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My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

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Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#161

Post by tomhoward »

jenius wrote: post #53

> “I just knew I wanted to solve a problem I personally experienced: having a closet full of clothes but still nothing to wear.” These are the kinds problems we are gunning for. These are the kinds of things investors are pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into. This is the scope of problem our industry is solving right now. This is why I'm often embarrassed to work in tech.

Embarrassed to work in an industry that can welcome and support founders solving problems as profound as enery/cleantech, health, transportation and food, but also diverse enough to address real frustrations and economic problems faced by women?

Like everything else in life, nobody is forcing you to buy the product or join/invest in the company.

But to sneer at its right to exist is both short-sighted and mean.

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#162

Post by prawn »

nikkidurkin wrote: post #25
pbreit wrote: post #18

Gotta 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…

+1. Postage in Australia is a very rough deal for many businesses. On top of internal pricing, companies overseas can often ship to here more cheaply than we can even ship internally. It's crippling and will remain so without either drastic overhaul or something like autonomous couriers years down the track.

Wine is big business in Australia, but where wineries in California seem to have (I'm an Australian with one physical product which would be easier to sell if the shipping weren't so expensive.)

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#163

Post by diziet »

nikkidurkin wrote: post #124
diziet wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious -- where did all the money go? How did you manage to spend $700k~ -- you hired 2 developers (full time, why?) and took care of ops over 3 years? How long did it take, four years?

5 full time staff, an office, flights, marketing expenses - that all ads up. Apparently we were burning a third of what a startup at our stage normally is with our team size, and I even thought that was a lot.

Was your office in SF (SOMA?). What marketing expenses -- were you paying for user acquisition on mobile? Were you flying to Australia and back?

Lasting 4 years on 700k with 5 people and no income (or even 2 years) with some other minor expenses is relatively low burn, though. We budget 100k+~ / person / year. If your app involved shipping dresses to your office, unfortunately you need to run the ops for it and handle physical objects :(

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#164

Post by 001sky »

birken wrote: post #26

Well 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 c…

Hardship isn't good. Hardship sucks.

The point is a bit more subtle. There is the russian roulette aspect of probability, and then there is failure from lack of character. Unfortunately, outsiders can't see or relate to the important distinctions. This makes dealling with use a bit more cognitive overhead--and that's what sucks. Explaining things to folks on the outside who don't have the inclination or understanding to care. That's a different kind of hardship vs. waking up everyday and doing difficult (but tractable) things like problem solving be it in math or marketing. But my guess is those are problems many will never have the privledge of having, for good or bad, one way or the other.

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#165

Post by samstave »

birken wrote: post #26

Well 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 c…

>hardship sucks

Isn't that why we have a name for it?

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#166

Post by samstave »

Amazing read. And I recall when I first saw 99 dresses how much I recognized the need, where my wife has literally hundreds of dresses and doesn't wear much multiple times.

On mobile but will elaborate on this as I think the idea was amazing but could have also benefitted from something specific...

EDIT:

My wife as a great style sense - and also reasonable with her money. She would find amazing fashions at Crossroads in San Francisco where she could find desirable brands like D&G, BCBG and other smaller labels where women sold their designer clothes at a discount.

She picked up MANY amazing dresses from this place, as well as shoes. She hardly recycled dresses for events or dates and did it economically.

If 99Dresses had coupled with places like this where they had rental inventory as well, I am sure this would have been an amazing offering.

You could have had a daily rental price, as well as an option so that if the owner chose; a sell price.

A place like crossroads was actually pretty good at being discerning, yet well priced in their garments.

It would also had been an opportunity to provide brick-and-mortar fitting rooms... as well as local inventory. Connect this with a garment style ID and a "different sizes available via online at locations X Y and Z.

DISCLAIMER: Did 99Dresses have all this already?

I am amazed it did fail - I LOVED the BM and Idea.

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#167

Post by carrotleads »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #80

I take complete responsibility for this failure. Were other people involved in 99dresses? Of course. Was any of this their fault? Absolutely not. I understand what you're going for here (and it's nice), but it's fair to let your team share responsibility for the defeat. Otherwise it never really feels like they were part of the successes.

IMO whenever I have led something, I share the credits and take full responsibility of the failures. I say the same thing to my kids, be it their hockey game or drama team. If someone else screwed up in the team, they mostly know it and I don't need to point it out publicly. I do it privately. Its their choice if they want to own up publicly.

Again IMO Nikki's was right to gloss it over and doing so kept focus on the main theme.

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#168

Post by simonw »

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #80

I take complete responsibility for this failure. Were other people involved in 99dresses? Of course. Was any of this their fault? Absolutely not. I understand what you're going for here (and it's nice), but it's fair to let your team share responsibility for the defeat. Otherwise it never really feels like they were part of the successes.

Good leadership means personally taking the blame for failure while ensuring your team gets the credit for success.

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#169

Post by carrotleads »

balls187 wrote: post #145
mindcrime wrote: post #54

One thing Nikki has going for her is that she's young. At 22 and already having the experience she's had, she has a great opportunity to learn from those lessons, tap into the network she's built, and ultimately do something great. I love the aggressiveness and the spunk she clearly has. Looking back on my own life (I'm one of the "older crowd" in HN terms), I wish I'd been that ambitious at that age. Or, maybe ambit…

Flipside, if she started 99dresses at age 32, would it have failed for the same reasons?

She would not have had teh same idea but if she did, she would have dealt it lot better IMO.

The advantages of age( if you are still open minded & not set in your ways) is huge but seems discounted in the YC and VC world. from y'day https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7930428

from long back https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7455757

Re: My startup failed, and this is what it feels like

#170

Post by ma2rten »

samstave wrote: post #166

Amazing read. And I recall when I first saw 99 dresses how much I recognized the need, where my wife has literally hundreds of dresses and doesn't wear much multiple times. On mobile but will elaborate on this as I think the idea was amazing but could have also benefitted from something specific... EDIT: My wife as a great style sense - and also reasonable with her money. She would find amazing fashions at Crossroads…

It looks like they failed, because of a string of bad luck, despite having a good business idea.
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