Not sure if it was a failure or not, but my last venture didn't go as planned. A partner and I decided to create an iPhone app just as the App store starting b

Not sure if it was a failure or not, but my last venture didn't go as planned. A partner and I decided to create an iPhone app just as the App store starting booming. The idea behind the company was to create simple fun games. As we started coding, we quickly discovered that neither of us were artists. Since we were bootstrapping, we could only afford a finite amount artwork and the game we were designing would require a ton of art. So we built a simple animation builder that would greatly reduce the amount of work. Once we built this thing, we thought it would be a great idea to make the animation app a consumer product. The idea was to let you make animations of your friends using only a picture. We programmed the app and kept on adding features. After a long year, we finally decided that it was time to release it into the wild. We submitted it to Apple and waited. While it was in review, we received a number of great reviews from cultofmac and others. Then Apple rejected it. It took us a week to find out why. We removed the offending content and re-submitted. It then took Apple 6 weeks to finally review it again. I think they finally got around to reviewing it because Gizmodo wrote an article about it. At this point our morale and wallets were empty. When the app was finally approved, we set about marketing the app. With an advertising budget of zero, you have to be pretty creative getting your idea out. We created about 100 animations of prominent tech journalist and sent it to every known email address of theirs. The reception was dismal. We even received some take down notices (which we promptly abided by) After a few more weeks of more failed marketing attempts, we decided to throw in the towel and get real jobs. The app is still on the store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/itouch-my-friends/id335338942?mt=8 http://itunes.apple.com/app/itouch-my-friends/id335338942?mt... Main points learned: - Ship early!!!! - Don't let events that are out of your control get you down. - Getting press about your product is hard. It is a lot easier if it has some controversy around it.