Ask HN: How Many Startups/Projects Have You Failed At?
11 comments
I killed a lot of zombie startup projects for my startup, Pressyo.
Many of them didn't get off the ground because we couldn't secure the basic distributions. Here is a list:
ProjectPY - a digg/reddit clone but much saner. This was the first project. We failed because we never tested the market. We took too long to go live.
ProjectTF - a derivative market for daily t-shirts. Didn't work because we couldn't work out/secure a deal in the back end.
edgeyo - a marketplace for startups and entrepreneurs, kinda like a public secondmarket + angellist. We worked 3 years on this, but ultimately got to nowhere. A lot of effort was wasted on this. Too much burn out too. We took a break after this. ZOMBIE
SpellTrade - A novel auction for Magic the Gathering cards. Think of options exchange for MtG cards. This was at the height of Jace the Mind Sculptor. This one failed because we needed to bootstrap the market, and tried to talk a few LGSes into doing it. Everyone got the idea, but no LGS was willing to take the risk of holding magic card stock for options. This is an example of waste: we built everything in preparation for the LGSes to come on board (they were happy to come on board)
Strangers for Dinner - This was the first project since we killed edgeyo. Kinda liks zokos, but for dinner parties. Over 2000 people signed up. But planet Earth is really really really big. It was very difficult to match people whose preferences were 5-10km from themselves. ZOMBIE
That felt good somehow. I feel we've learned quite a bit
Many of them didn't get off the ground because we couldn't secure the basic distributions. Here is a list:
ProjectPY - a digg/reddit clone but much saner. This was the first project. We failed because we never tested the market. We took too long to go live.
ProjectTF - a derivative market for daily t-shirts. Didn't work because we couldn't work out/secure a deal in the back end.
edgeyo - a marketplace for startups and entrepreneurs, kinda like a public secondmarket + angellist. We worked 3 years on this, but ultimately got to nowhere. A lot of effort was wasted on this. Too much burn out too. We took a break after this. ZOMBIE
SpellTrade - A novel auction for Magic the Gathering cards. Think of options exchange for MtG cards. This was at the height of Jace the Mind Sculptor. This one failed because we needed to bootstrap the market, and tried to talk a few LGSes into doing it. Everyone got the idea, but no LGS was willing to take the risk of holding magic card stock for options. This is an example of waste: we built everything in preparation for the LGSes to come on board (they were happy to come on board)
Strangers for Dinner - This was the first project since we killed edgeyo. Kinda liks zokos, but for dinner parties. Over 2000 people signed up. But planet Earth is really really really big. It was very difficult to match people whose preferences were 5-10km from themselves. ZOMBIE
That felt good somehow. I feel we've learned quite a bit
Three so far. Over the course of about 5 years. 6 months to a year and a half on each. Wrote post-mortems for the first two:
http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mort...
http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-...
Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets from it to move in a different direction.
Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done.
Don't give up.
http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mort...
http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-...
Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets from it to move in a different direction.
Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done.
Don't give up.
1 years ago with a good friend - in development for 2 years; no $$$ coming in and I had quit my job to pursue it with my girl friend at the time taking out a loan to cover my bills...
complete waste of money but taught me what failure tasted like and i learned ALOT about how not to start a business.
This time I have 2 going at the same time, with my partners more on the sales and money side than technical side. I hope to be successful this time :)
complete waste of money but taught me what failure tasted like and i learned ALOT about how not to start a business.
This time I have 2 going at the same time, with my partners more on the sales and money side than technical side. I hope to be successful this time :)
About five. I've yet to make a single dollar with any of the projects I've made. Right now I'm working on something super simple and focused. It's called Monkey Bar, it's just a web app that lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups. I'm hoping by focusing on a narrow niche, Mailchimp users willing to pay to grow their emailing list, I'll be able to finally get a sale.
> lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups
Those two things seem to be...disconnected...to me. HelloBar worked, I guess, though...
Those two things seem to be...disconnected...to me. HelloBar worked, I guess, though...
I have some projects that never saw the light. Two coupons websites, 1 tutorial website, and a freeware download site. I have learned a lot from it though. Now I publish my project with bare minimum and add features gradually
Failed at the first one (it's still alive and used, but it's not a success). Working on a second right now that I'm approaching completely differently and I'm really excited about.
In this year alone 4. In total since I started 20-ish. Not all have been tech. Most have made money.
A lot. Mostly one day projects that I lost interest in after I built version 1.
2 Startups in the last 5 years. Projects I don't count. Those are for fun.
One dead already, another might die soon too :)
Four deaths, two half-deaths one stillborn because of a missed dead-date, two mild successes.
Working on another. :)
Working on another. :)
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