5 ms·

I 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 di

I 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 ago
I 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 ago
  Hey 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 ago
    Yes, 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 ago
    It'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.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Business failure = chapter 11, not selling it for a less than spectacular price.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        No, Jacques. Re-read his comment. If I buy CSCO at 20 and sell it at 15, it isn't a decent investment just because I was able to offload it.
        jacquesm 16y ago
        How would you label cuil?
        tptacek 16y ago
        I don't know, I didn't follow cuil that closely. My understanding is they took significant VC. So their team probably got paid close to market salary. So, if they returned all the capital to investors, they "didn't fail", and if they didn't return capital, they did.

petervandijck 16y ago

I 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 ago
Hey 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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
  It'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.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Business failure = chapter 11, not selling it for a less than spectacular price.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      No, Jacques. Re-read his comment. If I buy CSCO at 20 and sell it at 15, it isn't a decent investment just because I was able to offload it.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        How would you label cuil?
        tptacek 16y ago
        I don't know, I didn't follow cuil that closely. My understanding is they took significant VC. So their team probably got paid close to market salary. So, if they returned all the capital to investors, they "didn't fail", and if they didn't return capital, they did.