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My Startup Failed. Fuck.

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Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#61

Post by Retric »

thisisrobv wrote: post #45
ChuckMcM wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Startups often live on the cusp of 'other people think we should quit but we're not going to!' I appreciated these sorts of posts because they are illustrative. The only thing to be bothered by is if you don't find anything to learn from the experience.

I feel like this is a point that is often lost. It's why being an entrepreneur is such a huge risk. You have to be stubborn enough to succeed in a world where the majority of people will tell you you're going to fail, you have to ignore all that. Often times however, you do fail.

I think the opposite problem is also worth considering. No matter how bad the idea some people you trust will probably say go for it.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#63

Post by starpilot »

cup wrote: post #3

Reading about failures can be more illuminating and educational than reading about success. It's interesting to see how you reached a number of gateways where you could have terminated but instead continued to pursue your goals/dreams (despite going against what many would consider the logical conclusion to close). I wonder how many other business have adopted that strategy (of ignoring initial reduced interest in yo…

Learning from failures is invaluable. Focusing only on successes is like getting a math exam back and only studying the ones you got right. Paraphrasing Tolstoy: all successes are alike, each failure is unique. It seems like there are far more ways to go wrong than right, but developing that catalog of mistakes from which to learn is difficult when it can be so painful to share (and often to listen to) unpleasant experiences.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#64

Post by dpolaske »

arbuge wrote: post #58

Great story & thanks for sharing this. I was curious about why you chose to go with Amazon Payments... why not PayPal, or your own merchant account?

Billing info was authorized, but not captured until the end of the sale period. Similar to what Kickstarter does. Amazon is really the only option (that we could find) that would allow that type of flow.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#65

Post by therobotking »

greyfox wrote: post #29

seems like it shoulda really taken off for independent artists.

Mmm, if you look at the site it's really not that surprising it didn't take off.

http://zillionears.com/

Landing on that site and seeing the big 'Create Sale' button is pretty confusing. I don't think 'oh this is a site for musicians to sell their music directly to fans'. It also claims I can use 'social sales' but is that a meaningful term? I've never heard it before and it sounds pretty buzzwordy.

edit: Just watched the video on the front page and I can easily believe that only 1 out of 1700 people thought it was worth bothering with.

The execution just seems awful.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#66

Post by coldtea »

danenania wrote: post #35
cup wrote: post #3

Reading about failures can be more illuminating and educational than reading about success. It's interesting to see how you reached a number of gateways where you could have terminated but instead continued to pursue your goals/dreams (despite going against what many would consider the logical conclusion to close). I wonder how many other business have adopted that strategy (of ignoring initial reduced interest in yo…

I think part of the difficulty of knowing when (or when not) to quit is that opportunity lurks even inside failure. My first startup attempt was a coaching marketplace and community for poker players. My co-founder and I were both successful professional poker players and coaches at the time, but we were young (20ish) and all but clueless about technology. I still think the market opportunity was there, but we hired…

>I think part of the difficulty of knowing when (or when not) to quit is that opportunity lurks even inside failure.

No, it does not. Since, statistically, most startups fail, it's is mathematically sound to assume that mostly failure lurks inside failure.

At some point you have to stop and do something else. Even if you've lost money and time, it's wiser to quit and do other stuff, than continue to losing money and time in the same endless sink.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#67

Post by jfb »

So did mine, largely because I was not able to commit to it for a variety of reasons that wouldn't be unfamiliar. I like reading the success stories, but I get pretty down thinking about my experience -- not the doing, but the way it ended up going down.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#68

Post by ljd »

mikecane wrote: post #13

"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.

This is not dynamic pricing. This is subtracting a dollar after every sale.

Companies like this make it very hard to explain what we do which is use machine learning to maximize profits.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#70

Post by dolphenstein »

danenania wrote: post #35
cup wrote: post #3

Reading about failures can be more illuminating and educational than reading about success. It's interesting to see how you reached a number of gateways where you could have terminated but instead continued to pursue your goals/dreams (despite going against what many would consider the logical conclusion to close). I wonder how many other business have adopted that strategy (of ignoring initial reduced interest in yo…

I think part of the difficulty of knowing when (or when not) to quit is that opportunity lurks even inside failure. My first startup attempt was a coaching marketplace and community for poker players. My co-founder and I were both successful professional poker players and coaches at the time, but we were young (20ish) and all but clueless about technology. I still think the market opportunity was there, but we hired…

Cool to hear! I've just built a simple HTML5 web based poker HUD. I'd love to pick your brain what you think I should do with it!
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