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Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#421
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds interesting to me (the releasing as open source bit, in particular). What's the backend tech stack?

A combination of PostgreSQL + PostGIS + pgRouting, Java + GraphHopper and my personal favorite: PostgREST!

Sounds like the folks at https://osgeo.org might be interested...

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#422
post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it still exists, I just paused development on it. https://www.chorosaur.com/ .

Pretty cool idea, I can see the incentive for kids and parents using this. It's not a failure, hope it works out for you!

Thanks - at the very least, our family can use it for our kids and scratch our own itch! ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#423

I built an app for kids that created a family currency where kids would pick the chores they wanted to do each day, earn points based upon the difficulty of the chores, and then those points could be redeemed for real-life rewards that they also chose - hosting friends for a sleep-over, a fishing trip with Dad, learn a new card game with Mom, screen time, etc. The problem came with the marketing. When I did my due di…

Great product idea. Sounds like something I would use. Have you heard of the lean startup?

Thanks. Yeah that's a great book, appreciate the recommendation.

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People inside our tight social circles are held accountable by social pressure. This is why, for instance, Mormons seldom defraud other Mormons -- it would make Sunday mornings unpleasant for a long time to come. That your uncle would choose very deliberately to alienate his entire family is the astonishing thing. Would be curious to know what his social life is like, now ...

Actually, "According to the FBI, affinity fraud crimes are especially prevalent in Utah." https://fox13now.com/2017/12/20/fbi-warns-lds-church-members...

Probably it's especially prevalant in Utah because it's not common in the US to do business with family members while it's more common in Mormon communities.

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#426
The gist: I wouldn’t try to sell SaaS/software to individuals.

My business-oriented startups have been successful. My consumer-oriented one wasn’t (at least as a business), because I thought that people would be willing to pay some amount to save time or get more done. Turns out that even if a user states that an app saves them hours per month, the vast, vast majority won’t spend any amount of their own money for it.

The product got users - some who used it hundreds of times per month - but even among those who said they loved it, they used it constantly, and it saved them hours, very few would pay even ~$35/year.

People are fairly good at valuing other people’s time (as businesses do every day). People are unbelievably awful at valuing their (our!) own time. That’s not anyone’s fault, it’s human nature.

This only comes out as a revealed preference, that is, by asking a happy active user to pay, not asking whether they would pay.

Almost every “consumer” company actually makes most of their revenue from businesses. The exceptions that don’t have millions of free users - like 1Password when it was licensed software and FastMail in its early days - are exactly that: exceptions. Most remain fairly small until or unless they start serving businesses too.

Asking individuals to spend their own money on a software/Web product (rather than a physical object or music/video content) is next to impossible and I wouldn’t do that again. Sell to businesses or find another revenue stream.

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I AM going to be that guy. I have zero tolerance for people who claim to be experts. You had one experience and used an idiom (incorrectly) to sound smart. So tired of smug upstarts like you.

>So tired of smug upstarts like you. Yes, no one likes smugness... I'm not the GP if you hadn't noticed, but honestly; don't be that guy.

Same to you.

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#428
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How far along to completion would you say the game was? Even 50%?

On one hand it was culmination of widely known ideas and "intellectual property" that Will had been openly thinking about, talking publicly about, experimenting with prototypes and proofs of concepts about, shipping products about, and even producing reality TV spots [1] [2] and a cable TV show [3] about for decades. And on the other hand it was also a lot of handwaving and vaporware and trendy ideas and creepy socia…

So any code?

Great collection of info you posted about it (and a shame about legal happenings that can hamstring capable people) but I'm even more curious now as to whether there was any code at all written!

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't that be a common knowledge in the area and work out as their competitive disadvantage? Provided that there are at least some competitors that are better for the customer?

The bigger issue with lending in Mexico is a bit deeper than the sketchiness of some of the big banks. In particular, there is no reliable credit score system, so determining credit worthiness is a crap shoot. There is actually a credit reporting agency, but nobody reports to it, so nobody is really sure why they're there. A lot of citizens also (understandably) don't trust the banks and keep most of their money at h…

I myself live in a country with a not so effective rule of law and whatnot. That's why I find it odd that banks are so concerned with possibly doing an illegal data collection, while employing unquestionably criminal techniques of extortion...

Re: Ask HN: Why did your startup fail and what did you learn?

#430
I basically learned that failing a startup is similar to dealing with end-of-life care - we all make the same mistakes so in a weird way, I think the best way to learn from this experience is to read Atul Gawande's book Being Mortal. It'll put things in perspective.

Here's the post I wrote, hope it helps folks: https://medium.com/startup-grind/startup-mortality-what-end-...

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