I invested three years in a site which failed | Hacker News Reader

I invested three years in a site which failed

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88 pointsretube33 comments

I think he is selling himself short. He is saying that he wasted three years of his life and now he feels stupid. I think that's a normal reaction. I applaud this guy. Mark Cuban and Jeff Bezos have both made statements about living life with no regrets. What if he didn't do it? Would he regret it later? Surely in the three years this guy learned a lot about building a business, marketing, coding, etc. I'll bet that next time he won't make some of the same mistakes.

In three years he did more than most will ever do in their life. It would be a tragedy for him to not try again at another business and just simply give up.

He may put himself forward as giving up but in actuality, he's going to revise it. [0]

It seems he failed at one most important aspect: Feedback from users (He got unhelpful feedback from friends and programmers though).

[0] http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ffu1n/iama_guy_who_inv...

I think he has regrets. He lost a lot of money and most of his friends. A lot of people would say that learning about marketing and coding do not make it worth it.

And those people are not entrepreneurs.

If and when he tries something else, he'll probably figure out exactly how much he learned. Until then, there's going to be a lot of regret to contend with. Especially if he keeps looping "I can not believe I was so stupid to think an idea I had could make it."

Good ideas often fail. Bad ideas can lead to ones that win. And persistence makes a hell of a difference. In that regard, he's got a lot going for him. Right now, he's burnt out. That should be treated like a health problem (i.e. one from which you can recover, given suitable time, rest, and diligent self-care).

I'm betting that, if he focuses on his personal life for a while, and just makes a point of enjoying his days one at a time, the itch to try something new and daring will return sooner than he expects.

I'm not sure how much he learned with a site with 30 users.

The name is terrible and I don't know what the site is about after examining the landing page.

BUT -- this guy is young (I assume) and he had an idea, found help in implementing it, and carried through. At least he has the drive. He just needs to keep trying.

The top reddit comment is the best lesson he can get from this - "fail fast". He's got the drive to make it happen. Just has to learn to pull the plug on bad ideas faster.

I think another important lesson here is that there's a big difference between putting in the time and putting in the work.

In the comments, he says the website took the developers he hired about a month. He doesn't even seem to associate himself with the making of the product. Of course I don't the situation for sure so I'll phrase this as a general comment. Sometimes, people think they can hire some programmers and think, "I put in money, I put in time, this should work." 3 years is a lot of time to run a website without learning to code, or reading a book about entrepeneurship. Putting in the work doesn't mean, "if I dont know how to do it, someone else will." It means "if I don't know how to do it, I'll learn."

I disagree with the folks who say that contracting your development is ALWAYS bad. I've been doing the development under contract for SetForMarriage.com for over a year and a half, and it's going great (even though I have other client work) because we communicate daily (it also helps that the owner and I were co-workers before). I get pretty considerable leeway to play with features and design (approval is almost always granted), and because of that I really enjoy working on the site.

It only took a few months to hit our first thousand users, because the owner of SFM spent a few days compiling a list of contact info for every local news station in the country, bugged them multiple times a week, and used vacation days and skipped college classes to fly out and give live interviews (he works for an airline so his flights are free). I was unsure of his hustling ability before that, but boy did he prove me wrong. Plus, he's funding this whole thing with airline salary and whatever's left over from his student loans.

I think the reason the Date or Done guy is so depressed is that he was never able to admit to himself that either the idea was bad or he wasn't hustling in the right ways. It's cognitive dissonance. We didn't spend any time on SEO for Set For Marriage until a few months ago, and we didn't even have a real logo until a couple of months after the site launched. I always hate to see people get so attached to their ideas that they fool themselves. I think when you're in the early stages it's better to be afraid that everything is on the verge of miserable failure but always know that it's in your power to drag it out of the mud into glory (or decide to pull the plug).

Also, I really hate to kick a guy while he's down, but if your social website needs a walkthrough there's probably something fundamentally wrong: http://dateordone.com/how

Having some trust with contractors is really important. I hired someone to work on a pet project for me and i'm thrilled so far. First revision is mostly done. He makes man decisionsn his own and I just run with it.

how much are you paying him? i'd assume self-starter contractors command a higher rate?

