We were successful in that we hit all of the numbers we set ourselves and had 50k monthly active users at the end of 2y.
We were unsuccessful in that we hadn't pulled in enough revenue to survive early enough, and were reliant on raising a next funding round. That did not materialise in part because we hadn't understood what angels and investors were looking for given their interests, where they were in their fund, their portfolio. We were too late into our runway to learn that lesson.
The story is over here: https://medium.com/tech-london/the-journey-of-a-london-start...
But my tip for you would be to go harder on getting a "No" from investors... it prevents wasting your time on false promises.
Also... can you get revenue from those users? I could, but not enough to achieve growth which is what we needed to get the product to a place where it could financially sustain itself in a viable way. I could only get it to a modest lifestyle company that would be in decline instantly without the investment to take it further.
I set a hard deadline... we were all in and 100% committed... but when we hit the deadline, it wasn't sustainable, there was no more runway. We'd built something, it was successful by many criteria... but not financially self-reliant and so by the only success criteria that ensures the viability of the company it definitely failed.
I don't regret shutting it down, and I took a lot from the experience. The forums we launched still exist and are now up to 250k monthly active users, it runs on a shoestring entirely from donations.