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Why my projects keep failing

adayinthelifeof.nl

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Re: Why my projects keep failing

#31

Post by is0tope »

It's basically always one of the two that's the main problem:

1. No actual customer. You built something you THOUGHT people wanted, but they actually didn't.

2. Bad/No Marketing.

You need to talk to customers to discover a problem first, then work on fixing it. In all my time trying to do side projects I'm becoming convinced this is some sort of innate skill as I have acquaintances who seem to have an uncanny ability to spot an opportunity in just about anything. If you can pair with people like this, great!

As for marketing, this is even more key and possibly even fixes problem 1 in some cases. I've said this before, but take a look at many of these "I started a dog social media website and now I have 10k MRR" more closely. 90% of the time the author already had a blog about dogs or something similar with 50k subscribers.

To that end, I've been focusing on working on my blog :)

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#32

Post by slightwinder »

is0tope wrote: post #31

It's basically always one of the two that's the main problem: 1. No actual customer. You built something you THOUGHT people wanted, but they actually didn't. 2. Bad/No Marketing. You need to talk to customers to discover a problem first, then work on fixing it. In all my time trying to do side projects I'm becoming convinced this is some sort of innate skill as I have acquaintances who seem to have an uncanny ability…

> 1. No actual customer. You built something you THOUGHT people wanted, but they actually didn't. > > 2. Bad/No Marketing.

I'd even say it's most always 2. If people don't want it, then your marketing just failed to attract the matching customers. Instead, there is also the case of a poor executed product. It's something people want, but can't use because it's not good enough for what it aims to deliver. I guess everyone knows those cases of software which are 90%+ matching their demand, but missing that one little detail which makes them unattractive as a whole.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#33

Post by kingcharles »

happytiger wrote: post #20

This is great. I love it when there’s honest post from a builder. The explanation for failure is clear to me. None of these products as they are constructed are customer-lead. They don’t start with product market fit. As crazy as it hounds the number one reason startups fail is a lack of customers. You love building the technical solution. You want to have market success. But your passion is probably not talking to t…

This was one of my dumbest failures:

http://www.dudefactory.com/

(it has no SSL cert, it uses Flash which is 110% dead)

It was launched at the height of AIM/MSN Messenger/etc. I thought we could charge $1/£1/€1 per picture.

Two things: none of our target market had money (you could pay by SMS as well as card, but no-one was doing that), and the avatars just weren't attractive - the women wanted ones that looked like dolls, not weird cartoons. Tried pivoting to AdSense supported and make about $30 a month IIRC.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#34

Post by clairity »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #26
happytiger wrote: post #20

This is great. I love it when there’s honest post from a builder. The explanation for failure is clear to me. None of these products as they are constructed are customer-lead. They don’t start with product market fit. As crazy as it hounds the number one reason startups fail is a lack of customers. You love building the technical solution. You want to have market success. But your passion is probably not talking to t…

Someone posted a link today about the 4 Ps - which dredged up a few synapses from my college days and the realisation that all the post-2000 advice people have been trying to learn has always been known - Product - Price - Placement - Promotion

as much as the MBA is maligned in tech/startup circles, ~90% of startup "learnings" is taught in business school, mostly in marketing classes, because business is mostly marketing (and the 4 P's are the pillars of marketing).

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#35

Post by mch82 »

“I don’t start projects with a direct goal.”

These are hobbies that fail as “projects” because they aren’t projects (it sounds like they were actually successful hobbies).

Here’s the PMI definition of project:

> All projects are a temporary effort to create value through a unique product, service or result. All projects have a beginning and an end. They have a team, a budget, a schedule and a set of expectations the team needs to meet. Each project is unique and differs from routine operations—the ongoing activities of an organization—because projects reach a conclusion once the goal is achieved.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#36

Post by knlam »

The only advice I can give op is to find another person to help marketing/grow stuff.

I also fell into the trap of making products without thinking about sale/marketing (or I thought I could do it myself). Turn out the mindset of the creator and the mindset of the hustler is widely different. I am sure many others out there can do both, but it is better for me and OP to accept that as fact and find a cofounder. You will be surprise how changing the narrative can change how customers perceive your product.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#37

Post by AutumnMeowMeow »

> Enthusiasm and loneliness are killing factors

Yup, I know this one quite well.

My day job is Not Programming and Not In IT, and I need it that way for my sanity. But my hobby has been coding for...35 years now? It's hard to have a few projects so far "out there" and no one IRL to talk to about it.

Got some nice folks online though. :)

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#38

Post by mathgladiator »

I like to call such a list a "wall of shame", and I have my own over here: http://jeffrey.io/wall-of-shame.html

What has helped me over the years is that I view tech as art, and so these projects are only market failures. Your growth as a technologist is manifest, and it's important to see side projects as a form of practice.

If you can move past the failure label and see everything as successful at something, then you feel a whole lot better. A discipline that I have had for decades now is to write a postmortem on why I believe a project is a failure because that crystalizes my learning.

My history helped me excel as a principal engineer which put me towards an early retirement where I can now focus on my ultimate side project: Adama ( http://www.adama-lang.org/ ) which I am turning into a new kind of PaaS thing.

Here is the crazy thing: I already know that I'm making several mistakes as I have no customers and no one asking me for anything. This is an exceptionally lonely way to start a project as the OP and others have noted, but I'm enjoying it well enough.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#39

Post by tjpnz »

Is there a middle ground between the Lean Startup crowd who say you should never write any code at the beginning versus op's view of a fully functional product? I'm pursuing a working prototype but am constantly being told by both camps that I'm doing too much or too little. I don't think wireframes are going to cut it but I don't want to spend every spare hour I have on what others have already said is a lonely and sometimes monotonous existence.

Re: Why my projects keep failing

#40

Post by mikesabat »

I've created my share of failed side projects. There's a few things that I've learned (am learning).

1. Test the market as early as possible. This doesn't need to be user conversations. Start testing the basic assumptions with product - it's a bit of an art to figure out how to do this.

2. Traction will take much longer than expected. So don't quit your day job, literally.

3. I won't build anything where the product doesn't market itself. It's too easy to make step one building the product and then step 2 is pretending to market/sell it, but pulling the rip cord after $500. So, it seems worthwhile to focus on ideas that if they work, will naturally spread.

Good luck!

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