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I wouldn't have any regrets re:seeing something "similar" sold for millions of $. Unless "heading in the right direction" means that you had a growing user bas

I wouldn't have any regrets re:seeing something "similar" sold for millions of $. Unless "heading in the right direction" means that you had a growing user base and/or solid revenue, in all likelihood the product you were building just wasn't succeeding. The idea in itself is not worth much: think Uber, Coursera, Airbnb, ... these are not novel ideas, many many people had the same ideas but didn't manage to make them a success (bad execution, or just bad luck/timing). You seem to still be very very young, most successful companies are founded by people in their mid 30s, so don't despair just because a couple of your attempts were not successful. The best is still ahead of you.

henvic 5y ago
tl;dr: I don't regret working on it. Just not even trying to market it! By heading in the right direction, I mean that I've built the 'minimum viable product' entirely in one year. Now it was time to go after putting it in the market somehow, search for a venture capitalist or anything like that. But, no, we didn't even try. We had many features that other sites didn't have back then. Such as the 'Google-like' search with auto-complete, auto-refresh appeal, etc. not so common back then, but we never went out after a single potential consumer or investor. I was in a situation that I had to stop developing on my own and focus on other things in my life. However, my business partner didn't want to stop adding new features. He wanted a few more things that I could achieve in a month or two to start looking for an investor, but I just didn't have the throughput (no time due to new endeavors + saturated), and things died off. I blame him for chickening out when we had possibly a tremendous competitive advantage that might make it an easy sell. I blame myself for not doing my own research for investors once I noticed that we reached a point of stagnation. Context: He had great designing ideas but was not technical. I wasn't good at communication back then and counted on him too much to make this happen. If this was today, it wouldn't happen again, thanks to my experience now.
- cubano 5y ago
  ahhh yes...you were working with an infamous "idea guy" where you were expected to do all the work while he sits back and just thinks of new ways to crack the whip with you. that sort of thing is very rarely a good way to structure a business. the people who do the actual work almost always need to be the ones who decide on new features as only they know the proper work/reward ratios. if i had a nickle for all the proposals i've seen from the "idea guys"...well i sure would have a lot of nickles.

henvic 5y ago

tl;dr: I don't regret working on it. Just not even trying to market it! By heading in the right direction, I mean that I've built the 'minimum viable product' entirely in one year. Now it was time to go after putting it in the market somehow, search for a venture capitalist or anything like that. But, no, we didn't even try. We had many features that other sites didn't have back then. Such as the 'Google-like' search with auto-complete, auto-refresh appeal, etc. not so common back then, but we never went out after a single potential consumer or investor. I was in a situation that I had to stop developing on my own and focus on other things in my life. However, my business partner didn't want to stop adding new features. He wanted a few more things that I could achieve in a month or two to start looking for an investor, but I just didn't have the throughput (no time due to new endeavors + saturated), and things died off. I blame him for chickening out when we had possibly a tremendous competitive advantage that might make it an easy sell. I blame myself for not doing my own research for investors once I noticed that we reached a point of stagnation. Context: He had great designing ideas but was not technical. I wasn't good at communication back then and counted on him too much to make this happen. If this was today, it wouldn't happen again, thanks to my experience now.

cubano 5y ago
ahhh yes...you were working with an infamous "idea guy" where you were expected to do all the work while he sits back and just thinks of new ways to crack the whip with you. that sort of thing is very rarely a good way to structure a business. the people who do the actual work almost always need to be the ones who decide on new features as only they know the proper work/reward ratios. if i had a nickle for all the proposals i've seen from the "idea guys"...well i sure would have a lot of nickles.