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?

#381

Post by iamcasen » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 8:32 PM UTC

TL;DR: We were way too ahead of our time.

Back in 2010 I joined the founding team to build a crowd-sourced video editing platform with the goal of getting people to edit their countless hours of home movie footage into short clips they will actually watch instead of them sit on a tape or hard drive somewhere.

We built the whole platform, had the economics all worked out. Did a number of innovative things like connect to a royalty free music API, and Dropbox's API before that was ever released to the public.

In the end it failed because the average consumer did not have fast enough internet in 2010. Most people simply could not upload their files to us, even after we implemented a dropbox integration. Gigs of video files just took too long and people lost interest.

In hindsight, we should have seen that coming and started out by partnering with a digitization service that could handle various formats like tapes, and we should have also done some form of shipping raw media so that consumers wouldn't have to upload files to us. I think we would have succeeded in that case.

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

#382

Post by aarongray » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 8:49 PM UTC

Drdrdrq wrote: post #380

aarongray wrote: post #317

I built an app for kids that created a family currency where kids would pick the chores they wanted to do each day, earn points based upon the difficulty of the chores, and then those points could be redeemed for real-life rewards that they also chose - hosting friends for a sleep-over, a fishing trip with Dad, learn a new card game with Mom, screen time, etc. The problem came with the marketing. When I did my due di…

I don't think you can guess in advance which marketing channel is going to work for you, you need to experiment and see what brings results. There's a book Traction that goes deeper into this, if you haven't given up yet. Good luck, both in business and marriage! :)

Hey that looks like a good book, thanks for the recommendation and well wishes! :)

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

#383

Post by dnate » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 8:50 PM UTC

IloveHN84 wrote: post #148

We were too early regarding the technology (doing 3d real time reconstruction of inner rooms using laser scanner - 2011), without even owning a laser scanner (price tag: $30000). We got to rent one for some hours ($2000/4hours) to get some samples but they were too few to draw a generic, working algorithm. With the samples it worked well, but we didn't get the opportunity to move further, then we ran out of money (fu…

Is there a company out there today that does what your startup tried to achieve back then?

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

#384

Post by Drdrdrq » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 9:13 PM UTC

blazespin wrote: post #138

haolez wrote: post #136

We wanted to create a routing app for bikes, which would take in consideration cliffs, dangerous streets and the likes. With our internal team, we’ve managed to create a killer backend that would do all the hard routing stuff without issues. It was better than Google Maps in most cases! Now, we just needed the app. We used all our money to pay a third party contractor to make the app, and they failed miserably. We ne…

Yeah, frontend work is routinely under estimated. You are not the first.

Yeah. It's not just frontend, you need to figure out the UX too. Backend is usually easy compared to this.

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

#385

Post by webmaven » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

woogiewonka wrote: post #210

pandapower2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The thought was, build it, offer it for free to grow it and then charge. I feel like this is an incredibly common software developer turned entrepreneur mistake. Lack of confidence in asking for money leads to a reluctance to put a price tag on the thing you have built.

With vacation rentals, you have to have people who actually rent stuff and that's the part of the chicken/egg problem I haven't solved yet. While I was able to bootstrap the site, the traffic to it was non-existent thus I felt guilty if I charged people to list. The premise was that they would list for free first, their listings would attract traffic, then I would charge people to list. Meanwhile people are booking a…

The simple way out of that conundrum is to make it free to list (perhaps with an option to upgrade to a "premium" listing for a recurring fee), and charge for the actual bookings made through your site (you'd need to experiment to figure out whether flat fees or a percentage worked better for you).

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

#386

Post by webmaven » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 9:30 PM UTC

haolez wrote: post #136

We wanted to create a routing app for bikes, which would take in consideration cliffs, dangerous streets and the likes. With our internal team, we’ve managed to create a killer backend that would do all the hard routing stuff without issues. It was better than Google Maps in most cases! Now, we just needed the app. We used all our money to pay a third party contractor to make the app, and they failed miserably. We ne…

This sounds interesting to me (the releasing as open source bit, in particular).

What's the backend tech stack?

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

#387

Post by dzonga » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 10:00 PM UTC

mmsimanga wrote: post #331

charlesdm wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did it actually work out though? Is the mine making money?

So the contractor did indeed come through and mine for about three years. Contractor opted not to renew his contract. At this point I have to disclose my home country, it is Zimbabwe. We have had trouble convincing anyone to invest in the country. Dictatorship. Money that we made was shared according to the shareholding structure. I made peanuts. Nothing happening now, I guess we tired from fighting.

tsano, Zim ma1 people just screw each other! i'm from Zim too

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

#388

Post by andreivasiliev » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 10:25 PM UTC

punnerud wrote: post #293

andreivasiliev wrote: post #280

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.

4 years working on it.. Can we have one line of description?

I was working on a video conferencing product targeting enterprise users. There were already many solutions on the market when I started: WebEx, BuleJeans, Skype Business, AdobeConnect, etc. As a regular video conference user, one thing bothering me most was I could not figure out who was talking to whom when there was a heated discussion. So I designed a system that could track people's attention so that everyone would know who was talking to whom. It took me a long time to build a usable product since I had never worked in the video conference industry. After I released a beta product, people told me that they would just ask for clarification if they don't know who was talking to whom. They would never learn to use a new system just because of that.

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

#389

Post by ajones93200 » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 10:31 PM UTC

andreivasiliev wrote: post #296

andreivasiliev wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. I did not talk to my customers while I was first building my product partly because I worry someone might steal the idea, partly because I felt customers would not understand the benefit until I showed them a finished product. And then when I finally showed people a finished product, just as you said, everybody liked it but nobody needed it (or they just pretended to like it :-( ).

Although I learned the lesson, I still think I have not spent enough time talking to customers. I am a shy guy and would rather coding than talking to people.

If you are an entrepreneur, you will have to overcome that psychological barrier. Go to some local events and talk to everybody who is willing to listen to you. Some of them might be your potential customers.

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

#390

Post by andreivasiliev » Tue, Sep 18, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

ajones93200 wrote: post #389

andreivasiliev wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I learned the lesson, I still think I have not spent enough time talking to customers. I am a shy guy and would rather coding than talking to people.

If you are an entrepreneur, you will have to overcome that psychological barrier. Go to some local events and talk to everybody who is willing to listen to you. Some of them might be your potential customers.

I recently moved to SF Bay Area. I live in Fremont (cannot afford to live in SF). I don't know any good places to hang out with peer entrepreneurs. I guess I should try harder.