I cringe when I hear stories like this, because I know what it feels like when something doesn't work. It's tough to get back up after being knocked down, but this is more than that. This guy has been on the ground the whole damn time, and he's just figuring it out. I hate writing negative things like this and I'll probably get down-voted, but this boggles my mind.

> So I took a shot, I hired a programmer and a designer. I made payments for 2 years to pay all of this off. I had a custom logo made, I had a custom CMS implemented and I spent a lot of advertising.

I applaud his effort, but that is absolutely insane. You know what else can be done in 2 years instead of paying for a programmer and a designer? You can learn to program and design. Yes. You really, really can. Anybody can. 2 years is a really long time. And not only will you have a custom logo and a custom CMS after 2 years, you will unlimited custom logos and unlimited CMSs for the rest of your life (not to mention a whole load of other things you can do with skills like that). I'm not even going to comment on whether the idea was a great idea or a fundamentally flawed idea, but I can definitely tell you he made horrible time/money investment choices along the way, and that's why he failed.

> Now 3 years later my website has had about 30 users, and about 20 things posted to it. I am out a lot of money, I have almost no friendships because I spent almost all my time at work, college, or on the site. I spent way more than I ever should have. I have become depressed and I can not believe I was so stupid to think an idea I had could make it.

It really hurts to read this... but are you kidding me? Not to sound arrogant, but I honestly don't even know how that's possible. 30 users over 3 years? And there are how many billions of people on the internet? He spent a "lot" on advertising... where? A bathroom stall in a funeral home? Does he know what Google is? At this point in his rant, I couldn't resist any further. I had to check out the site. It was better than I expected, but not great. It looks eerily reminiscent of a pretty standard Wordpress template. Stanley Web Design should be embarrassed of this work, and this guy should be embarrased for hiring them.

All I can say is that I sure hope he learned something from this, because if there's anything to be gotten here, it's a few pretty big life lessons (one of them being not to rely or depend on others to get anything done for you). I sincerely hope that he picks himself up and tries again, but maybe with a little more know-how and elbow grease this time around.

You know what else can be done in 2 years instead of paying for a programmer and a designer? You can learn to program and design.

First, most people who aren't programmers don't know what can be learned in two years. If you aren't a programmer you may not even know where to begin.

And I'm not a designer, but I took some drawing classes in college... but I don't think I'd invest the next two years of my life to see if I could be a good enough designer to create logos and other assets. I'd much rather pay someone who can show me a kick butt portfolio today.

I don't think elbow grease was the problem. Rarely is, IMO. It's not knowing the business and the market that screwed him. And that's what he needs to know better going in. Learning Ruby or MVC or Javascript wasn't the delta between success and failure.

People can do anything if they want it bad enough.

* for low values of anything

Two years isn't really that long. I've been doing what I do for 14 years and I still have a lot of room for improvement. I can't imagine what it would have been like to start a company based off my first two years of programming and design experience.

2 yrs is a massive amt of time for something like this. I built and deployed my first web app (which had greater complexity than this one...) in 3 weeks starting from close to zero knowledge. All it took was determination and the willingness to work around the clock for a brief period of time. I gained a huge amount in that short span so my advice to others would be to stop talking about it and just do it.

I think if he had been technical the damage would be seriously mitigated.

It's the kind of FML-clone site a lot of hackers would put up after a weekend sprint. It looks reasonably polished, but not 3 years polished. What was the revenue plan? Advertising?

"What was the revenue plan? Advertising?"

How else would one of those "thumbs up/down voting + comments" sites be monitized? People certainly aren't going to pay a subscription for it.

I like one of the upvoted comments on reddit: turn the ship slightly, port over to Facebook, and slap adsense on it.

Then move on to the next idea.

