of reasons for the gang to flourish, starting with violence

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

#274

Post by eps » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:16 PM UTC

mleonhard wrote: post #107

I started RestBackup, a backup service for small business databases. I coded 6 months before talking to customers. When I finally talked with them, I learned that I built mostly the wrong thing. I spent half a year changing my product to fit their needs. I could have saved about 6 months by talking with people first. Then I used the wrong sales strategy. I focused on cold emailing, snail mail, and cold calling, which…

Looked at restbackup site - it's not clear what you do or offer. Is it some sort of embeddable component for backing up host app's data to the cloud? But billed through you?

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

#275

Post by mathattack » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:17 PM UTC

One I joined failed due to:

1 - Inability to convert unpaid customers to paid. (And a focus on the wrong vanity metrics)

2 - Poor analytics which caused number 1. (The AI didn’t work)

3 - Weak governance. (Too much money too early, and a paradoxically bad founder/funder relationship)

4 - Excessivr nepotism, side projects and conflicts of interest.

This gave me a checklist to look for in companies I subsequently interviewed at.

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

#276

Post by danilocesar » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:23 PM UTC

fybe wrote: post #221

I was part of a start-up that still exists but it seems to be stagnating. i left due to the founders having almost nothing in common except for making money. The site is like squarespace but for local shops and businesses. The founders met on an airplane and thought they can make a business. So you had the business CEO with no technical background living in X country and the ruthless CTO with his team in Y country. I…

Thats's nice... the CTO commited a crime by stealling the money and the CEO commited a insurance fraud to keep the company. I'm glad you left, I hope you ended up in a place that's not being run by criminals :)

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

#277

Post by stealthcat » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:30 PM UTC

mmsimanga wrote: post #219

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…

>Don't just trust family

Reminder what happened to Joseph in his life [0].

[0] https://quran.com/12

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

#278

Post by SkyPuncher » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:31 PM UTC

theelous3 wrote: post #252

mmsimanga wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this uncle was elected as the chairperson and given power of attorney to register everything on our behalf. The capital city is a good 800km away and we all had day jobs. As I said in another comment, the true problem was we (I) believed a family member wouldn't screw us like that. So it was literally a handshake agreement.

A handshake agreement is enforceable.

While technically correct, realistically unprobable.

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

#279

Post by gelstudios » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:32 PM UTC

beh9540 wrote: post #272

Right out of school, another person and I had a startup building a managed VoIP solution. We didn't start selling early enough, and underestimated the amount of time closing our first sale would take. That lead to my business partner taking another job to make ends meet, and not able to meet obligations to our company. Since he was managing the relationships and I was doing the tech, I basically was left trying to ma…

I had a similar experience with managed VoIP. The first almost-accidental customers seemed like a good sign that the most minimal viable product could work as a business. But we did not start selling early enough, and it played out almost exactly as you described.

Lessons: 1. Sales is hard, especially if you have never done it 2. Commitment -- everyone involved should have skin in the game 3. Hardware is hard, even when you don't manufacture it -- refurbishing + firmware modifying ip phones, poe equipment, etc ate into our runway

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

#280

Post by andreivasiliev » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 1:33 PM UTC

My startup failed because I was too secretive. I though I had a great idea and always worried that somebody would copy it. I spent 4 years working on my idea only to find out that nobody was interested in what I was doing. Now my mentality completely changed. I will be flattered if someone even bothers to copy my idea. At least that means I am doing something right.