Death of a startup: Spaciety post mortem | Hacker News Reader

Death of a startup: Spaciety post mortem

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22 pointsezl5 comments

I liked the ladder analogy but I feel like this is basically every startup's experience. You climb up the ladders, invalidate assumptions when you realize what's too short, and identify traits that make some ladders better than others. And then at the end there usually is a big honking ladder than you realize is your best bet of trudging up and getting to 'the top.' If you can make the ladder exploration process one which you earn actual money during this time, this makes it a lot easier.

The OP mentioned 'founder-startup' fit, but I wonder what kind of startup trajectory they were expecting. Nothing is formulaic about a startup, but it sounded like they had close to the standard success case as possible. They launched a product, they got some customers, they got information from those customers, they realized future growth would require a pivot in their product but that growth could easily dwarf what they had done before, and... well, that sounded like a lot of work and they punted.

The Spaciety team launched a product, got customers, got revenue, and had a seemingly clear path to more growth via investment and product enhancements/pivots, so despite shutting down I would actually consider them a success. But I finished reading this and was mostly left wondering what trajectory the OP and his founders were looking for? Very few startups had a story like, "well we put in a lot of time to launch the product, got some customers, so now we just kind of hang out and let it run itself and we probably have a 50% chance to sell for like $3 million."

The OP talks about founder-startup fit, but were they a bad fit for Spaciety or a bad fit for starting a startup in general?

Yes, I think the ladder analogy is true for all startups. This is largely written for my family and friends who aren't involved in startups.

I don't think its true that all startups are for all founders. We realized that the "right" track for this startup was "build software, get a large sales team to distribute it". That particular profile of a business didn't suit us.

In some regards your criticism is right: Founders get into a startup without necessarily knowing what paths lead to success. The most probable path to success was one we didn't feel we were good for. You might say that a really tenacious founder ought chase any thread that leads to success -- and that our unwillingness to do so is a founder deficiency.

I happen to be interested in lower variance, possibly lower EV opportunities. I don't want to roll the dice for 2 years for a chance at a big exit.

"Startup" means a lot of different things, so I think its pretty hard to identify someone as ill-suited for "startups in general". There are a thousand ways to skin a cat; pick the one that works for you and keep doing it.

It's a shame you guys couldn't go down the path of writing your own scheduling system, based on what you said (market fragmentation, outdated systems) it sounds like that's definitely a problem that needs a solution! Of course I understand that you decided not to do it for personal reasons. Either way, good luck with whatever you guys are going to do in the future, whether you'll do something together or walk separate paths.

While the market is currently very fragmented, Spa Booker has a fighting shot at being the real leader here. From what we've seen, they're doing it right. We'd be starting behind them (they still have VERY little market penetration).

There are a lot of challenges to distributing the scheduling system, even after it is built. We could be starting with a network of around 100 spas, but that's just a drop in the bucket.

Spa owners are so busy running their spas that even if they see your new system, acknowledge that its superior in every regard, and free, it could still take 6 months to get it in use. People are busy and change is expensive (not dollars, but time, mental overhead)

This is sort of like building a social network. You need to get critical mass to really start making it valuable, and that type of startup is scary to me. The original Spaciety business was able to provide value to Spa #1, and able to make consumers happy around Spa #10.

This story made me sad, I wish you guys would continue because it sound like you are onto something and you have done a lot of the hard work already.

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