I like her so much! This amount of perseverance and strength is so overwhelmingly commendable and inspiring.
I wish Nikki all the best in the future!
My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
21–30 of 273 posts
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#22It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured. She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclu…
Hey Andrew, I actually glossed over that out of respect for the 2 guys. My purpose was not to bitch about them, and many people who will read this post in my network will know who I'm talking about. There were mistakes made on both sides, but in the end I bent over backwards to accomodate them and as soon as YC was over and they could say they were YC founders they bailed. I'm not saying its entirely their fault - I should have picked up on the warning signs but I was off fundraising for 2 months and didn't notice. But I did consider them my friends, and they didn't care what position I was left in if they were to leave. Anyway, I'm sure we both learned a lot from the experience.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#23It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured. She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclu…
I'd be interested in that too. I am a research scientist, and the experience of trying to get some decent innovative science done appears to be similar in terms of emotional stress as running a start-up. Will it work? What do I need, who will give it to me, etc, etc.
One thing I have learnt, though, is the people are harder than science; if you don't have your working relationships aligned all hell can be created.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#24It's sad to read stories like this. But I have to wonder... if the concept is profitable what keeps it from being executed without 2 million dollars in investor money? So maybe you stay smaller... who cares? For you, it is about what you are making, not how big the company is. How much does it really cost to set up a database driven website? Hmmm? Now, I realize this doesn't apply if the end game is a high dollar exi…
I generally agree with this perspective, but a two-sided marketplace is one of the business models that really does need to grow fast. No one would install the Uber app if it didn't have any drivers, and no one would apply to be a driver if there were no riders.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#25Gotta hand it to OP. Sounds like she gave it her all as a very young founder. I suspect after re-grouping she could have a bright future. The one thing that made no sense to me was why they didn't stay in Australia and go after local market. Does the concept not work there?
There are only 23 million people in Australia, and its a small population spread over a huge area. That means shipping is expensive, which isn't great for trading low value second hand fast fashion items. An item that can get shipped for $2.80 in the US would cost $7 at least in Australia.
Also, Australia Post doesn't have any APIs to automate shipping. Girls had to physically go to the post office to ship items, and there wasn't tracking either. This meant a lot of customer service headaches.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#26Well written. One thing I always find funny about the startup world is the idea that hardship is good. Hardship isn't good. Hardship sucks. Sometimes hardship is something you need to survive to accomplish your goals, but not always. While there are a lot of successful startups that went through a lot of hardship, there are a lot of them that didn't. It seems that based on a lot of factors that were outside of your control you were playing the startup game on "hard mode" and you gave it a pretty good run anyways.
Also a pretty good lesson that having a good job and comfortable life maybe isn't so bad after all (a very un-silicon valley lesson).
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#27Thanks for posting this! It sounds like it was incredibly difficult at times. Hard to imagine, but thanks for making it vivid.
I would love to hear more about the following (not holding my breath):
"After hiring a few people and finding an office in NYC we were ready to launch. We solved the chicken-and-egg problem using techniques that we promised never to speak of again because they squarely sat on the grey/black spectrum of naughtiness. If there was a line, we definitely crossed it. We had to. These hacks were harmless to others, so I figured it was only a problem if we got caught."
Edit: ++empathy.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#28It's sad to read stories like this. But I have to wonder... if the concept is profitable what keeps it from being executed without 2 million dollars in investor money? So maybe you stay smaller... who cares? For you, it is about what you are making, not how big the company is. How much does it really cost to set up a database driven website? Hmmm? Now, I realize this doesn't apply if the end game is a high dollar exi…
I generally agree with this perspective, but a two-sided marketplace is one of the business models that really does need to grow fast. No one would install the Uber app if it didn't have any drivers, and no one would apply to be a driver if there were no riders.
OK. That's a very valid explanation in this case.
Kind of like all the ebay replacements that never seem to get anywhere in spite of how awful ebay is.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#29Bad luck. Though, where are all the expenses? Seems to just be an iPhone app with not much schelps, could your technical partner manage it part time?
I think it was a combination of bad luck, timing, and some bad decisions on my behalf. I learned a lot from the experience.
Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well.
I looked at the figures, and although it might be possible to cut out all the tech/product side and just leave operations, then we would really be in a zombie state. I thought it was better to cut our losses and move on.
Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like
#30It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured. She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclu…
Hey Andrew, I actually glossed over that out of respect for the 2 guys. My purpose was not to bitch about them, and many people who will read this post in my network will know who I'm talking about. There were mistakes made on both sides, but in the end I bent over backwards to accomodate them and as soon as YC was over and they could say they were YC founders they bailed. I'm not saying its entirely their fault - I…
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