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Wow, it's great to see a bunch of very candid assessments of failure. You don't get a glimpse of failure very often often, especially for really early stage stu

by sskates 15y ago

Wow, it's great to see a bunch of very candid assessments of failure. You don't get a glimpse of failure very often often, especially for really early stage stuff, so it's hard to learn from the mistakes other people make. Appreciate the author for putting themselves out there like this. Reasons for failure broken down by project: 1) No traction/user retetion/no monetization potential 2) Weren't able to break into the existing market 3) Sales problem for an engineering focused team 4) Market opportunity too small 5) Disagreements in the founding team 6) Disagreements in the founding team 7) Market opportunity too small 8) Disagreements in the founding team 9) Bad cofounder 10) Bad cofounder Grouped by reason for failure: -5 cofounder problems -3 no traction -2 traction, but market was too small Startups are rough.

bruce511 15y ago
The exact timeline for all the projects isn't clear, but it hints of a relatively short period, say 3 years? 10 (make that 11) projects in 3 years seems like a high number to me. Yes, lessons can be learned by failure, and test pivoting early is good if needed, but if you're failing this often, and (disturbingly) for the same reasons then there surely must be a time to step back and take some time to do things differently. The disagreements with founders being repeated so often is a sign of something. I realize that it may indeed be "the other guy" in all cases, but sooner or later folk will stay wondering if it's you. At best, your ability to select partners comes into question. There must also be a balance between this frantic skipping from one project to another (6 months per project?) and putting in the time to get a product done right. It _feels_ like you're looking for an overnight smash hit, or you bail quickly. The conference project felt especially like this. You narrowed the market to a tiny segment, the segment incidentally that had the least motivation to pay anything, then opted not to follow through on the markets that are more likely to pay. It's like you built a job site, focused on people who already had high paying gigs, rather than people out of work desperate for jobs, or employers disparate for employees. I think the article was really interesting, and I think an excellent learning experience for others - thank you for being honest enough to post it. I think you have learnt some lessons along the way, and hopefully these comments will make the xperience more valuable to you. I wish you all the best with finding the one-true-project you want to commit to long-term.

by sskates 15y ago

bruce511 15y ago

The exact timeline for all the projects isn't clear, but it hints of a relatively short period, say 3 years? 10 (make that 11) projects in 3 years seems like a high number to me. Yes, lessons can be learned by failure, and test pivoting early is good if needed, but if you're failing this often, and (disturbingly) for the same reasons then there surely must be a time to step back and take some time to do things differently. The disagreements with founders being repeated so often is a sign of something. I realize that it may indeed be "the other guy" in all cases, but sooner or later folk will stay wondering if it's you. At best, your ability to select partners comes into question. There must also be a balance between this frantic skipping from one project to another (6 months per project?) and putting in the time to get a product done right. It _feels_ like you're looking for an overnight smash hit, or you bail quickly. The conference project felt especially like this. You narrowed the market to a tiny segment, the segment incidentally that had the least motivation to pay anything, then opted not to follow through on the markets that are more likely to pay. It's like you built a job site, focused on people who already had high paying gigs, rather than people out of work desperate for jobs, or employers disparate for employees. I think the article was really interesting, and I think an excellent learning experience for others - thank you for being honest enough to post it. I think you have learnt some lessons along the way, and hopefully these comments will make the xperience more valuable to you. I wish you all the best with finding the one-true-project you want to commit to long-term.