My Startup Failed. Fuck.

I've been there done that, so I get the frustration you went through. Lesson # 1 What people say is cool doesn't mean that it's something that they'd use. Just because you say you're building the next Facebook will get you some "that's cool" responses but doesn't mean they'd actually use it.

One of the most useful things I do to validate an idea is to actually use YC's application- if you can't answer all the questions about your idea without any doubts, you're don't have a solid idea yet. And validating your idea means to follow up at the very least with the people that said it was "cool". Forget the stealth startups, be completely transparent in what you're building and have beta users follow you from day 1.

Good luck with your next thing!

"Dynamic pricing" -- does anyone really like that? I've seen reports of online booksellers (no, not Amazon) giving people different prices based on the account they use. No one really likes to feel like a sucker.

EDIT to add: Some people might bring up airline tickets or hotel rooms. Limited analog inventory, not infinite digital inventory.

Welcome... do it again.

I see this happen more and more that we talk to our potential customers about the idea we've been brewing and they say 'heck yeah I would totally use it', later only to find no interest in it. One thing I learned is, most of our ideas are pretty cool and most likely all the potential customers would agree when you try to validate but very few would actually hop on to try it. May be the implementation wasn't right, or may be its too hard to change the customer behavior to switch. Sometimes the customer was not serious enough when you pitched.

This seems unkind. What data would you want? It's easy to jeer in hindsight, but frankly if focused and professional market research could reliably determine the existence of new markets there would be no need for a startup to find them. This very web site wouldn't exist.

They played a hunch and lost. The linked post details lots of mistakes, but this particular one doesn't seem like one to me.