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I started Mefeedia.com in 2004, it was a videoblogging aggregator. I sold it 3 years later for a small amount, it was in other words a failure. - Timing was aw
by petervandijck 16y ago
I started Mefeedia.com in 2004, it was a videoblogging aggregator. I sold it 3 years later for a small amount, it was in other words a failure.
- Timing was awesome, I was riding the same wave that Youtube rode (Youtube started a few months later I believe).
- I got lots of high profile press from riding this wave (New York Times, Wall Street Journal etc etc). Press is mostly about riding a wave they want to write about, and being available on the phone.
- I failed mostly because a) I couldn't execute well enough, and b) it was too early for the actual idea. (The idea was that you could easily gather video from all over the web into your own stream and then watch that on your computer or tv). The idea may also have been simply wrong. But mainly I couldn't execute well enough. Not enough coding power.
- I did great with community engagement: the videobloggers were all behind me, even though the product was fairly useless. The site was explained in various books. I had a steady trickle of about 100 new signups a day.
- Selling it was the right decision. It took my mind off it and on to new projects.
- The first working version was a real weekend project (took about 3 days to write the video aggregator). But then it took up much more time than I ever thought.
The 2 greatest lessons where:
1. It's a marathon, not a sprint.
2. Execution is everything.
See also:
http://www.slideshare.net/petervandijck/2-lessons-from-my-first-startup http://www.slideshare.net/petervandijck/2-lessons-from-my-fi...
- SimonPStevens 16y agoI don't know. You had 100 new signups a day and you sold for a positive value. I would describe that as success. Only a small success perhaps, and perhaps it didn't meet your goals, but a business success none the less.
- petervandijck 16y agoI sold it for roughly the amount of money I had put in it, so I had worked all those hours for free. Also, and more important than the money, the product never became what it could/should have been. The idea had (has) potential, but we didn't get there. The users that signed up didn't get real value from the product in the end. It became more of an SEO play. So that's where it really failed, in my mind.
- jacquesm 16y agoHey Peter, don't be so harsh on yourself. A failure is when you end up working for the bank to pay back the loan or when you end up losing it all, not selling it for what you put in. The time you spent you spent both building something and learning a lot, that's worth more than several years of education, you are now better prepared, smarter and wiser and I'm sure that your next venture stands a much larger chance of significant success because of all this. Trust me, nobody that ever 'scored' scored on their first project unless they got wildly lucky or aimed really low.
- petervandijck 16y agoYes, in personal terms I'm very happy I did it. Learnt heaps and had a lot of fun. And got my name in the NYT and WSJ :) But as a startup, it failed :)
- tptacek 16y agoIt's a business failure. That's all he's saying. He's not calling himself a failure. When we say things like, "oh, that's not really a failure", when we highlight these moral victories, we delude people who are considering starting companies.