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Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

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Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#191

Post by gnicholas »

fizx wrote: post #72
throwaway95118 wrote: post #53

I raised $10M and it wasn’t going to work. We had spent 20%. Board wanted to change course, I said let’s give the money back. I said you’ll have to fire me if you want to keep raising money and change course and they did. 4 years later after they raised another $60M they sold the company for $15M. Sometimes you don’t win. Sometimes it’s better to back out and start anew. Give it all you can but there’s no honor in dy…

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ― George Bernard Shaw

This quote is the mantra of the Unreasonable Group, an impact-oriented organization that helps startups solve “big f’ing problems”. They are awesome!

http://Unreasonable.is.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#192

Post by dahidahi1 »

justboxing wrote: post #65
fastball wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that not zero confidence? They built something, sure, but the technical cofounder believes it has very little/no utility. That's telling.

Having confidence in something, and finding out that your target audience doesn't want it, or need it are 2 entirely different things. Per his OP, the technical founder has not explicitly stated whether he believes that the product has zero utility. Rather he's saying that he found out (from data I suppose) that there is no product market fit for it.

> Having confidence in something, and finding out that your target audience doesn't want it, or need it are 2 entirely different things.

Splitting hairs IMHO.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#193

Post by daanlo »

nautilus12 wrote: post #162
rajacombinator wrote: post #59

Read your OP and all follow up posts in the thread. My advice is take 2 weeks vacation (travel somewhere), and do not work during this time. You need to step back and digest what you’ve learned so far. Don’t feel guilty about taking this time, it’s necessary for making an important decision. If you come back after 2 weeks and feel the same way, shut it down and return funds to investors. Your investors and advisors a…

Arent you advising them to take a vacation during the most critical juncture of the business? Isnt this just promoting more of the perceived or real iresponsibility that led the business to where it is now? Seems like if they are serious about the business they wouldnt be able to take their mind off the issue. Id only take a vacation if Id decided definetely that i was shutting it down to decompress and think about m…

Since the burn Rate is now very low OP now has all the time in the world to take her decision. I have founded several businesses and there is nothing as productive as taking your mind off your work and finding a new perspective.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#194

Post by dang »

jack_pp wrote: post #136
grosjona wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how I'm the cruel one. This person contributed to wasting 100K... How many lives could have been saved for that money if it had been donated to charity (for example)? I merely wrote a few lines of text on some website.

[flagged]

Please don't take threads on generic ideological tangents, even in the middle of a silly flamewar. It always makes things worse.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#195

Post by kuwze »

I have no experience with what I am recommending, so please take it with some large grains of salt.

I suggest trying to pivot for a specialization, just a niche of B2B tradeshows. I think looking at the most expensive B2B AdWords[0][1] should be a quick and easy way to help you in that regard. From my brief research it seems like if you specialized in 'virtual data rooms' you might be able to make some quick $. It doesn't look like there are any tradeshows in that domain, and it has a very high CPC.

[0]: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/06/27/most-expensive...

[1]: http://grepwords.com/1000000-top-high-paying-cpc-adwords-ads...

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#197

Post by wheelerwj »

how are you throwing in the towel with 50% of funds left and encouragement from your early investors?

get back in there and find a way to make it work! come back in three years when your broke, your early investors hate you, and you’ve had at least one divorce.

just kidding. its hard to be a startup founder. it takes a lot of time and energy. some good suggestions here, take some time, regroup, come back refreshed. Keep your burn low and talk to your customers about why they left and ask the people who never signed on why they didn’t.

perhaps equally important, if you insist that you’ve already failed and you don’t have the motivation to push forward, please stop wasting other peoples money and give it back. or at least hire someone who will try. do not phone it in. one warning though, if you tap out now, you may very well ruin your reputation and another shot at a funded startup. the early stage investors are prepared to lose their money on a stallion, but not on a deadbeat. either way they will remember you.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#198

Post by confiscate »

mlevental wrote: post #9
melvinram wrote: post #3

Have you made progress in trying to understand your customers and their problems? You mentioned that 1 or more customers in the pilot are paid-customers. If someone is paying you, either they are forking out the money in the hope that you're going to solve a problem for them or they are forking over the money for other reasons (ex. as a favor to you or due to past relationship.) Do you understand why the paid pilot c…

the pilots that signed with us signed because the pain point is real and we did a good job pitching them/they are extraordinarily impressionable. the problem is that a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users).

finding a real pain point that a customer is willing to preorder with real-money, is much much harder than coming up with a tech solution.

the former is harder because it is totally outside of your control, and the latter is way easier because it is almost entirely within your control.

have you thought of other tech solutions that can address the pain point? e.g. put ipads across the trade floor, with the app already installed, so you don't need to ask users to install anything. Or provide a $3 free coffee deal for every person that uses the app, as a marketing promotion? basically some other out-of-the-box way to solve that pain point that you spent so much effort to find

i would say, don't give up so easily because it sounds like you solved the hardest part (finding the pain point), and you are held up on the easier part (coming up with a technical solution). The tech part can always be adjusted on your end to meet the pain point somehow.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#199

Post by confiscate »

mlevental wrote: post #19
danieltillett wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably the key. Do you know why users aren't using the product? Have you asked them? It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't.

>It sounds to me like you have a market where one side has a problem, but the other side doesn't. yes that is probably a succinct way to express it

have you considered which side of the market is more important to focus on first

if you can get a lot of attendees to willingly use the app, the event organizers will follow. They might even knock down your door demanding to pay you $ for a chance to be your customer

if you get the event organizers to sign up, but the attendees don't use the app, then the event organizers will leave

so it would be best to focus on signing up attendees first? aren't they 100x more important then convincing the event organizers? just a thought.

Re: Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?

#200

Post by elvirs »

threeseed wrote: post #34
hhw3h wrote: post #21

Jason Lemkin recommends giving it 24 months to start a B2B SaaS. B2B SaaS is a long road despite the big splashes sometimes seen like Slack or Intercom. https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-... Also watch the CEO of Segment talk about their journey to product market fit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pl5GG8RQ4

Slack was developed internally for years at Tiny Speck before being released. So they aren't like most startups who generally start their 24 month period with a lengthy period of product development.

this is actually a very good argument to 'ship fast, fix later' proponents. I think 'ship half ass product asap' doesnt really work in SaaS because there isnt endless pipeline of prospective clients and word spread quickly in small circles. The product must be market ready and impressive to a certain degree to achieve positive resonance in its circle.
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