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My Startup Failed. Fuck.

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Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#101

Post by dquail »

avenger123 wrote: post #46
3am wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, I guess I'll be the wet blanket here. It's pretty clear to me reading this that this person and their partner were nowhere near ready to found a startup. It highlighted the potential benefits for some people of getting a corporate(ish) job, learning about the business world, and learning the trade a little more before trying to starting a company. It's like the demotivator for "Mistakes", this is probably best as…

You know, I respectfully really disagree with you. Based on the blog, I get the sense that the founders are in their early twenties. At that age, no one is "ready" for a startup. I doubt that Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, etc. were ready to start their company. At that age, you just do it, since the risks are low. Unless your parents are wealthy or you have access to a lot of money, at that age its unlikely that a lot…

Age is largely irrelevant. I'd argue that no one is truly ready to found a startup.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#102

Post by nemrow »

arbuge wrote: post #58

Great story & thanks for sharing this. I was curious about why you chose to go with Amazon Payments... why not PayPal, or your own merchant account?

Dans right (he's my co-founder). Amazon allowed for a much larger period of time between authorization and capturing. They are the only processor that had the technology on hand for us.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#103

Post by nemrow »

salemh wrote: post #12

I would be interested in: Once he found out about the dynamic pricing he tells us “I think I am just going to release with another platform.” FUCK! Are you serious???? What other platform(s)? What were differentiating factors between those, and your service? Do artists suffer any particular trending pain-points in alternate services? 1,700 or so artists could probably provide great feedback into what they actually wa…

Yes, Bandcamp was for sure our competitor. Simple to use, and well known. Our added value was the dynamic pricing (which we found out was not a value at all). There are many pain points for artists. The main one is "no one is buying my music". That pain point hasn't yet been solved in an easy way, and as time goes on, it seems its getting harder and harder.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#104

Post by rewind »

locacorten wrote: post #84
mikeg8 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A cool idea does not equal a business model. That is why I think soooo many startups fail. They build something awesome, amazing, cool whatever, but they don;t stop to ask people, "Will you pay for this? Is this something you think I could charge for?" That is the data I WANT and need.

Ahem... Have you heard of Facebook? Or GMail? Or Hotmail? These are money-losing businesses. As we speak. Real life is much more complicated.

Those are all examples of outliers, not real life.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#105

Post by nemrow »

adamnemecek wrote: post #24

Out of curiosity, what did you do wrong originally that was against Amazon's terms?

We were a middle-man to the artists. We had it setup so when a fan bought their music all of the money went directly to us, and then we paid out the artist. That is where we went wrong. You need to use "recipient tokens" so the money is split by Amazon. This way the money goes directly to the artist and we get sent a cut directly from amazon.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#106

Post by nemrow »

lancer383 wrote: post #73
tiredofcareer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's a comment that betrays a lot about you and, potentially, why your startup failed.

That and the landing page video — it was both cheesy, and patronizing to both musicians and their fans. And after watching it I still don't understand the "decrease price by a dollar" pricing scheme.

All of these things I DO agree with. And yes, we are young. We might not use the word "shit" on our homepage next time. But Hell, I used the word "fuck" on the title of this article, and it sure turned alot of heads.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#107

Post by nemrow »

mikeg8 wrote: post #78

Thank you for sharing your experience but to me, the whole post is about how you didn't really listen at all and built something that people didn't want, which ended up failing, yet you still learned a ton . I bet you learned something but did this experience really teach you a LOT? You don't mention any other learning experience in this post (you say you'll write more later) but somehow in the end, this failure was…

I hear what you are saying. I have tons of pages of lessons I learned that I will touch on in later posts. I tried to summarize the whole experience in to one page. My experiences took me to business meeting after business meeting, and opened my eyes to the entire tech / music startup scene. The main lesson I learned was not listening to feedback early on, but I also have insight on co-founder issues, legal issues, budgeting issues, personal/work dilemmas, etc.

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#108

Post by SurfScore »

onan_barbarian wrote: post #95

If there's a common thread between endless startup failure stories, then it is "we talked to a bunch of people who said they'd spend money on this" and when push came to shove said people didn't actually spend money. We're not failing, but even from a (modestly) successful startup perspective, the vast gulf between "people who like to talk to you as if they will spend real money" and "people who will actually spend m…

I like to live by the motto:

You never know if someone is willing to pay until you ask them to open their checkbook.

The same theory can be applied to most investors. (pre-handshake protocol at least)

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#109

Post by nemrow »

delluminatus wrote: post #5
minimaxir wrote: post #2

So we talked to a few artists who said they thought it was a cool idea. BOOM! Our idea had been validated! Why was that sufficient data to justify spending months and months of your life bringing this startup to fruition? EDIT: I did not intend to make a sly insult toward the author. I've seen people do startups with similar justifications and I am confused.

The post was clearly meant to be firmly tongue-in-cheek. That part in particular was simply self-deprecating sarcasm.

Bingo! :)

Re: My Startup Failed. Fuck.

#110

Post by nemrow »

dopamean wrote: post #42
delluminatus wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The post was clearly meant to be firmly tongue-in-cheek. That part in particular was simply self-deprecating sarcasm.

Exactly. Sometimes when you think your idea is good all you need is one or two other people to tell you they think its good and that's it: it's a good idea. How did Instagram come to the conclusion that their idea was a good idea? Or any other startup for that matter. If Zillionears turned out to be a success no one would have thought that having a few people say "good idea" in the beginning was insufficient to get s…

I totally agree with that! There are tons of companies that "win the lottery", and build a product with no validation and succeed. It is obviously not the "right" way to do it, but sometimes it does work.
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