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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

#251

Post by Domenic_S »

mbesto wrote: post #181
nostromo wrote: post #137

Sometimes I wonder how non-technical founders can sleep at night with all the stress. It elevates cofounder risk to a single point of failure for the entire company. Seeing through "developer bullshitting" is a dark art that is hard to master without spending a bit of time as a developer.

When you start learning the difference between "poor" and "broke" the stress usually goes away. For anyone that doesn't understand - being poor means you have nothing, being broke means you are still accumulate wealth, it just means you don't have cash, but more intelligence. I suspect Nikki has banked loads of intellectual wealth from her journey.

Broke is a circumstance. Poor is a state of mind/being.

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

#252

Post by diziet »

diziet wrote: post #163
nikkidurkin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Was your office in SF (SOMA?). What marketing expenses -- were you paying for user acquisition on mobile? Were you flying to Australia and back? Lasting 4 years on 700k with 5 people and no income (or even 2 years) with some other minor expenses is relatively low burn, though. We budget 100k+~ / person / year. If your app involved shipping dresses to your office, unfortunately you need to run the ops for it and handl…

Curious as to why I was downvoted ~

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

#253

Post by clarebear »

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…

I agree with the "who picks on you seems to have to do with what vibe you give off" sentiment. Perhaps I over interpreted from Nikki's description, but I have seen and experienced smart, young(ish), accomplished women sometimes get sabotaged by older women in bureaucratic or middle management type roles. I could imagine that whatever that thing is might have been what motivated the "tinpot dictator who likes making up rules on the spot" to choose Nikki to power trip on and feel helpless. I don't know whether they are jealous, they feel helpless and therefore like watching others feel that way, think they are protecting young women from roles they aren't ready for, are just having a bad day or they met that kind of resistance and now think it builds character. It doesn't really matter. But it certainly hurt 99dresses and that makes me sad.

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

#254

Post by AndrewWarner »

dools wrote: post #209

This is a "fail story" that stuck with me -- wish I'd been able to suggest it when you were looking for stories similar to your own! http://blog.jazzychad.net/2011/05/02/startups-are-hard.html Also here are some Mixergy.com interviews that I've enjoyed from failed entrepreneurs: http://mixergy.com/interviews/adyin-mirzaee-fluidware-interv... http://mixergy.com/interviews/chris-snook-no-limit-publishin... http://mixer…

Here's one more.

Hiten Shah used to run a web hosting company.

http://mixergy.com/interviews/kissmetrics-hiten-shah-intervi...

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

#256

Post by Mz »

nikkidurkin wrote: post #22
andrewljohnson wrote: post #15

It struck me when she glossed over how/why her two co-founders left. There's got to be a deeper story to why two "co-founders" would leave right when 1.2M is secured. She said they decided to tell me they were leaving the company without even a hint of warning - my guess is there was no agreement in the first place or a lot of unnoticed warnings. To conclude she's just too trustful is almost certainly a flawed conclu…

Hey Andrew, I actually glossed over that out of respect for the 2 guys. My purpose was not to bitch about them, and many people who will read this post in my network will know who I'm talking about. There were mistakes made on both sides, but in the end I bent over backwards to accomodate them and as soon as YC was over and they could say they were YC founders they bailed. I'm not saying its entirely their fault - I…

You are 22 and female. I kind of hope you will cut yourself some slack. As a 49 year old woman, I kind of wonder how much this whole thing was impacted by your gender. It took me a long time to realize how many doors are just not open to me because of my gender, how many subtle ways I get cut off from information I very much need.

Of course, male or female, you did a helluva lot for someone your age and I really think you should feel fine about the entire thing.

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

#257

Post by gridspy »

madaxe_again wrote: post #233
logicallee wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read your parent comment with a large level of irony (i.e. not literally). Your parent is bitter that actually building a successful business - by the metrics you just cited, as your parent claims to be doing -- feels/reads/is lived like total failure compared to the feeling of reading a "faery tale" of running a business into the ground while getting incredible levels of support that were "unearned" (if I try to p…

Yup - nail on head. Not bootstrapping any more, we did that bit years ago, but I didn't still want to be here, doing this, eight years down the line - hence this is a failure. A moving, growing, functioning, successful failure. We don't want investors, actually - we don't need 'em. We do, however, want to sell this thing one day, as you can only stare at the sun for so long before going blind. Until then, however, it…

Before you can sell the company, it sounds like you need to find a way to hand the day to day operations and management of the company over to others. At that point selling or keeping the company becomes an investment decision - either way you can step back from it somewhat.

Why do you need to remain involved day to day?

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

#258

Post by kevinwang »

jpatte wrote: post #219

"Fail fast, fail early, fail often!” they all chant, trying to put a positive spin on the most excruciating pain any founder could experience." Is it just an impression, or did she get this sentence the wrong way? The whole point of this saying is to make you realize that failure should actually not be such a big deal. Failure isn't an dead end, it's a step forward on the difficult path of entrepreneurship. Therefore…

I think in the article she does acknowledge that rationally, she knows that she did gain a lot of experience and skills, but she focuses on the uncontrollable emotions and feelings that she went through over the course of her last 4 years.

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

#259

Post by andretti1977 »

Even if i obviously understand why she felt that way, there is something really wrong in the way she thinks: she didn't fail. It was the startup that failed. She felt bad because she impersonified her project. But a person is not the things she creates or tryies to create. That is a misconception. And this wrong (even if understandable) way of thinking, may drive people to depression and other dangerous situations. Please, remember that we live once and that we are not the things we create: we, as people, are much more valuable than anything we can do.
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