Why have I failed? | Hacker News Reader

Why have I failed?

blog.bahadir.io

121 pointsbcambel50 comments

Reading his backstory, I think it was because he quit his job to become an entrepreneur.

He just put the cart before the horse, that's all. Find a good company, find a good project, work on it. When you see a true market for something, then and only then should you go after it.

Don't just be an entrepreneur because you think it's what you want to do—it's not about you, it's about the market and the value you can provide to it.

>Don't just be an entrepreneur because you think it's what you want to do-it's not about you, it's about the market and the value you can provide to it.

This should be considered a powerful quote that everyone should live by.

Exactly, in fairness I think the original author has figured this out, but its an important litmus test.

If you want to be an entrepreneur you first need to discover a problem you are passionate about fixing, and you enjoy working on. You will need that to carry you through the hard work. Finding that is best done by working for someone else and spending your personal time reading, networking, and listening. While you are working for someone else, hone those skills that make you a better employee, and you can use as an entrepreneur, get better at writing code, develop tools to communicate clearly, think through assignments and figure out what needs to be done to complete them. All great skills.

did not listen people very well. I've heard them but did not actually listen. I kept on talking and talking.

I couldn't care less if you're some guy with a fancy idea in his head with no clue on how to do anything about it or if you're Paul Graham himself, as soon as you stop listening to what others have to say, you're failing.

My father rarely had anything insightful to say but one thing he did say that really stuck with me was "As soon as you believe you're the smartest man in the room, you're in the wrong room". His point being that you should never stop learning from others and always seek out opinions of those more experienced or simply those with alternative experience to your own.

^^^ This is a good point. I knew he'd fail at the first line when he claimed to know everything. That's not a good attitude to jump into any situation.

I guess that was exactly his point.

Agreed. Not only does an active listening habit reward you with more efficient learning, but the body language that results comes off as much more charismatic.

Love your fathers lesson. Just goes to show us that the moment we choose to stop learning is the moment we've chosen to fail.

edit: clarification

I wholeheartedly agree with you; some personal other side of the story regarding the link in OP's article.

Lack of listening? That's not my experience with Bado. I know him in real life and I've worked together with him at a very young company/startup right when he came from Turkey to the Netherlands. That was a blast, both on a professional and a personal level. I also got to experience the Turkish hospitality when I had to work for three weeks in beautiful Istanbul myself. After both of us moving on to greener pastures we kind of lost contact though.

Last time I met him (and another former co-worker) was several months ago in Amsterdam; we had a great night; much booze was had and we bounced around from pub to bar to nightclub. But we also bounced back and forth all these ideas on entrepreneurship and all that. I remember telling him I was worried that he had a lot on his plate and that especially with his potential visa problems he was quite vulnerable.

But then again; you shouldn't take everyone's advice either. If Larry and Sergey had done that they wouldn't have started a search engine either ("too hard; Yahoo is king already"). But carefully weighing outside's viewpoints is a good idea.

In my personal experience Bado never acted like the smartest man in the room; he was always willing to learn and exchange books/ideas with me. But when starting to go down one road with your company one might close itself off a bit though. Sometimes it does pays to be stubborn though :)

Don't get me wrong, my statement wasn't directed at Bado specifically. It was more of a general point aimed at those who feel they have little to learn from others.

But then again; you shouldn't take everyone's advice either.

You're right but again, that wasn't my point. My point is you should always listen. Sometimes you can learn more from other peoples mistakes (even if they don't consider it a mistake) than their successes.

Yeah, I didn't even interpret your statement as to mean that. Edited and hopefully clarified my post now.

Somehow along pg's lines in one of latest essays, the thing about being the wave even you are not actually leading or luching the wave, but try to be part of the wave. That's were new ground is broken and new things happen.

My believe is that there are also personal waves that are not necessarily general waves. Once you out-learned, change the environment maybe to radical but gives at least a good direction.

Wow, that's some humility. You are less of a fool than when you started. Based on what I've been reading lately a few things stick out above all others:

>did not look for a market very well

>did not try to sell the product, I've just build it

>my job is not programming. My job is delivering value using programming

Because, really, would the project have been a success with more Backbone?

Hi bcambel, big congrats to your courage and honesty - one of the biggest learning for me of being an entrepreneur is the humility.

Just a thought, you might want to think of yourself as "an entrepreneur that failed once" rather than "a failed entrepreneur". In psychology that makes a big difference in how we label ourselves. Relate the failure to an incident in our lives, rather than an attribute that we belong to.

Also, just curious, what made you decide to give up? What are your plans now? All the best.

Funny, had you been more successful (by any definition), most of these comments would still be true. Successful people make many of the same mistakes you're citing here.

I hate to paraphrase and respond to your entire post, but it was such an interesting one, so here goes...

did not take care myself; emotionally and physically

Yes! This must always be #1. As Vince Lombardi said, "Fatigue makes cowards of us all." If you don't have your health, nothing else matters.

did not listen people very well. I've heard them but did not actually listen. I kept on talking and talking.

