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How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

ryanleland.com

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Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#11

Post by Tawheed »

adamhowell wrote: post #3
mikeryan wrote: post #2

5 months in? Why not spend some more time fixing the problems of what went wrong?

That's one of the problems with going solo -- it's way too easy to chalk it all up as a good experience and move on to the next "killer idea," armed with what you supposedly learned last time. I can say this because I'm just as guilty of doing this as this guy -- if not more so. And that's one of the reasons I'm now no longer going solo.

FALSE. This has nothing to do with going solo. What he didn't do was go through a concrete thinking process in selecting the idea. He probably just "jumped right into coding" -- I've done this before too, we all have.

When you go through a real thinking process and tether yourself to a set of goals that your idea tries to solve, and write down why your solution is valuable, it will do MORE THAN SUFFICIENTLY pull you up during the down slopes, and will also help you objectively analyze your next steps.

He's not failing because he doesn't have another dumb shit next to him telling him to "keep going!" He's failing because he didn't start with a solid foundation and vision.

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#12

Post by Tawheed »

Ryan, don't give up. At the very least, make the "Get Started" button bigger... I had to squint 5 times to figure out what your site is even about and how to get started!

But before anything else, think about your goals first, before you just jump straight into another idea. If you can think back to that first time you wrote that first line of code, and all the excitement you felt from the vision you painted in your head... you'll realize, this idea ain't over yet. You just forgot parts of the vision that was essential to making it a success....

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#13

Post by webwright »

"The idea was that people could create discussions, and vote on things they prefer. Using that data, I would work hard at calculating compatibility."

That's the first thing that went wrong. I still don't have a clue what it is. Hackers hate marketing, but you can't ignore the part where you figure out how to describe your product in a way that makes sense/resonates.

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#14

Post by MicahWedemeyer »

No hockey stick after 5 months? Yeah, time to quit and move on.

Seriously? 5 months? That's it? I would have killed for any media exposure and even 100 signups after 5 months. It took me at least that long just to get some small-time bloggers to take me seriously.

Unless you've seriously f-ed up (like emailing your entire userbase telling them "I quit, eat me."), then you've still got a userbase and a decent idea. I really doubt that it's commercially viable (didn't see a single mention of a revenue plan), but if you're just doing it for fun then push forward.

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#15

Post by jimboyoungblood »

dlevine wrote: post #6

So what happened? You say what you did right and wrong, but you don't talk much about the history of your company. Without some more details, it's hard to put that into context. 5 months in seems fairly soon to throw in the towel. Did you lose interest in the concept, or was there some other reason for abandoning the project?

From the original article: I think that the concept of the site was just too limiting

It's great that he was able to see that and not sink any more time into an idea with no future.

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#17

Post by jamesk2 »

His site sounds like digg's recommendation system or what reddit tried to do with their recommendation system.

It's really hard to be second mover without a significantly better algorithm or lots of money. In the search engine space, Google had that better algorithm and Bing has lots of money and an equivalent algorithm. He had neither. So unless he was able to come up with a working "compatibility" algorithm, it was going to be a really though haul.

Chalk it up as a lesson learned. Good luck on your next startup. I appreciate the honesty. On my startup, I have to keep focusing on making the product work well rather than being distracted by those other "gaping loops" like scaling, marketing and monetization. Those are useless without the product.

Re: How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)

#18

Post by catch23 »

jimboyoungblood wrote: post #16
GotToStartup wrote: post #9

Wow, this site looks pretty cool. I would not give up so early.

5 months is a looooong time for a web app (assuming he was working on it full time)

eh, not really. most webapps visible today spent more than 5 months in development, and usually had a small team of developers. This is just 1 guy doing it for 5 months. LinkedIn didn't get any growth in it's first 5 months, and delicious spent a year before seeing much growth, so 5 months is nothing for a webapp.
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