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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

#121

Post by nikkidurkin »

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.

At the end of the day, I am the CEO of the company. It was my leadership that got us here. Even if something wasn't executed right by one person on the team, that is still my responsibility. Furthermore, we were killed because we ran out of money - also my responsibility. That's the point I'm trying to make.

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

#123

Post by nikkidurkin »

Theodores wrote: post #60
nikkidurkin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hi Nikki Consider one more roll of the dice, this time in the UK. We speak English and we have a postal delivery network. Rather than chase the $$$ consider taking your idea to Oxfam - a British charity known for selling donated clothes. Your app will enable them to introduce a younger audience to the work they do. They also have people to pick up the phone, a marketing budget and that network of stores. From a custo…

Thanks! Will look into it. I want to sell the assets if I can, but I think I'm just ready to move on and take a break.

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

#124

Post by nikkidurkin »

diziet wrote: post #94
nikkidurkin wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was a combination of bad luck, timing, and some bad decisions on my behalf. I learned a lot from the experience. Actually, we had a team of 5 working on this. Running operations is really intense and time consuming. There is lots of customer service, community management and making sure items arrive at their destination. Then I was there to work on product and I had 2 developers as well. I looked at the fi…

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.

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

#125

Post by nooron »

boyter wrote: post #100

I met Nikki in Sydney while at a start-up camp. I will admit to being slightly jealous because she did get a lot of attention due to what I thought was solely being a tall attractive female that dresses well. However having read this seeing and seeing how this played into her impostor syndrome has made me re-evaluate my thinking. The attention might be useful, but I can totally understand questioning if its because i…

You're a good person for acknowledging this and offering her such kind words. Everyone's got biases and resentment, but you just discharged yours with genuine dignity. Please take care.

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

#126

Post by nikkidurkin »

[deleted] wrote: post #74

[deleted]

Just telling it like it is. I could have lied, but how does that help anyone?

I'm a firm believer that with gender issues you can either whine about it, or you can find the positives in it. If your whole startup depended on you getting a visa approved, you'd use anything at your disposal to get the job done. If that meant fake crying, then so be it. It worked.

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

#127

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

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 at a lot of startups is the result of entrepreneurs not respecting the old adage, "It takes money to make money." A lot of entrepreneurs don't really know how much money they need, and young ones often start their companies before they know where it's going to come from.

The good news is that now is a great time to be selling equity in a tech startup. The bad news is that even if you're successful in trading your company's equity for capital, there's no guarantee you'll get enough capital, or that you'll be able to get more of it when you run out.

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

#129

Post by zo1 »

groby_b wrote: post #59
clarebear wrote: post #55

I cringed at the description of "a lady who took an obvious immediate disliking to me" in the visa office. It made me sad to recall times that a woman has controlled my destiny and denied me for whatever reason when the men would have let me in. I'm so sorry that Nikki also knows what that feels and looks like. I hope my daughter never does.

It's not a gender issue, it's a U.S. bureaucracy issue. They're all little tinpot dictators who like making up rules on the spot - and U.S. bureaucracy design takes away many avenues of recourse, so they get away with it. I've experienced them when immigrating to the U.S., at the DMV, when getting inspections for contractor work. The little $*(#@ get off on making you feel helpless. Who picks on you seems to have to…

"* it's a U.S. bureaucracy issue*" It's an issue everywhere, not just in the US.
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