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What it feels like to fail

aflanagan.com

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Re: What it feels like to fail

#31

Post by augustflanagan »

nostromo wrote: post #29
puredemo wrote: post #27

1. Your domain is, in my opinion, terrible. We spent three minutes trying to pronounce it. 2. "We have >7,000 users, and lots of them are still super active in the community." That's actually great start! Why aren't you trying to expand?

"All told we are probably out ~$2,000 and one years worth of work." Clearly all businesses should be ROI positive after $2000... let's give up!

I don't think the $2,000 mark is really of any significance in deciding whether to move forward or not. If we had a business model that I truely believed in I would be happy to invest a significant amount of money into it. As it stands at this point I don't.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#32

Post by nostromo »

augustflanagan wrote: post #31
nostromo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"All told we are probably out ~$2,000 and one years worth of work." Clearly all businesses should be ROI positive after $2000... let's give up!

I don't think the $2,000 mark is really of any significance in deciding whether to move forward or not. If we had a business model that I truely believed in I would be happy to invest a significant amount of money into it. As it stands at this point I don't.

Makes sense. From re-reading the blog post I wouldn't classify it as a failure as much as a "it's time to move on"-ure.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#33

Post by marcusbooster »

augustflanagan wrote: post #15
orblivion wrote: post #4

So... did you ever try a revenue model? Make some sort of premium account? I'm not speaking from any amount of experience, but you have 7000 users, you're about to throw in the towel on the business end of things anyway, I would think it's worth trying to come up with something.

We tried a couple of different ideas, neither of which gained traction. The most promising was offering a paid tool to Spanish and English professors, who could sign up their classes and then monitor how their students were using the site. We actually had about 50 universities sign up for a free trial, although only about 10 actually used the site actively last term. I think the biggest problem with this idea was tha…

I think you need to reaccess who your paying clients are. People that are so desperate to learn they'll try anything - expats in a new country for a job (or dragged along by a spouse), contractors dealing with workers and language barrier, esl teachers, travelers who want to be prepared to communicate with the locals, etc. Less fun, and more solution based advertising. I know I've seen Rosetta Stone ads highlighting it's use with diplomats and the like.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#34

Post by stoney »

marcusbooster wrote: post #33
augustflanagan wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried a couple of different ideas, neither of which gained traction. The most promising was offering a paid tool to Spanish and English professors, who could sign up their classes and then monitor how their students were using the site. We actually had about 50 universities sign up for a free trial, although only about 10 actually used the site actively last term. I think the biggest problem with this idea was tha…

I think you need to reaccess who your paying clients are. People that are so desperate to learn they'll try anything - expats in a new country for a job (or dragged along by a spouse), contractors dealing with workers and language barrier, esl teachers, travelers who want to be prepared to communicate with the locals, etc. Less fun, and more solution based advertising. I know I've seen Rosetta Stone ads highlighting…

Having moved to a new country myself recently, I would have loved the opportunity to talk to the locals about life in general - where to live, where to go out, etc (though in my case I moved between English speaking countries so the language wasn't such a big deal). I could see the same working for travellers.

Also the chance to make some contacts in the country before I arrived would have been good - making friends in a new city is hard.

I would have paid for that kind of service.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#35

Post by catch23 »

abstractbill wrote: post #10
natgordon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lenguajero is a pretty bad name. It's easy to pronounce in Spanish (and is actually kind of witty) but is terrible in English if you don't know Spanish. I'm the other co-founder of Lenguajero.

I'm having problems even beginning to imagine how I would pronounce Lenguajero. I definitely think you had a big naming problem and might want to consider persevering.

Maybe he should rename it to "Eyjafjallajokull"... all the Icelandic people have no problems with it.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#36

Post by natgordon »

malnourish wrote: post #6

As a member of a small group of friends, venturing into the possibility of our first start-up, seeing the failures of others can be really eye opening. I suppose I haven't thought too much about a revenue source, however the first major thing we're going to do is an Android app... If you can call that major.

Launching real products for real users it major :) Good luck.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#38

Post by bazookaaa »

I've been feeling the same way about my startup, which has almost 17,000 users but only a small amount of them are paying customers (launched a paid plan a few months ago). I keep wanting to ask myself how much longer I should give it to see if it reaches profitability, or should I just shut it down? Anyway, right now I'm creating a survey for the paying users to be able to tell what they like/don't like about the paid plan. I also plan on doing a referral program that benefits both parties (I did get both of those ideas from a slideshow about a startup and their freemium model, forgot which). Keep those ideas in mind if you ever plan on introducing any paid plans and good luck.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#39

Post by bootload »

abstractbill wrote: post #28
augustflanagan wrote: post #21

Just for the fun of it does anyone want to throw out some new names for the site? Lenguajero is pretty bad in English. I think we fell into the trap of speaking Spanish everyday and thinking that it just sounded cool (and a bit witty). Ideas???

secondspeak.com is currently unregistered, and makes sense to me as a name for a site for people learning a second language.

"... secondspeak.com is currently unregistered ..."

That also means you could try other languages. Something that should be considered. Chinese/English for example could give you a lot bigger user base.

Re: What it feels like to fail

#40

Post by thaumaturgy »

augustflanagan wrote: post #30
puredemo wrote: post #27

1. Your domain is, in my opinion, terrible. We spent three minutes trying to pronounce it. 2. "We have >7,000 users, and lots of them are still super active in the community." That's actually great start! Why aren't you trying to expand?

Yeah, I'm getting that a lot on here. I think it is a hard name for people who only speak English, or speak English and other languages that aren't latin based. (Our Spanish speaking members really like the name.)

So use multiple domain names.
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