Now you know. But you must still beware: don't listen to everyone equally. You must learn to distinguish good feedback from bad.

being an expat and entrepreneur is somewhat crazy when you know you're going to have visa problems. Too much instability in one man's life drains too much energy.

Naaa. If you wait until conditions are better, you'll wait forever. Almost always, the best time to do something is "now".

did not use my time wisely

Hardly anyone else does either.

tried to do too much

Don't we all?

should be less harsh on myself and others

This should always be the case. You must be brutally honest with yourself and others, but "harsh"? I don't think so.

was(am) stubborn when I should not be

This works both ways. Many of my biggest successes were the result of my stubbornness, when I was right and conventional wisdom and the feedback of others would have held me back. The secret is knowing when to be stubborn and when to go along.

was inconsistent ( ran ~90km in June '12 then in the last 6 months I only ran 30km )

Just about everything follows sinusoidal curves. Nature isn't very consistent. You probably won't be either.

did not ask for help

Now you know. But optimizing when, where, and from whom to ask for help is just as important as knowing that you must every once in a while.

never did true problem description. Should have write it down

Good idea. But don't forget that it can evolve. You may have to rewrite it every now and then.

should have connected with more people. Relationships matter a lot.

The right relationships matter a lot. The wrong ones are worse than none at all.

did not plan ahead the business

Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes the best journeys are taken one step at a time in what you think is the right direction. Don't kill yourself over a "plan" that you may never have been able to forsee anyway. Even in business, evolution is sometimes more important than driving home the plan.

do not write a 100 page business plan does not mean don't write it at all

Nice thought. A one pager may have helped you maintain focus on your true north.

started working on other ideas and lost focus when business needed the most

Yea, a common problem. I guess the first step in solving it is recognizing you have it. Good for you.

should take the money when a beta user offered to pay

Maybe, maybe not. That could have really jump started the project. It also could have derailed it.

should have postpone opening company till we have a paying customer base.

Usually a very good idea. A good guideline, but not a rule.

should have asked money from people

Maybe, maybe not. Same answer as your beta user.

rather than having a $400 Amazon EC2 instance, €30 p/m server was enough.

Good thought. Keep expenses low! Runway matters.

scalability problems should be solved when there are scalability problems.

That's easy to say now, but at the time you're building, it's often really hard to tell what the scalability issues might be. Go easy on yourself here.

have stuck in maker's obsession

That's a good thing, I think. We need more obsessed makers, not less.

wrote too much code. 30% became immediately unnecessary

This is always true. The problem is that while you're building, you rarely know which 30% will become unnecessary. As John Wanamaker said, "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half."

did not prioritize what I should be working next

Absolutely! This is the second most important thing you said (after taking better care of yourself). Your To Do List only needs one item. Your most important job is making sure it's the right item.

should have learnt Celery before

Naaa. I've always believed that building the right thing will naturally guide you to learning the appropriate tools. A million "should haves" don't make any difference now.

should have learnt Flask before

See "Celery" response above.

more Backbone less spagetti JS.

You should never write spagetti in any language! Find a way to solve that problem before you ever write another line of code.

less code, less code, less code.

Refactoring is necessary but not sufficient. Again, go easy on your self.

my job is not programming. My job is delivering value using programming.

Semantics.

should release the app much more earlier

Maybe, maybe not. You can release too early and sabatoge the entire endeavor. This is another general guideline, never a rule.

should have fixed the showstopper bug and email users a.s.a.p. to say that we're sorry. ( Some users registered and tried the app when they shouldn't but since I left the Google login open, they've registered and saw a non-working app )

Yes. The customer almost always comes first and deserves their fair share of your service and respect.

did not look for a market very well

Are you solving a problem that needs to be solved? You must be.

did not able to explain the product in simple terms

Great point. This is usually trickier than it seems and is an absolute must.

did not try to sell the product, I've just build it

Another tricky point, but a very good one.

kept 600 people waiting for a demo while having a product

Not sure what this means, but it doesn't sound good. Live and learn.

should have integrated payment gateway much more earlier

Now you know.

Facebook & Twitter do not have quality content

So what? You must learn to focus on issues, not details. Most of your feedback here sounds like issues. This sounds like a meaningless detail.

I am a fool. A big one.

No, you're not and I have proof: A fool could have never written such an interesting post. Thanks for sharing. I'm sure this has helped others.

Very well put. Concise and constructive.

Thank you

A beautiful comment and I think you add a lot of good thoughts. I must respectfully disagree with one point though: "my job is not programming. My job is delivering value using programming.

Semantics."

I'm not sure. More than once I have gotten lost adding features no one wanted because the process of doing it interested me, or I spent hours optimizing a routine because I just knew it could be improved even when what my users wanted was a new feature and the performance was acceptable.

When time is limited, focus on adding value through programming, not programming for its own sake or because the problem is interesting.

