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Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

sergioschuler.com

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Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#21

Post by logicallee »

patio11 wrote: post #5

This is a fantastic writeup (and like nearly all worthwhile writing on the subject, I don't necessarily agree with all of it). Two elaborations: 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at sell…

I'm in a hurry and didn't read the article - but on 1, developers are far from normal consumers or businesses, consider far different things reasonable and interesting and are a totally different "sell" - much as founders themselves are far different from normal employees and simply can't be judged on the same basis. I don't think your point 1 is valid at all. (Likewise, just because you can convince a developer, doesn't make you an actual salesperson, doesn't mean you can convince a customer!)

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#22

Post by enraged_camel »

sergioschuler wrote: post #6
patio11 wrote: post #5

This is a fantastic writeup (and like nearly all worthwhile writing on the subject, I don't necessarily agree with all of it). Two elaborations: 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at sell…

You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…

>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers".

Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the product yourself, even if it's imperfect. Doing so will have several advantages:

1. It will make it easier to find a developer (they will respect you a lot more)

2. It will make it easier to get customers

3. It will make you appreciate the technical aspects of the business

Number 1 is the most important. The reason non-technical people have difficulty convincing developers to work on their ideas is that developers tend to look down upon non-technical people, especially "sales types." In addition, most developers have a thousand ideas of their own - you need to give them a reason to work on your idea instead. And that's a lot easier to do if you already have a version 1.0 out there that you have developed and have customers paying for it.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#24

Post by sergioschuler »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
sergioschuler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…

>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the…

In fact I am learning how to program, so I agree with your points - but I don't think it is for every one. There is plenty of space for non tech founders.

BUT I do believe it is easier if you do know how to code.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#25

Post by ry0ohki »

"The developer had no intention of being the project’s developer (?) he was not really a developer, he was a computer science graduate who owned a webdev shop and was used to managing, not coding."

Heard this story so many times. Amazing how many people join a startup and don't want to do the actual work. Remember that scene in The Social Network where Mark Zuckerberg calls his outsource team about progress on that latest feature? No? Me either.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#26

Post by sergioschuler »

dagss wrote: post #17
sergioschuler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…

To me it seems like recruiting of a developer worth anything, from scratch and without an existing team to help you to recruit or lure, must be much more difficult than getting an amazing idea or selling said amazing idea. Is that just because I never tried selling anything? Does anybody have examples of successful startups that proceeded in the way Sergio describes and became successful -- starting out with a busine…

Look at http://thefoundation.com/ , they have some cases about this kind of approach.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#27

Post by mmcnickle »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
sergioschuler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…

>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the…

And I would disagree. I think you're underestimating the time and effort required for a complete beginner to produce version 1 of any non-trivial product.

As a developer what I'd be looking for before coming onboard is a) a clear idea of what is being built b) that there is the money in place to pay me.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#28

Post by jt2190 »

adrianmsmith wrote: post #10
patio11 wrote: post #5

This is a fantastic writeup (and like nearly all worthwhile writing on the subject, I don't necessarily agree with all of it). Two elaborations: 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at sell…

> 1) General advice to non-technical founders, not specific to this post: If sales is one of your primary skill sets, and you cannot sell one developer on working for you, you may want to have a brief heart-to-heart with yourself on whether you are sufficiently skilled at selling to build a company which will live or die based on your sales ability. But I think "selling" the product to a developer is a difficult sell…

I read that as selling the venture to the developer, i.e. convincing a developer that the company has all of the pieces it needs to be successful already except for a developer. Note that good freelancers usually have paying customers already, so even they will need some convincing to take on a new client.

As far as offering equity to a developer, this may be as weak a move as building a product before proper validation, since it essentially means bringing on an investor before proving that there's something worth investing in.

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#29

Post by aaronbasssett »

I wonder how much their conversion was impacted by internationalisation problems. It looks like they were attempting to target the US, but their pricing page wasn't localised for that market. Unless they really were charging one thousand nine hundred and ninety dollars per team. Price is shown as £19,90 instead of $19.90

Also due to what I perceived as a thousand separator, not a decimal mark, I initially read the price as nineteen thousand and nine hundred dollars!

Re: Lessons learned from my failed startup after 2 years, 300 users and 0 revenue

#30

Post by mzarate06 »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
sergioschuler wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are absolutely right on both comments! And additional comments: 1) I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". 2) Absolutely agree. When I say "I should build that", in fact what I wanted to say was…

>>I am not a developer, but I believe having an idea -> finding a developer is the wrong flow. It should be like this: 1. Have the idea. 2. Get customers who give you real money to build this idea. 3. Get a developer by telling "I already have paying customers". Actually, I disagree. Even if you're not a developer, you should still strive to learn enough development such that you can push out the first version of the…

I agree with some of what you say (e.g. a non-technical founder that learns some technical aspects of the business will be more respected).

Though in practice I've experienced too many cases where I couldn't imagine non-technical founders I've worked with learning enough, and fast enough, to launch a v1 on their own. It's possible, but between OP's suggested flow vs. yours, I'll side w/the OP's. As a developer and co-founder, I'd much rather a non-technical founder concentrate on finding paying customers (or other cash flow), marketing, becoming immersed in the target market, etc. than learning how to code.

To supplement, the article's Where it went wrong and Where it went REALLY wrong sections cite non-technical reasons for failure. So while you raise great points, it's not clear that the OP's situation would have been better if he had learned to code first.

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