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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

#91

Post by lgieron »

antoinec wrote: post #49
sergioschuler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"There is plenty of space for non tech founders." In the tech startup ecosystem, I don't think there is that much space for founders that don't want to code. Saying "I want to start a tech startup but I don't want to code" is as ridiculous as saying "I want to sell horses but I don't know anything about them and I certainly don't want to have to learn anything about them". It's possible, but you're gonna have a hard…

The thing is, non-tech founders rarely have ideas for tech startups. They usually wanna do real estate startup, social network startup etc. which just uses tech as a tool.

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

#92

Post by PythonicAlpha »

sergioschuler wrote: post #67
PythonicAlpha wrote: post #50

I want to shine some light on one side problem, scratched here: The problem today is (out of the perspective of a developer): To many companies rely on just "hire any (cheap) developer" to ramp up the product. I see it all the time: Quality is not asked for, many companies (specially in the web business) just want the cheapest developers. They search for a student (at best), because he is cheap and will just make a s…

I believe this is a marketing problem (from the developers). See, I am a non-tech founder, I don't understand why X is cheaper than Y. If I perceive the same benefit, I will get the cheapest one. (This is hypothetical, but not so much: I understand a bit of tech and even so I don't have so much clue on how to judge a developer besides what he shows me he had done).

You are right, that developers are most of the time bad marketers. But I must disagree with the notion "... besides what he shows me had done" (I admit that might not have been your point, but I still want to loose a word or two about it).

That's a problem intrinsic with software: What you "see" is not what you get. You see a perfect polished UI, but you get a sack of bugs! So this criterion is not usable at all. The intrinsic values of a program are not visible to non-developers at all. Even software-companies have a hard time, deciding which criterion to choose as a base for decisions.

I think, when you look at cars or houses, people are more likely to ask a professional to decide about the condition of the car or house. Also everybody that loves his car (and life) will bring his car to some person that has read some books about motors and does repair the brakes "half-prize" in his back-yard. But in software practice, you just want to see some polished front lids of cars and decide that the brake repairs will be fine.

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

#93

Post by pmcpinto »

Great write up, I think this point is crucial: Founder roles and expectations.

Even if the goal/role is to be the non tech founder, it's important to learn the basis of html, CSS and Javascript. It will give you another perspective when you think about how to implement an idea.

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

#94

Post by robomartin »

r0h1n wrote: post #76
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 a non-technical founder (I have an engineering degree on paper, but have never been a practicing developer) who's starting out on his own. I disagree (or maybe, have an alternate viewpoint) with your first observation. I don't think sales skills are completely fungible across domains. A great business seller may not actually be a great motivational/aspirational seller, and vice versa. So it's wrong, IMHO, to assu…

> I don't think sales skills are completely fungible across domains

My experience across a fifteen year business confirms this. Year one I had to sell. As an engineer I was a horrible sales guy. A couple of my dealers took me under their wing and over approximately a year a made notable changes.

Years later, as we grew, I had to hire sales people. That's when I learned the lesson. If someone is good about selling product A it doesn't necessarily mean they can sell product B. I hired around a dozen sales people over the years. Most were collosal failures. Some of the most memorable ones came with huge contact lists and years of selling other products in the industry. Based on the advise of other entrepreneurs I ended-up hiring someone with little sales experience and training them over a year. She was my best sales person, by far.

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

#95

Post by d0m »

Elizer0x0309 wrote: post #46

A business person trying to start a tech startup.... It's like a business person looking for musicians to start a band. This is beyond ridiculous. Either bring some skill to the table or go create a "business startup" and stop polluting the industry with yet another failed idea and even worse a "post mortem" of why it failed. PS: This includes Marketing, Managers as well as the Business peanut gallery.

Disagree.. tech startups needs a very good seller.. to hire employees, raise money, sell to customers. And developers are notoriously bad at selling!

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

#96

Post by jonnathanson »

robomartin wrote: post #94
r0h1n wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a non-technical founder (I have an engineering degree on paper, but have never been a practicing developer) who's starting out on his own. I disagree (or maybe, have an alternate viewpoint) with your first observation. I don't think sales skills are completely fungible across domains. A great business seller may not actually be a great motivational/aspirational seller, and vice versa. So it's wrong, IMHO, to assu…

> I don't think sales skills are completely fungible across domains My experience across a fifteen year business confirms this. Year one I had to sell. As an engineer I was a horrible sales guy. A couple of my dealers took me under their wing and over approximately a year a made notable changes. Years later, as we grew, I had to hire sales people. That's when I learned the lesson. If someone is good about selling pro…

I agree. Sales is often domain-specific, and this becomes truer the longer you spend in any given domain. And sometimes a long list of great contacts is more of a liability than a benefit. You need someone who can call up anybody you need them to -- not just someone who's going to hit up his list every time. The people on the list might not even be the customers you want or need. Hell, who you need may change in two months. In general, a static and inflexible asset in a variable environment is a bad thing.

[Side note: there are such things as general "salesmanship" skills, like being personable, charismatic, good at articulating value propositions, good at finding ways to get in front of people, and so forth. But these things need not be conflated with capital-S Sales.]

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

#98

Post by RyanZAG »

antoinec wrote: post #49
sergioschuler wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"There is plenty of space for non tech founders." In the tech startup ecosystem, I don't think there is that much space for founders that don't want to code. Saying "I want to start a tech startup but I don't want to code" is as ridiculous as saying "I want to sell horses but I don't know anything about them and I certainly don't want to have to learn anything about them". It's possible, but you're gonna have a hard…

Definitely a good analogy, but I think your conclusion is wrong (although I do still think having a non tech founder is not ideal). If you only want to sell horses then not knowing about horses is going to be a tough time. Same with trying to sell some kind of programming tool or something. However, as soon as you start to do something involving horses and not just selling them, it opens up a bit more.

Instead of just selling horses, you can make a startup that makes it easier for for people who want to ride horses but can't to ride them. You could have a stable with restaurant to let people watch others ride them, etc. Simply because you don't know about horses is not the problem, because the problem is finding ways to bring people to horses based on the public's opinion of horses. Your horses don't need to be looked after by the world's most knowlegable horse lover, just someone who sort of knows horses and is willing to learn will hopefully keep your horses in good enough condition until you can hire more horse caretakers.

This analogy works very well for tech startups too. You don't necessarily have to know how to make the website, it can be enough to know how to create something around the website (physical deliveries, or whatever) and just get some bare-bones barely functional web presence that you improve when you get traction and funding.

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

#99

Post by apineda »

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…

Stephanie from https://www.refficient.com/ did just that.

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

#100

Post by narrator »

I would like to thank everyone who posts these failure stories. We get too many effortless success stories here and often forget that failure is the norm and not the exception. It's a bit like how those books on software anti-patterns are so helpful. Sometimes it's more helpful to focus on what not to do.
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