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Started a stupid company. Failed.

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Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#161

Post by AndrewKemendo »

Killah911 wrote: post #148
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stories should be required reading. To that end the community would benefit massively from you documenting it. Just as there are Journals of Negative results [1][2] so too should there be a journal of failed startups. Your detailing of what caused the failures could save thousands of man hours and potentially someone falling into the same traps. Goal #1 for you right now is to get your family in order and steel…

I'm sure that would be nice to have. I'm can relate to OP, I'm out of pretty my all of my savings and trying to think of ways to shutter my co. I already have four kids. When a friend of mine said to me, "perhaps we should disect this failure", the zing from that made it all that much worse. I'm sure there's plenty of lessons to be learned from failed startups, but even 5 years after my first failed startup, I still…

I can't speak for your situation so don't take this as a goad, only my thoughts on the idea of doing a triage/after action/autopsy.

I know that feeling. I have failed before and hard. I did however resolve to ensure that it wasn't for nothing by, as your co-founder suggested, dissecting it. What I found was that instead of it just being a downer, I realized how many good things were done and how many exciting developments, both personally and professionally came out of what was at the end of the day a failure.

In the end the margin of failure can be tiny - but I would guarantee that you will also be able to find some massive successes in there as well. Adding to that the benefit that others would take away and I think it would be of great benefit.

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#163

Post by peterarmstrong »

themanthatfell wrote: post #120

My wife cried reading all of your comments. I guess we were looking for some sign that someone somewhere is pulling for us. During the first hour this post was up I hovered over the delete more than once. It doesn't seem right to bring an entire ecosystem of ambitious and wonderful people a story of failure. I guess I learned that hitting delete would be worse. Thank you from the 5.3 of us.

I got laid off when my son was 2 months old and my wife was on maternity leave. That was about 9 years ago. You can pull through this.

(My solution was to relocate countries, from Victoria, Canada to Silicon Valley. We did this in 2 weeks. Now, ironically, I'm doing a startup, but living back in Victoria.)

If you're a programmer and a US citizen, you have won the talent + nationality lottery. (I'm the former, but not the latter.) If you're both, realize how fortunate you truly are.

One course of action is to...

1. Move to Silicon Valley if you're not there right now. It's a boom, and it sounds like you don't have much to lose at the moment.

2. Go be an early employee at some startup that is funded. Maybe you'll get lucky and it's the next Dropbox or Snapchat. Or maybe you'll just earn good money in a great climate.

3. Consider doing another startup once you have savings or can bootstrap doing consulting. However, bootstrapping takes a LONG time and requires serious commitment.

Good luck! Peter

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#164

Post by fygwtclub »

I consider myself a lot less Smarter than people here on HN so I never comment. But your 70 words made me.

'Manthatfell' - You are a very brave person to write something up like this very openly. But, If a Man of the Family loses hope it tears that family apart. Trust me. I observed this very closely. HN Community is so strong, kind and supportive.

You already found a lot helping hands. You are now 'Manthatfellbutgotup'. Just start Running..

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#165

Post by r0ash »

zedshaw wrote: post #13

Hey, other comments are going to give you a few lines telling you to not quit, that you should hang in there, and that it'll be alright. That may be true, but to me it sounds like you're possibly not doing well enough to make any of that possible, and you probably need to find work fast. Here's what I want to do: 1. I have a little list of companies looking for employees that I'll send you. Not much just companies th…

You are a gem, if we get couple of thousands like you with loud voice this world would be a great place to enjoy.

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#166

Post by binarysolo »

OP, please let us know what rough geographical area you are located. This will allow some of us to at least give you some sort of referral to work; I can help out in the SF Bay Area but seeing the responses there are plenty better positioned who can lend aid and support to you.

Fight hard and good luck.

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#167

Post by [deleted] »

sharkweek wrote: post #138
typicalrunt wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a bit OT here but I have to wade in... To people that know him personally, like myself, Zed is a great guy. My guess at the problem is that his Internet persona took on its own life outside of his control, and it grew to such a bad situation that it was better to not try to feed the trolls and simply put some distance from it. In other words, let the haters hate and be ignored, stand up for yourself when appr…

I don't personally know Zed outside of his internet persona -- and to me it seems like he's just a guy who doesn't put up with bullshit. I have never seen a time where he's an asshole to anyone who isn't shooting first. He puts his opinions out there and sometimes those cause flame wars so if you catch him in the middle of one those on Twitter then I can definitely see where people might think he's a jerk. His tweets…

[deleted]

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#168

Post by AKifer »

zedshaw wrote: post #13

Hey, other comments are going to give you a few lines telling you to not quit, that you should hang in there, and that it'll be alright. That may be true, but to me it sounds like you're possibly not doing well enough to make any of that possible, and you probably need to find work fast. Here's what I want to do: 1. I have a little list of companies looking for employees that I'll send you. Not much just companies th…

Wow ! What a man ! By reputation, I knew you from your rant on Ruby on Rails years ago and your move to the python ecosystem. As a Rails lover, at first time I was thinking like the mainstream about your rants and your opinions. Later I discovered learnXthehardway series and your work and found them awesome. But today, I definatelly appreciate you Zed, hope one day I will meet you in person, even for a 15 minutes coffee time. Have a nice day and good luck themanthatfell, one advice. Never give up, as a men we should never abandon even how deep is our situation (I even took the risk to quit my job in 2011 while my wife was giving birth of our first child), you'll always find a way. If you have 1 chance on 100 to get something, just try 100 times and you'll get it, even Thomas Edison tried 10K times before finding the way to make the light bulb.

Re: Started a stupid company. Failed.

#170

Post by alsobrsp »

You can't win if you don't play.

Most of my business ideas don't make it out of the box. One did well enough, about $100k over 6 years, now we are being sued for trademark infringement. Bogus according to several lawyers, but no money to fight it.

Shit happens, fall back, regroup, fight another day.

At this point you do what needs to be done for the family. Take care of them and they will take care of you. Then see if you can figure out what happened and try a new idea.

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