81–90 of 186 posts
Do take a break. A year sounds about right.
When it comes to commerce, I'm liking the model of first building an audience and then adding commerce.
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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.
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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.
A cool idea does not equal a business model. That is why I think soooo many startups fail. They build something awesome, amazing, cool whatever, but they don;t stop to ask people, "Will you pay for this? Is this something you think I could charge for?" That is the data I WANT and need.
These are money-losing businesses. As we speak.
Real life is much more complicated.
Your startup failure was good. It hit quick. You learned. You moved on.
If I had more time I'd tell you about all those failed startups that suffer a really slow death. Like the YC startups. Pretty much all of them are failed. They haven't seen the light yet. You have. Be grateful.
I'm sure it's painful, but thanks for sharing. I agree with cup, that reading about failures can be more valuable than reading about successes. If anything, your story adds more fuel to the fire for the approach that @sgblank advocates[1][2]. Get out of the building, talk to customers, validate customer needs, etc. We've been doing this, but - to be honest - we haven't done as good a job as we could. Hopefully we wil…
Startups repeatedly make the same mistake of not talking to customers enough and dying as a result. One of the most helpful guides is to try to make a mistake in the other direction. Try to talk to your customers too much. No early stage startup ever died from talking to their customers too much.
I have seen so many people start their own company after breaking off from some existing company and "doing it better" or realizing some previously un-claimed niche specifically because they had the industry knowledge.
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 exp…
I decided to start a Twitter profile to collect all these post-mortems in one place. If such a resource already exists, let me know!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
A cool idea does not equal a business model. That is why I think soooo many startups fail. They build something awesome, amazing, cool whatever, but they don;t stop to ask people, "Will you pay for this? Is this something you think I could charge for?" That is the data I WANT and need.
Ahem... Have you heard of Facebook? Or GMail? Or Hotmail? These are money-losing businesses. As we speak. Real life is much more complicated.
Facebook, Google, and Microsft not profitable? Seriously dude, just google them; they're very profitable (technically MS lost money last year, but that was entirely due to a one-off asset writedown, and they've made gobs of cash every other year).