I think the original poster made the same mistake I did, and took the wrong lesson from the situation. The startup idea sounds great and I would enthusiastical

I think the original poster made the same mistake I did, and took the wrong lesson from the situation. The startup idea sounds great and I would enthusiastically start working on it right now as a cofounder. The problem was spending money before having a sense of how to get more. That’s all. If the startup could have been run entirely without paying contractors or incurring other serious expenses, the poster could have run it for longer, and iterated on models longer, until the product/market fit got dialed in. There just wasn’t enough runway, enough iteration.