Ask HN: Save my dying Startup

Dear HNers, I am writing this post in hopes of getting some help on saving my startup which is slowly decaying before my eyes; countless hours of work, tens of thousands of dollars spent, and a ton of sacrifice just dying. There is a wealth of knowledge that exists at HN and I’m hoping some folks can steer me in the right direction with my dying startup because at this point I’m not sure what to do? About three years ago, my friend and I thought up an idea for creating a "social network for traders." He had worked in finance for one of the biggest forex brokers and was a trader of foreign exchange. A few months into his work, he realized that this company, with its millions of clients, was missing a critical component that clients constantly kept asking about "can I communicate with other clients regarding certain positions or trends in the market?" Coming from a web development/IT background, I immediately got to work on creating a small prototype of what we both envisioned to be a forum for currency traders to come and discuss their strategies, trades, tips and suggestions on choosing brokers, etc. etc. The website was simple but as we put more effort into it, we realized there wasn’t any real competitor to a website that caters to an international community of traders at all. We figured our ideas are on a much bigger scale and we decided to proceed further and bring our ideas to fruition. What started as a hobby and then a venture soon turned into a business. Six months into it, we picked up an angel investor overseas (coincidentally, one of my buddy’s clients who was interested in such an idea). As money rolled in, web development expanded dramatically. We outsourced all the dev work to India, having two firms work around the clock, we hired mathematicians to help with formulas, and hired graphic artists. We managed teams of workers and went through countless design phases and formula tweaks. The overall premise of the site expanded from a simple forum to a world wide community, where traders can interact and compete with other traders by predicting the weeks end financial markets. Today, our weekly competitions, allow traders to pick from various local or world markets, and try to predict how that respective market will close. Besides forex, we include other markets such as futures, U.S. markets and world markets. Each prediction is graded based on a unique scale according to our internal algorithm. The scale "tiers" are provided on the website in layman’s terms to make the user understand how he can earn or lose virtual dollars (which in turn, can be redeemed for real-world prizes). In the short team, the momentum was flowing and we were convinced that we were on the up and up. We had enough money for development and knew what we needed to spend to get to where we wanted to be. Then in 2009, our investor backed out half way into the process leaving us with no money left for marketing (we originally wanted to leave 60% for marketing and advertising). Today, we still believe in our idea but ever since the money dried up, we found ourselves not being able to market the website properly and in turn leaving it stale and hope that word-of-mouth will help. Development is more or less complete and we have active users trading but the momentum is gone and in a way so is our motivation. The easy answer is to say "keep working at it" but it is difficult especially when time is so valuable (we are in our late 20’s and life is becoming more challenging i.e. jobs, women, money, etc.). What does an aspiring entrepreneur do now knowing that his idea can still work but has no motivation to continue without short-term incentives?

At the risk of sounding foolish, there is some truth to "keeping at it." Check out airBnB's talk startup school; you guys seem to be in a similar place as they were a year or so ago.

According to you, you're nearly complete with development, and marketing is your biggest expense. That's better than some situations (no cash, no products either). Marketing is the easiest thing to reduce in expenses.

The most powerful tools in your marketing arsenal are handshakes, telephones and business cards. Go to small groups for face-to-face conferences with potential users, and take your current users out for a series of lunches/beers. Contribute as much as possible to the user generated content of the site itself. If it is a form of web2.0 for traders, you and the rest of the team should post things several times a day - the site may become much richer because of it.

What's the lack of motivation due to? If you're not motivated by the product anymore then get out now, but if you're just feeling beaten down then absolutely keep at it.

When you say you outsourced all the development it sounds like you expected this project to take off without getting your hands dirty. What have you been doing to market it? Word of mouth won't help you if you're not even talking about it. Go out to conferences and meetups and talk. Get to know bloggers or journalists who write about investing. You have some users? Talk to them. Ask them what they love and what they hate about your product. Find out how they're using it. Find people who aren't using your product and see how they're solving their own problems. I know a trader who still uses IRC chats. Start asking a bunch of questions and get excited!

If you know the idea can work, than a limited/non-existent marketing budget shouldn't stop you and it certainly shouldn't discourage you this much.

It sounds to me like you need to dig deeper, both into getting more funding and reviving your motivation. You've come this far. It seems a foolish idea to me that you would consider pulling the plug becacuse you lack cash for marketing.

Cash can be found. Keep at it. Perseverence is hard and success has peaks and valleys. Just because you're in a valley right now, doesn't mean it will last forever.

For me, the text is just one huge blob, so I made a half-assed attempt to format it so that it's more readable:

The website he is referring to is http://www.yatrader.com

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Dear HNers,

I am writing this post in hopes of getting some help on saving my startup which is slowly decaying before my eyes; countless hours of work, tens of thousands of dollars spent, and a ton of sacrifice just dying. There is a wealth of knowledge that exists at HN and I’m hoping some folks can steer me in the right direction with my dying startup because at this point I’m not sure what to do?

About three years ago, my friend and I thought up an idea for creating a "social network for traders." He had worked in finance for one of the biggest forex brokers and was a trader of foreign exchange.

A few months into his work, he realized that this company, with its millions of clients, was missing a critical component that clients constantly kept asking about "can I communicate with other clients regarding certain positions or trends in the market?"

Coming from a web development/IT background, I immediately got to work on creating a small prototype of what we both envisioned to be a forum for currency traders to come and discuss their strategies, trades, tips and suggestions on choosing brokers, etc. etc.

The website was simple but as we put more effort into it, we realized there wasn’t any real competitor to a website that caters to an international community of traders at all.

We figured our ideas are on a much bigger scale and we decided to proceed further and bring our ideas to fruition. What started as a hobby and then a venture soon turned into a business.

Six months into it, we picked up an angel investor overseas (coincidentally, one of my buddy’s clients who was interested in such an idea). As money rolled in, web development expanded dramatically. We outsourced all the dev work to India, having two firms work around the clock, we hired mathematicians to help with formulas, and hired graphic artists. We managed teams of workers and went through countless design phases and formula tweaks.

The overall premise of the site expanded from a simple forum to a world wide community, where traders can interact and compete with other traders by predicting the weeks end financial markets.

Today, our weekly competitions, allow traders to pick from various local or world markets, and try to predict how that respective market will close. Besides forex, we include other markets such as futures, U.S. markets and world markets.

Each prediction is graded based on a unique scale according to our internal algorithm. The scale "tiers" are provided on the website in layman’s terms to make the user understand how he can earn or lose virtual dollars (which in turn, can be redeemed for real-world prizes).

In the short team, the momentum was flowing and we were convinced that we were on the up and up. We had enough money for development and knew what we needed to spend to get to where we wanted to be.

Then in 2009, our investor backed out half way into the process leaving us with no money left for marketing (we originally wanted to leave 60% for marketing and advertising).

Today, we still believe in our idea but ever since the money dried up, we found ourselves not being able to market the website properly and in turn leaving it stale and hope that word-of-mouth will help. Development is more or less complete and we have active users trading but the momentum is gone and in a way so is our motivation.

The easy answer is to say "keep working at it" but it is difficult especially when time is so valuable (we are in our late 20’s and life is becoming more challenging i.e. jobs, women, money, etc.).

What does an aspiring entrepreneur do now knowing that his idea can still work but has no motivation to continue without short-term incentives? ---