I got a job where I just get to write code, go home at regular time, and get paid every month. it's awesome.
Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
51–60 of 181 posts
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#52Someone should start a blog interviewing failed startup founders and letting them tell their stories and share their lessons, really in-depth. Maybe even bring in other people for multiple perspectives.
The problem is these lessons are, for the most part, already out there. Unfortunately, some things you just have to go through to really learn. All of the mistakes I made were ones I read about. It just took me a while to recognize that my mistakes were the same as the ones I read about.
That said, if somebody did start that blog I would definitely read it.
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#53Failed at a bootstrapped startup ( http://shoutt.me/ ) earlier this year after a painful 2 years. Learnt a lot and failed a lot - in practically everything - marketing, sales, growth, tech, operations. Lost a fair bit of money too. Failed because the product was wrong and it took us 2 years to accept it. Succeeded in one thing - found the right co founders. In 2 months started working on the another idea ( https://do…
I honestly believe that you have the single most important thing for a startup (a true 'just starting out' startup). The right co-founders (co-founding team).
It's the one thing out of all the other things that you listed that cannot be learned. It is dependent on pure and simple luck. So, I have hopes for you guys if you have that plus a plethora of lessons learned. Good luck! Even though you may not even need it. ;)
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#54Started a startup in Vancouver using Machine learning to automate the sports betting odds generating stack. Got two cofounders one MBA (yah i know) and a fundraiser, both failed badly as I did all the code. ended up doing 40% of the fundraising. fired the MBA for incompetence, 4 coders I had all left when other co founder did a deal where the term sheet was pulled last second. packed up left the company to the fundraiser and used all 12 man years of work to bet on sports. Now a successful sports gambler, completely financially free. Single most deadly killer to startups is a bad cofounder.
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#55Had a startup (rather, small company that was established in the hosting space), sold it when I was 19. Took that money, paid out employees, and tried to start something new and fresh. That failed. Had a co-founder that wasn't dedicated. Had some tech that I could sell and did sell, but I still considered it a failure because I never hit the mark I wanted. Consulted, took some jobs with startups here and there. Those…
You should publish your book of ideas as a GitHub repo and submit it here. It might help you find a perfect cofounder for one of your ideas, etc. Or just get general feedback. :)
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#56I ran out of gas and left my cofounder; divorced; worked a succession of small startup jobs, some better than others; ended up back at Apple. I have ideas that I cannot express at Apple and so may end up taking another whack at the piñata, now that a) I am not in the throes of a crumbling personal relationship and b) I've gone round the carousel once, so I have some idea how the world works. I regret the way I left m…
I don't think it is possible to do with more than two of work stress; personal life stress; physical safety or health stress simultaneously. One at a time is ideal, but most startups have work stress and physical stress (due to time) simultaneously.
You don't have to be single and childless to do a startup successfully, but if you have family life or interpersonal relationships, they have to be good ones, or at least low stress ones.
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#57While I was working on my own (small) startup, I took a contract at a job search engine in 2004, called Indeed.com. I ended up joining as employee #1, and stopped working on my own startup about a year later. Fast forward to 2012, Indeed.com was acquired for a cool billion. After that, I started Searchify.com (still going), and I'm currently living in Argentina, traveling through Patagonia at the moment.
How is patagonia? Heard the wifi isn't so abundant there.. Congrats, I hope to make it there one day!
Internet is generally slower, there is no 4G yet. Wifi is actually pretty common it seems, but I'm in a fairly popular part of Patagonia right now (San Martin de Los Andes and Bariloche). Tomorrow I'm driving South towards a town called El Chaltén, where there is apparently NO cell coverage, because the people who live there don't want it. I'll have to depend on Wifi 100% there.
Aside from Internet coverage, Patagonia is beautiful, if you like lakes and mountains (and glaciers)!
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#58Someone should start a blog interviewing failed startup founders and letting them tell their stories and share their lessons, really in-depth. Maybe even bring in other people for multiple perspectives.
The problem is these lessons are, for the most part, already out there. Unfortunately, some things you just have to go through to really learn. All of the mistakes I made were ones I read about. It just took me a while to recognize that my mistakes were the same as the ones I read about. That said, if somebody did start that blog I would definitely read it.
Yeah, this was the biggest surprise for me in founding my own startup. I had worked for two previous startups to learn what to do and what not to do, and went into my own startup with a whole laundry list of pitfalls to avoid. It turns out that I ended up committing almost every one of them (except the ones that were management-related, and those only because we never got big enough to employ people. I think that when I ended up becoming a team lead at my job later, I ended up committing a bunch of them too, or nearly committing them and catching myself right before).
The nice thing about having knowledge and experience is that oftentimes it shortens the time required to realize you're making a mistake. Folks who haven't done this before and haven't read about other peoples' experience can sometimes waste years doing something that clearly isn't going to work. If you've read about it before you might catch yourself after a few months, and if you've personally experienced it from the other side it might take you a couple weeks. But it really does require committing the mistake, learning (painfully) from it, and then doing it the right way a couple times before you'll start getting it right automatically
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#59I went and lived in a monastery for a little over a year. Then started something new. Couldn't stay away for long.
Intrigued. Do tell more.
Re: Ask HN: Founders whose startups have failed, where did life take you afterwards?
#60Started a startup in Vancouver using Machine learning to automate the sports betting odds generating stack. Got two cofounders one MBA (yah i know) and a fundraiser, both failed badly as I did all the code. ended up doing 40% of the fundraising. fired the MBA for incompetence, 4 coders I had all left when other co founder did a deal where the term sheet was pulled last second. packed up left the company to the fundra…
im in vancouver too. interesting you are in to sports gambling are the odds anything like poker? you should write an article on it.