Why did your startup fail?

Actually, we knew what the market wanted. But that need doesn't help anyone at the end. I created a system so users can digital sign documents. People wanted the silly Adobe PDF signature like to instead using their national eID. So, those signed documents aren't valid to a judge.

Our biggest problem was that. Immature market because: a) very few people uses their eID cards, b) there were technological knowledge involved in the process.

We did a great job on taking down all the barriers but the OS ecosystem right now is a mess with the digital signatures.

We really felt like Credit Card Companies when they launched, no one used CC in the past until they become a major need.

When the government worry about stimulating the use of eID as it should be expected, is when we will see the market grow and know what people need about eID. But do the adobe thing is just a piece of cake and even using it on 1000 documents, all will be pure crap before a judge of the European Union or any country, I assume, outside the United States.

I like where this discussion has gone. I feel like the vast majority of us are stating that we didn't understand our market well enough and didn't get validation early enough.

Our product relied heavily on the technology behind (it needed to be fully coded before being functional). So how do you all think we should go about validating a market using an MVP without having the product coded out?

The general public is apathetic towards politics.

I built a product which had the following goals:

1) Free to consumers.

2) Paid plans for business to get access to leads generated by the above consumers entering their data.

The problem was that I did all my upfront market validation with the first group, which jumped all over my product with comments like "I could totally use that!" and "wow what a great idea!" type feedback.

I built the product for the consumers first and launched a private beta. Then when I turned to build the other side of it for the businesses, I found most of them didn't see the need for it, and it would take a high touch sales process to get them onboard. At least until the product became a household name and had millions of users.

I quickly realized that I had run into what I've since deemed "the Groupon Problem". The only way to make the business work would be to pour in tons of capital to hit really high user numbers while paying for a high touch sales process.

I had envisioned being able to run the whole thing as a bootstrapped business. When I realized it couldn't possibly work that way, I scrapped it.

I learned a ton though, and now I'm just waiting for another great idea to really execute on.

I just looked at your website. Why offer a free plan at all?