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

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

#391

Post by me_eu »

JamesCoyne wrote: post #68
thanatos_dem wrote: post #60

CEO would disappear for months at a time, with the promise of returning with capital. We never really knew where he went, and he wouldn’t let anyone else talk to investors (including me, who was CTO). Eventually he stopped paying us, but promised that the money was just tied up in the parent company set up in the caymans. After 2 months of not paying myself or any other employees, the COO and I drainked the remainder…

Why shouldn't a startup fuck with the cartels?

In Romania we ain't Estebans but Michails and we don't do weed but forests. Nevertheless you don't wanna face a Michail alone in one of our forests.

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

#392

Post by myth_buster »

timoth3y wrote: post #114

I wrote a detailed and (to me) heartbreaking account of this two years ago. The article went viral and kind of freaked me out, but I think the advice is as good as ever. https://medium.com/startup-lesson-learned/why-i-turned-down-...

Thank you for sharing your story/learnings. I didn't come across your blog initially. These specially resonated with me:

  I need a higher level of certainty than investors do because my time is more valuable to me than their money is to them. Investors place bets in a portfolio of companies, but I only have one life.

  Listen to what your users say, but believe what they do.

  From now on, immediate benefit: sell to the user. Long term benefit: sell to the boss.

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

#393

Post by t0mbstone »

pandapower2 wrote: post #195
konschubert wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there a middle way between a handshake deal and 10K on lawyers, meaning that you write down the terms in paper in a wording that sounds right to you and then sign off on it?

A simple email between the two of you describing the terms would be a vast improvement on a handshake deal.

The interesting thing was that I actually did send him an email with an outline of the terms, and when he got the email he verbally said, "looks great! let's do it!".

I was too dumb and naive to catch on and realize that his verbal agreement was worthless, and I moved forward without ever getting anything explicitly printed out and signed.

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

#394

Post by gitgud »

aarongray wrote: post #352
robbick wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does this product still exist?

Yeah, it still exists, I just paused development on it. https://www.chorosaur.com/ .

Pretty cool idea, I can see the incentive for kids and parents using this. It's not a failure, hope it works out for you!

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

#395

Post by EpicEng »

everybodyknows wrote: post #372
EpicEng wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is why, for instance, Mormons seldom defraud other Mormons >If the link is mere nominal membership in the same faith, that may be worse than no link at all So which is it?

Not enough info in the article to form a judgement.

...You're the one who made the initial claim.

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

#396

Post by nojvek »

I made a small startup while backpacking. It was called backpackbud. Contained list of hostels, tips, things to do etc

Maintinaing it was pain, backpackers are cheap and I didn’t make any money. It died.

Then I started bewolo.com with some friends. Those friends brought in their friends and I was the only technical guy. My shares were Startups are hard. We only hear about the successes and big IPOs and think I can do it too.

I’m probably going to do it again but this time, try to go full time for at-least an year.

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

#397

Post by haolez »

Drdrdrq wrote: post #384
blazespin wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The backend was damn hard. But so was the app! Routing and navigation is a tough domain.

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

#398

Post by haolez »

webmaven wrote: post #386
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?

A combination of PostgreSQL + PostGIS + pgRouting, Java + GraphHopper and my personal favorite: PostgREST!

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

#399

Post by anitil »

gfarah wrote: post #357
maayank wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting to 550 consumers sounds impressive. How did you achieve that? Any resources that in retrospect helped you most?

In our case we approached construction companies. After a lot of one on one talks, we convince a couple with upcoming projects to sell the new houses they were planning on building with our devices pre-installed and use that fact as a selling point when pitching to prospective home owners. Prospective owners then, could decide to opt-out from having our product pre-installed and save that cost, but the majority wante…

It's these little ideas that make this place so great. Most of the time I would think 'I want to sell to X so I will try to sell to X'. This extra step of almost pre-selling and then making it an opt-out is such a brilliant idea.
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