My First Failed Startup and How I'm Approaching the Next One | Hacker News Reader

My First Failed Startup and How I'm Approaching the Next One

1 pointothmanosx3 comments

Starting a startup is tough, and I learned that the hard way. My first attempt, Brieflytics, was born out of a problem I saw in my own development team—so many repetitive daily tasks spread across different tools like GitHub, Jira, and Slack. I envisioned a platform that would aggregate this information and generate useful analytics and summaries for teams.

Excited by the idea, I quickly put together a landing page to showcase the product and its planned features. I started reaching out to people online, gathering feedback, and trying to gauge interest.

That’s when reality hit me: only one person signed up for the newsletter. Just one. It was a painful but clear signal—I hadn’t validated the idea properly. I was building something I thought people needed, not something they actually wanted. That was my first major lesson.

Fast forward a bit, and during our usual Google Meet calls at work, I noticed something interesting. People weren’t happy with Google Meet. They were missing features they loved from Zoom, better chat UI, reactions, replies, persisted messages, transcriptions, and more. That was my cue. This time, instead of rushing to build a landing page, I built a simple prototype and got my team to use it. They loved it.

That prototype evolved into my new startup, GM-Pro. a Chrome Extension that enhances Google Meet with features like a better chat UI, reactions, persisted messages, transcriptions, and many more improvements. If you want to try it, you can install the extension from the Chrome Store.

This experience was a complete shift from my first startup. I had validation before investing too much time. I had real users giving me real feedback. Now, I’m focusing on refining and expanding this product, knowing there’s actual demand for it.

Lesson learned: don’t just assume a problem exists—make sure people actually care about solving it before you build. Validation first, then execution.

Has anyone else gone through a similar startup failure? How did you pivot?

Kudos for trying!

> That’s when reality hit me: only one person signed up for the newsletter. Just one. It was a painful but clear signal—I hadn’t validated the idea properly.

I'm always confused by the industry and people at large about validation and "failure". What failed? Is it the idea or the execution or the end product or? I see so many inaccurate "experiments" deemed as failures when it's not the same thing.

> I envisioned a platform that would aggregate this information and generate useful analytics and summaries for teams.

Some form of this is a "success". There's been at least a few companies that have raised funding (and/or still making lots of $$$) in this area. So did the idea / the problem you see "fail" or something else? Why does it have to be an outright failure? Perhaps a different form of it would work for example. Maybe the newsletter is the issue. Who knows?

> Lesson learned: don’t just assume a problem exists—make sure people actually care about solving it before you build.

The original problem mentioned, maybe not in those exact words do exist. It's not just an assumption.

Thanks! I appreciate the perspective. You're absolutely right; failure isn’t always black and white, and I probably framed it too harshly.

To clarify, I don’t think the problem itself failed, there’s definitely demand for better workflow aggregation. Like you said, companies have succeeded in that space. But in my case, the way I approached it, the execution, timing, and maybe even the target audience, didn't gain traction. I took the lack of interest as a signal that my specific take on the solution wasn’t compelling enough, at least in the way I was presenting it.

Maybe a different approach could have worked, and in hindsight, I could’ve explored other ways to validate it instead of relying on a newsletter signup as my primary gauge. That’s a great point.

And yeah, the original problem does exist. I guess my real lesson was not just about assuming a problem existed but making sure I was the right person to solve it in a way that people actually wanted.

If you’re curious, the old landing page is still up: https://brieflytics.vercel.app/. I’d love any thoughts on what I could have done differently there.

Also, my new project, GM Pro, is tackling a problem I validated firsthand—improving Google Meet with features like better chat UI, reactions, persisted messages, and transcriptions. You can check it out here: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gm-pro/bfmgohplnhbl....

I've also seen some competition in the Google Meet extensions space, products like FellowApp, Spinach, and others, so I already know the idea is valid and there's a market for it

Would love to hear any feedback, whether on the old idea, the new one, or just thoughts on startup validation in general!

> I took the lack of interest as a signal that my specific take on the solution wasn’t compelling enough, at least in the way I was presenting it.

Some individual tools in your list already have summaries themselves (as emails).

Usually only mid-to-large enterprise would care for such type of information e.g. for a PM. These places are not as likely to sign up for a list and instead of some different type of procurement chain, need SOC2 or something else. I mean if they have to give access to so many systems you'd need to pass security.

> I’d love any thoughts on what I could have done differently there.

It's an interesting topic and perhaps I can reach out to you personally? On a quick thought, maybe as a Slack plugin / bot that messages instead of the newsletter would drive more adoption. I've seen enterprises use random slack integrations a lot more (than a newsletter type). It wouldn't complicate things THAT much either.

> improving Google Meet with features

More individuals use Google Meet. Also as an extension on its on its easier for individuals to pick up, even if they work at large companies. In this case you're NOT asking for any data (compared to above) and makes onboarding a lot easier.

At the end of the day different market segments require different methods.

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