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Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

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Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#101

Post by bbarn »

mbohanes wrote: post #83

Hi all, I am the author of this post. Thank you very much for your comments, some of which were really thought-provoking. I will address them in a separate blog post when I find the time, probably next weekend. @mbohanes

waving goodbye to my 82 HN points with this one

Dude, you're obsessed with being a founder, more than you have vision/plan/reason/skill to actually be one. You have all of the lingo right, all of the right words, hell, your post here even knows how to speak to why you failed in a voice that will get the rest of this community to read it. Your company name even had an "r" at the end with a missing vowel!

Reading your article, like many others before me, I was annoyed at first but thought, you know, maybe this is just another young wantrepenuer who needed to learn for himself...

Then I saw this response. "I will address your comments in a blog post". Really? Look at the great posters/founders that come in here and respond to comments. They do so comment by comment, to the point where sometimes I wonder how they've got the time and then remember how much I cared when I was trying to do my own thing and know I'd have done the same. Do you really think we're all waiting with baited breath to see your next blog post? Think it'll get upvoted too? Not likely. Something cool with security/lisp/new tech x/can't believe someone just did y/PG's thoughts on life/3D 2048 MMORPG will drown it in seconds.

I'm not saying to quit, you're terrible, or anything like that. Just start being real, stop thinking about your presence, funding, seeding round 22, or whatever, and get to building something actually awesome, and you'll have the startup ecosystem banging your door down. The rest just makes you look hungry to be something you're not.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#102

Post by avalaunch »

ams6110 wrote: post #89
l33tbro wrote: post #39

Post mordems like this make me sad. Not for the founder's bank account per se, but for the fact that he has all the wrong takeaways from his startup experience. You started off well. You did the market research. Great. You've clearly gotten people interested in the service. Even better. You demonstrated in your post that a clear-headed approach was taken and you objectively determined people would want your product.…

I believe this idea would have worked if you had decent marketing. I'm not convinced. I am surprised to hear it has worked anywhere. I'm not a gourmet cook by any stretch, but I do cook most of my own meals. I would never buy fresh ingredients online. Shopping for the ingredients, perusing the choices and selecting "the best" unblemished fruits, vegetables, and meats is part of the experience of cooking. I don't want…

My family uses a service called Green Bean delivery. They deliver fruits, vegetables, and herbs. I don't think they deliver meats yet. We were a little worried that we wouldn't be selecting the fruits and vegetables ourselves but they have excellent quality control. We've never been disappointed with a delivery.

The thing is, they do it right. Once they get the orders, they go directly to the farms and get exactly what they need for delivery each day. That way they never have to deal with spoilage. And they can be picky about the product they buy and later deliver to their customers. And to top it all off, they offer free delivery and are still usually cheaper than shopping at the grocery store. I believe this is profitable for them because they don't have to deal with spoilage.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#103

Post by sgdesign »

theseoafs wrote: post #82
sgdesign wrote: post #78

Something I see missing from a lot of these startup discussions are the ideas of identity and community. Sure, "solving a problem" is important. But Nike isn't solving a problem that other shoe companies haven't solved a thousand times over. The reason they're successful is that buying into their brand makes you part of a bigger community, and that community has a positive identity attached to it. Same thing with a s…

> Or did you just try to "solve a problem"? This comment misses the point. The first goal of a startup should be to solve a problem. Companies identify problems and offer solutions to customers. If you've started a company without having identified and solved a problem a lot of people face, you've already failed as a business. Trying to organize a "community of passionate members" should be considered incidental, par…

Well, there are countless successful products that don't "solve a problem". What problem do Call of Duty or League of Legends solve? What "problem" would the hypothetical iWatch solve?

In other words, solving problems is great and all, but you can also make a great product that people just enjoy using, and let it grow organically.

