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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

#141

Post by bloat »

Elizer0x0309 wrote: post #129
bloat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the Monkees fit the bill of a "pop band manufactured by a business person" more than the Beatles do. And they're better.

A subjective comment. "Better". Their music has done nothing to move our species' art forward. If you are just going to release the same stuff as another band then you are stagnating evolution, move to the side! Don't compare the two. The Beatles have ushered in new song writing, band lineup, tone setup and lyrical prowess. Incomparable. Do you even use your ears, or are you just regurgitating?

No - I'm being provocative. Happy New Year!

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

#142

Post by Elizer0x0309 »

bloat wrote: post #141
Elizer0x0309 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A subjective comment. "Better". Their music has done nothing to move our species' art forward. If you are just going to release the same stuff as another band then you are stagnating evolution, move to the side! Don't compare the two. The Beatles have ushered in new song writing, band lineup, tone setup and lyrical prowess. Incomparable. Do you even use your ears, or are you just regurgitating?

No - I'm being provocative. Happy New Year!

:) Happy New Years!

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

#143

Post by davemel37 »

I think a more important lesson to learn here is to have the uncomfortable conversations ASAP. The sooner you communicate clearly, the fewer opportunities there are for misunderstandings.

If I had to give founders one piece of advice it would be, "Just Ask"... Ask for the sale, ask what youll get in exchange for equity, ask, ask, ask...

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

#144

Post by codygman »

sergioschuler wrote: post #38
drewmclellan wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't blame your host, actually. It's WordPress. It's a shame it's so often given a free pass on these issues when it really isn't good at handling peaks in traffic.

Any alternatives?

If you install wp super cache[1], then you shouldn't have any problems

1. http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-super-cache/

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

#145

Post by tgflynn »

koide wrote: post #118
guilloche wrote: post #107

Questions for peer founders: As a developer and solo founder, I just can not finish a serious project in one year. For example, it took me two years to get version 1 of torapp guilloche designer (www.torapp.info). We did not get consistent/significant customers and need a new product to survive. To evaluate more ideas and to be familiar with respective areas took me another year easily (without deep knowledge in the…

It certainly will depend on the actual product A LOT. A vector editor is very complex compared to the typical CRUD-based with a little business logic that lots of SaaS products are in the end.

"typical CRUD-based with a little business logic that lots of SaaS products are in the end"

Isn't the market for that sort of thing getting crowded by now ?

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

#146

Post by tim333 »

Thanks for the write up - It's always better to learn from other people mistakes. I think however you and the most of the other posters miss the most basic problem because they mostly seem not to have tried the site and that is that, to me at any rate, it seems the product is not very good. It seems to be basically a 40 question form with questions like "People in the team know the weaknesses and strengths of other team members." that you mark from 1-10 and is not customizable. Personally I hate that stuff - you spend ages filling the thing out and then when you find the average response is say 7 what do you do then? There's not obvious action. If you had a form with a question saying say "what do you thinks the biggest problem with your team?" and people were able to say anonymously that say "there were four founders without the right experience and only one dev really working" then that would at least be useful. I think before worrying about the market etc you should have tested your system on real teams to see if it actually helped them much. This could have been done with zero or little tech - say either a paper questionnaire or just write your questions in an email and have people email their answers back to you. The fact that 200 people tried the product and none bought does imply a product problem but it if you define your product as trying something to fix team management problems then I think the issue is not that there is no demand for that but that your product does not work in that regard. If it was me and I could code a bit, rather than scrap the thing I think I might try changing it to see if it could be made to work at the team improving level. You could say cut it to say five 0-10 type questions and five "what's the biggest problem?" type questions and then try that with a couple of real teams and see if they found it helpful.

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

#148

Post by sergioschuler »

tim333 wrote: post #146

Thanks for the write up - It's always better to learn from other people mistakes. I think however you and the most of the other posters miss the most basic problem because they mostly seem not to have tried the site and that is that, to me at any rate, it seems the product is not very good. It seems to be basically a 40 question form with questions like "People in the team know the weaknesses and strengths of other t…

Your evaluation certainly have merits and a lot of it we confirmed when speaking to clients later. Just one thing to make clear: I have 5+ years of team management/leadership development and I used a similar tool I created and evolved (in paper form) to improve a loooot of teams. So the tool works - BUT you are correct, it is a pain to apply and you probably need consultancy to get out of the team management hole if you are not a skilled manager.

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

#149

Post by readme »

sergioschuler wrote: post #16
readme wrote: post #14

OP, your biggest mistake is not taking the time out to learn how to code yourself. You said it went on for 2 years, that was plenty of time.

INDEED! In fact I started. Did One Month Rails (a couple of months ago). My github (please don't laugh, but do give out advice): https://github.com/sergioschuler/

kudos

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

#150

Post by reinhardt »

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…

Silly analogy is silly. How about "I want to run a nuclear factory but I don't have a PhD in nuclear physics", is it also as ridiculous?
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