8 ms·

What happened after rejections? Have you ever launched your products after being rejected?

by wonjun 19y ago

nostrademons 19y ago
After SFP05, I took a realistic look at the product and my ability to complete it before competitors did and decided not to pursue it. I took a job with another startup instead, first finishing up a long-time volunteer coding project I'd been working on. It turns out the product (web-based collaborative editing) would've had a market, but I probably would have been crushed by Google. They folded similar features into Google Docs not long afterwards. After SFP07, we continued working on it. We launched a side project (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233) and put about a month of effort into that before deciding it wasn't worthwhile. We also launched an intermediate milestone that we'd mentioned in our application, which is linked in my profile. It's had the same lack of success that we predicted, though I was of course hoping that there may be an off-chance of it taking off. (We did it that way because we need the functionality anyway for the main idea, so might as well package it up and get feedback while we work on that.) Well, some subset of "we". We had applied with 5 founders, and PG immediately shot back an e-mail with "too many uncommitted founders!" It became apparent that he was right, so the 3 that were not really into it left a couple months later. Curiously, our schedule in the SFP07 app would've been nearly dead-on had we not done the 5-week side project. We were initially planning to launch Diffle in late April; it actually launched on June 1. Then we were going to prototype the main idea between then and the start of the SFP; we actually got our first prototypes done during the first week of July. Progress since then has been slower than we anticipated, mostly because I kept the day job through the summer (I'm in the process of quitting now, and really would recommend that anyone in a similar situation quit as soon as they have an idea - it's not worth the hassle of ensuring you own your own IP).
- wonjun 19y ago
  wow thanks a lot for sharing your stories. I think the 3rd time will be the charm for you. It sounds like you've learned a lot from the two previous submissions. Good luck!!!
  - queensnake 19y ago
    (Indeed, it makes me want to apply just for the process! I have an open-source idea, didn't PG say he could monetize anything? It would grow in use as word spread (pretty sure) but ultimately wouldn't get that big and would be hard to make anything off of.. sigh).

What happened after rejections? Have you ever launched your products after being rejected?

by wonjun 19y ago

What happened after rejections? Have you ever launched your products after being rejected?

After SFP05, I took a realistic look at the product and my ability to complete it before competitors did and decided not to pursue it. I took a job with another startup instead, first finishing up a long-time volunteer coding project I'd been working on. It turns out the product (web-based collaborative editing) would've had a market, but I probably would have been crushed by Google. They folded similar features into Google Docs not long afterwards. After SFP07, we continued working on it. We launched a side project (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234 and http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18233) and put about a month of effort into that before deciding it wasn't worthwhile. We also launched an intermediate milestone that we'd mentioned in our application, which is linked in my profile. It's had the same lack of success that we predicted, though I was of course hoping that there may be an off-chance of it taking off. (We did it that way because we need the functionality anyway for the main idea, so might as well package it up and get feedback while we work on that.) Well, some subset of "we". We had applied with 5 founders, and PG immediately shot back an e-mail with "too many uncommitted founders!" It became apparent that he was right, so the 3 that were not really into it left a couple months later. Curiously, our schedule in the SFP07 app would've been nearly dead-on had we not done the 5-week side project. We were initially planning to launch Diffle in late April; it actually launched on June 1. Then we were going to prototype the main idea between then and the start of the SFP; we actually got our first prototypes done during the first week of July. Progress since then has been slower than we anticipated, mostly because I kept the day job through the summer (I'm in the process of quitting now, and really would recommend that anyone in a similar situation quit as soon as they have an idea - it's not worth the hassle of ensuring you own your own IP).

wonjun 19y ago
wow thanks a lot for sharing your stories. I think the 3rd time will be the charm for you. It sounds like you've learned a lot from the two previous submissions. Good luck!!!
- queensnake 19y ago
  (Indeed, it makes me want to apply just for the process! I have an open-source idea, didn't PG say he could monetize anything? It would grow in use as word spread (pretty sure) but ultimately wouldn't get that big and would be hard to make anything off of.. sigh).