Doing a start-up is like going to college, especially for those who cant code. You put a ton of money into and either way the outcome should be positive; either it's a crazy success or it wasnt but you gained invaluable skills(coding & or online marketing), as well made some new friends by throwing yourself into local start-up communities. Don't isolate yourself; every town has a tech community.

Overall, his story mirrors mine; spent way over 100K & about 4 years on it. I dont regret it, as the journey was a lot of fun, a great learning experience and I met some great people/connections. We are even now are seeing others creating & having a shot at the same concept(which is neat to see).

Interesting comments, but let's face it - this was not a great idea. I'm not even 100% sure what its about - I suppose people providing dating advice - but isn't that what yahoo answers basically does as well? How do you plan to compete with something like that? The Adwords banner ad does not look nice on so primitive a startup with hardly any users, but maybe this was recently added to generate some revenue, who knows. Also if you are paying a programmer and want the site to look professional, they shouldn't include "Site designed by Stanley Web Design" at the bottom. And the term "Submit Query" is just too techie.

Live and learn, obviously he shouldn't give up. But if he is not going to be the programmer, then he really should be the person focusing on design aesthetics.

Classic mistake: having someone else implement the site. How can you pivot, adapt, and make good use of feedback if you can't work on the site without having to pay money?

The cynic in me thinks this might just be an attempt to boost the site's profile before sale. It's going to have lots of links it didn't have before ...

Also the idea isn't, I don't think, awful. It's not my kinda thing but it's got something there. It looks pretty sub-optimal. Just the button text "Detract From users reputation" speaks volumes to me; why is there a dropdown and submit button for voting "do or done", why aren't they more prominent [isn't that the point of the site?] ...

Ok, I love the idea firstly and I think he shouldn't quit just yet, pivot and iterate, yes.

Problems to be addressed.

1) Trying to do two things at once - It should be Date or Done, that is it nothing else. Don't try to be Date or Do; do one thing and do it well.

2)Reduce the options available to users - Give your users too much choices and they don't want to use your site, Choice Paradox. So, take away that form on the front page about what they want to see.

3)Remove the How to Use - The site should be intuitive enough so that they understand how to use the site.

4)One Question on the front page - Again limit the options the users have. Only one question to respond to.

5)Don't require login to vote, Date or Done - Make it easy for the users to interact with your site.

6)Seed your stories - Give your users something to munch on while they don't have any questions of their own.

7)Make comments one liners - Comments should be able to fit in a twitter status. Also, give them a button to allow for more characters.

8)Sharable comments - When you make a comment, it is suppose to be likeable and tweetable[new words]. People have this need to show they are smart or funny or whatever to their friends, make it easier for them do to this will allow your site to spread virally.

9) Get a technical founder - I will leave the percentage up to you. But, a huge chunk will be my suggestion.

10) Make link SEO friendly - I see they kinda seo friendly, but we need them to be questions that people would actually google for.

11) Anonymous posting of questions

--->

Take a month off and get back to it. You definitely have not tried everything.

I invested three years in gaining important startup experience for my next project

This is only true if he actually learnt what he did wrong. Looking at his replies to some of the comments on Reddit, I'm not convinced he quite gets it.

As many people have commented, the implementation of an idea is key. For anyone with a startup idea, first think about how you would implement the idea. Dwell on the implementation for weeks or months all the while trying to think outside the box. Once you think you got something golden, pitch the idea (just the idea and nothing more) to friends and family you trust to get feedback. THEN ask them how they would implement the idea! Take their thoughts and mold them with your own.

Entrepreneurs need to realize success in business is an anomaly.

Jeez, they really tore into the poor guy. I think it was an admirable effort at least. He already feels like shit, and they're just tearing him new ones.

So this is why people say ideas are worthless? Because this idea was worthless from day 1. Definitely a worthy learning experience though.

No. Even a good idea is worthless unless implemented. This is actually the complete opposite of that.

I don't know... I'm pretty sure the basic idea could work if implemented masterfully.

I can imagine a similar thread about threewords.me if it had been implemented by somebody else, and failed rather than "succeeded".

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