Of course, you could argue that any good product does solve a problem. But my point is that despite what everybody says, the problem doesn't always have to be the starting point.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#105

Post by DrewAllyn »

ams6110 wrote: post #89
l33tbro wrote: post #39

Post mordems like this make me sad. Not for the founder's bank account per se, but for the fact that he has all the wrong takeaways from his startup experience. You started off well. You did the market research. Great. You've clearly gotten people interested in the service. Even better. You demonstrated in your post that a clear-headed approach was taken and you objectively determined people would want your product.…

I believe this idea would have worked if you had decent marketing. I'm not convinced. I am surprised to hear it has worked anywhere. I'm not a gourmet cook by any stretch, but I do cook most of my own meals. I would never buy fresh ingredients online. Shopping for the ingredients, perusing the choices and selecting "the best" unblemished fruits, vegetables, and meats is part of the experience of cooking. I don't want…

People may want the occasional experience of being a cook, without being super dedicated. It's like getting the occasional riding lesson, but never buying a horse. Horse enthusiasts say that caring for the horse, raising it, selecting a saddle, etc. is an integral part of the experience, and they might be right, but that doesn't stop places from succeeding at offering riding lessons.

I also like to cook, but I buy all my vegetables online anyway. I find the online experience good enough, and the convenience totally worth it. I would probably be an infrequent user of this service.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#106

Post by pimlottc »

tchock23 wrote: post #63

It's a bad idea for founders to be doing their own market research. The prevailing advice from "startup gurus" like Steve Blank is that you must "get out of the building" and talk to customers face-to-face. Here's the problem with that advice (as Dinnr found out): 1. Very few people will tell a founder their idea is bad right in front of them; and 2. Founders suffer from the worst case of confirmation bias ever. They…

Thank you. Market research is a formal practice performed by trained professionals with experience in (among other things) framing the questions correctly and interpreting the responses. It's not something you can replace with surveymonkey and a few ad-hoc interviews.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#107

Post by steilpass »

DontBeADick wrote: post #45

> b) People are too optimistic about their future behaviour. I read about a focus group once where a company was asking consumers about different color tea kettles. They had tea kettles in a dozen colors and asked people which one they would purchase. The responses were split fairly evenly among all the different colors. At the end of the day, the people who participated in the focus group were allowed to take home o…

Nice story. Do you have the source to read it up?

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#108

Post by dusklight »

Uh so the author ventures the hypothesis, that no one used his product because there was no demand. Can I venture a second hypothesis? No one used his product because it was too expensive? How much did things cost and how did dinnr experiment with pricing?

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#109

Post by peteretep »

personZ wrote: post #35
maxbrown wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't help but have a negative reaction to your comment. Yes, similar "lessons learned" are proliferated throughout the startup world, primarily because these are some of the hardest things about building a successful business even if you already know that they're the hardest things . This is clearly just a self-reflective piece, entitled "lessons I learned" not "lessons you should learn". If the rest of us want th…

Their observation isn't remotely an ad hominem: They are specifically criticizing the message, not the speaker. And their point is valid: There is a wide "startup" belief that you needn't know the market or domain, the customers, etc. You just need to find a domain name and make a web page and customers will come and somehow a business will fall together. Only the overwhelming odds are that it will face likely failur…

    > Their observation isn't remotely an ad hominem

    >> "things no responsible person"
Calling someone irresponsible seems pretty ad-hominem.

Re: Lessons I learned from the failure of my first startup, Dinnr

#110

Post by peteretep »

ufmace wrote: post #97

Right after I read this, my immediate reaction was to feel kind of annoyed at the author. A little superficially, no tech or design talent in house, no food industry experience, and not much marketing and sales expertise, so what exactly does he bring to the table here, besides really wanting a startup? Also, this idea hits on one of those things that lots of people really want to believe that they would do - cook th…

    > Right after I read this, my immediate reaction was to
    > feel kind of annoyed at the author. A little
    > superficially, no tech or design talent in house, no
    > food industry experience, and not much marketing and
    > sales expertise, so what exactly does he bring to the
    > table here, besides really wanting a startup?
He addresses this specifically, talking about how it went against everything his Austrian upbringing suggested.

But also: am I wrong to think that there are many examples of successful startups being started by outsiders? Execution sounded pretty reasonable, he just had misjudged the market, based on the same model working well in other markets.

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