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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?

#441

Post by tonyoconnell »

fortydegrees wrote: post #187
tonyoconnell wrote: post #127

10 years ago I built an almost amazing business that schools, universities, teachers and students could use to build elearning and web apps. Think Square Space + Moodle + Udemy. Heres a demo if you're interested https://vimeo.com/2221065 The demo doesn't show much of the learning management features but they were also complete. But the app had memory leaks and I didn't have the cash to pay expensive engineers to fix…

> 1. I should never have given up. If you don't give up you can't fail. I think if you expand the scope of 'failure' to mean your life, as opposed to just the business, then you didn't fail. You were pursuing a strategy that would have led to the failure of your marriage, which is much worse than a failed business. I think you succeeded.

The marriage ended ... but I can hold my head high knowing I tried my best. I grew and learned so much after the marriage ended that I never would have if we broke up back then so I suppose everything worked out for the best.

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

#442

Post by tonyoconnell »

mrep wrote: post #345
tonyoconnell wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I spent hours and hours, months and months, up all night trying to fix memory problems, that I wasn't qualified to fix. It was one of the darkest times in my life. Everyone I loved wouldn't speak to me because I wouldn't give up. Then one night when I couldn't take the loneliness anymore I deleted the server, local copies and backups and went to bed.

Memory leaks in a python web server? Did you try just accepting the leaks and restarting the web server every x hours? That is what my old team did with our python web server.

I used to have to restart it all the time but I never thought to just set it to automatically reboot. I should have known that most computer problems can be fixed if you switch them off and on again.

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

#443

Post by tonyoconnell »

tempuser24 wrote: post #262
tonyoconnell wrote: post #127

10 years ago I built an almost amazing business that schools, universities, teachers and students could use to build elearning and web apps. Think Square Space + Moodle + Udemy. Heres a demo if you're interested https://vimeo.com/2221065 The demo doesn't show much of the learning management features but they were also complete. But the app had memory leaks and I didn't have the cash to pay expensive engineers to fix…

When you say the CIA do you mean the Central Intelligence Agency ?

Yes. And the FBI use the same tech https://plone.com/secure

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

#444

Post by DonHopkins »

gt2 wrote: post #428
DonHopkins wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The "Serial Hacktreprenuer" never wrote a line of code -- he just destroyed companies and tried to take credit for other people's ideas. But here are some earlier demos and prototypes I developed for Will at the Stupid Fun Club, exploring his ideas about storytelling, social networking, mobile and geolocated gaming, a community scripted TV program, geographical music organization and navigation, and a reality TV show with robots, which got tangled up with the HiveMind boondoggle and was never released (so I can't release the sources, unfortunately). You can read the articles and his lawsuit complaining how Will was committing an "atrocity" and "genocide" by taking all the ideas he presumed he owned and doing them without him, but take it with a grain of salt because we had been working on that stuff for many years before he came along, and they were pretty obvious widely known ideas:

Stupid Fun Club StoryMaker Demo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2yEHs_WLzQ

>Demo of the Urban Safari StoryMaker technology, developed for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club, by Don Hopkins. Originally developed for CurrentTV's Bar Karma TV show, the first online community-developed network television series. Branching collaborative storytelling and voting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_Karma

>MediaWiki front end server. Python back end server. Flash Storymaker client. Geolocated storytelling. Google map overlays. Administrative back-end content management system. MediaWiki integration and embedding. iPad Storymaker application. MapKit integration. Facebook StoryMaker app. Voice synthesizer reading stories. Facebook album import and export. 3D branching story visualization with Unity3D.

MediaGraph Music Navigation with Pie Menus Prototype developed for Will Wright's Stupid Fun Club:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KfeHNIXYUc

>This is a demo of a user interface research prototype that I developed for Will Wright at the Stupid Fun Club. It includes pie menus, an editable map of music interconnected with roads, and cellular automata.

>It uses one kind of nested hierarchical pie menu to build and edit another kind of geographic networked pie menu.

Servitude:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg

>Stupid Fun Club's "Servitude" One Minute Movie about Robot Servitude, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

Empathy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrbqXPnHvE

>Stupid Fun Club's "Empathy" One Minute Movie about Robot Empathy, written by Will Wright. Robot brain and personality simulation programmed by Don Hopkins.

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

#445

Post by t0mbstone »

cbnotfromthere wrote: post #253
t0mbstone wrote: post #90

Our startup failed because my business partner wanted to just be the "idea guy" who designed the screens, while having me code it and do all the heavy work. Initially, this was going to be a 50/50 split, but after working on it almost full time for about 6 months, I ran out of money. He had a pretty big savings account and came from a well-off family, so he agreed to front me basically just enough to cover my rent wh…

You were an employee by your own admission: - his name on papers - his name on bank accounts - he was paying you a salary.

Plenty of people are salaried employees of companies that they have an ownership stake in, you know...

For example, it's not uncommon for a CEO to be paid a salary by the very company that they own.

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

#446

Post by plasticman »

beh9540 wrote: post #272

Right out of school, another person and I had a startup building a managed VoIP solution. We didn't start selling early enough, and underestimated the amount of time closing our first sale would take. That lead to my business partner taking another job to make ends meet, and not able to meet obligations to our company. Since he was managing the relationships and I was doing the tech, I basically was left trying to ma…

Just out of curiosity. It sounds like you did have a working product. Did you kill it or what did you do with it?

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

#447

Post by plasticman »

BitterSweets wrote: post #269

Not my startup but worked for one until they pivoted. We had a photographer platform ( https://picr.com ) competing with Thumbtack (except our photographers were to be paid higher instead of a bid to the bottom. Everything seemed right. We had the right market (Portland, OR), with a beautiful design and great customer experience. We managed to get roughly 100 photographers on board but the customers never came. After…

Really like the concept of your product. I do have some questions for you. If you have the time get in contact with me. Email is found in my profile.

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

#448

Post by imeyou »

I started a location-based Q&A social app. A Twitter-like quora app as per location. The idea was well received early adoption, and user retention couldn't be achieved. Learnings were that (1) there was no niche it was a very horizontal platform and people did not know what to best use it for (2) Lack of trust between strangers to answer queries

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

#449

Post by Leigho15_M »

adventured wrote: post #118
solveit wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attack? As in invade??

You can't take people like that too seriously, the world is filled with plenty of nuts. During the Bush vs Gore chaos right after the election, the people - from another developed nation - I was working with on a start-up told me they hoped the US would collapse into civil war over it (they wanted to see the US suffer a political catastrophe for a change, they said).

That is a nutty idea!
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