I am also looking for a job in Netherlands, do you know any company/friend ? Send me an email to bcambel@<google's-fantastic-email-service>

"... Cemal started to convince me that Cashgenius is a really hard way to go. We have also spoken wtih a couple of prospects and realized that they are not using computer to manage their financial situation. I was in a situation where I wasted again my resources for a product where no customer exists to start up the engines of my business. My game plan was gone. I was falling apart."

Feels like this is as big an issue as any - you were working on a product you believed in, but when it became clear the product wouldn't work exactly how you wanted, you dumped the whole thing in the trash and went to chase the soul crushing social media wave. Better plan may have been to spend more time finding out how you could change Cashgenius to fit to a potential market?

I could be wrong here, but pivoting a product is nearly always better than trashing it at the first sign of difficulty and chasing the new hot fashion.

Is there some kind of context? What did he fail at?

http://blog.bahadir.io/posts/story.html

"Should take the money when a beta user offered to pay"

Not sure about this point. Why would we take money if we knew the product is not in a working condition. And what if, the product doesn't get to a stage where we feel the fee justifies.

the customer will complain, close his account or ask for a refund

The nice thing about paying customers (besides the money) is that they will tell you what's wrong with the product, so you can fix it. Nonpaying users are much more likely to just walk away.

Because that's how a business works. You provide value and the customer pays you for it.

And "If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late." -Reid Hoffman

I get your feelings here, and I think they say good things about you. But until you take money, you aren't running a business. What with business cards, a nice website, and an office, it might look like a business, but it's just an expensive fantasy.

Money is proof that your customers find you valuable. If you are really worried that the money is more an expression of faith and that you might not earn it, then don't recognize the revenue. Keep the money separate so you can give it back if things don't work out. But take the money. And then ask other people for money.

Avoiding taking money is basically avoiding finding out whether or not you've got something good. Your answer to that question is almost irrelevant. It's your potential customers that you should be listening to. One of the truest answers they will give you is their first check. (Still truer ones are regular checks and referrals to friends.) So take the money.

I don't think you have failed. I think your strategy has failed. Maybe a better strategy would have been to still have your job (part-time?) and still have a visa and then use the rest of the time to create your product. You might use a lot more time, but the great thing is that you always have something to fall back to (the chance of failure is huge when doing startups so it's good to have some kind of safety net). When/if your product starts to take off then you can then quit your job and apply for a entrepreneurship visa. I think it's a much more sane strategy than risking everything.

> do not write a 100 page business plan does not mean don't write it at all

Who advices against a 100 page business plan? Is there something wrong with it? (besides spending too much time on planning?) if you could write 100 pages about your domain, wouldn't that be a good thing?

As a foreigner looking at the US I sometimes get the feeling a lot of SV startups don't work with a business plan at all, is that customary?

Shouldn't any startup at least make an 8 section business plan? (summary, idea, team, marketing, business system / organization, schedule, risks, finance).

The idea, from what I understand, is that a 100 page business plan is ultimately wasted time as a good chunk of that will change very quickly. So rather than writing 100 pages of, what will inevitably become obsolete, you should write a shorter one and focus on actually creating the business.

Ofcourse the plan itself might not be the paper it is written on. But I think there is a lot of value to be had from having all your thoughts about what you are going to do written down at least once. There is so much to be thought about when starting a venture. I get the feeling some startups just deal with every problem when it hits them in the face, instead of anticipating and carefully maneuvering?

The attitude I see is that detailed plans can be dangerous but that not having a plan does not mean you should not have a process. I think this often comes from Steve Blank's definition that "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model". In that context you cannot know what your business model should be. Instead you have a set of theories or assumptions about what might work and your process should be to validate (or invalidate) those as early and efficiently as possible. The lean startup process has a similar focus on working toward "validated learning" about the market and your product.

I think business plans are perceived as risky because they contain assumptions which may be treated as axioms instead of questions. Instead of leaning and reacting the business starts to try to conform to the "known" plan and it is very difficult to consistently resolve cognitive dissonance between the plan and reality in favor of reality.

How many pieces of that 8 step plan are actually relevant while searching for a business model?

Of course not businesses need to fit that definition. If you are not searching for a model then hopefully you have a very good plan.

If part of your short list of failures legitimately includes not knowing not one but two separate MVC frameworks, then your actual short list of failures is, "Set out on a project without any concept of requirements or technical implementation," and that right there is reason enough.

You have succeeded by merely trying.

When I look back at my "failed" companies, I see all of the experiences I needed for my current company and past jobs.

There are no failures in the startup world if you took good experiences away from it. It wasn't a failure, it was training.

Aren't we all one low point away from writing something like this?

Thanks for your openness!

Failing happens and is a good thing. Don't forget to look at the bright side. Learning rocks.

> Scalability problems should be solved when there are scalability problems.

Preferably, before!

> I am a fool. A big one.

Nah, you're awesome. That's way better than all the dumb and pointless ways I've failed. Keep it up.

dang, a lot of what he wrote resonate with me. the difference is, i've been meaning to ASK people here in HN for some advice regarding my project (i don't dare to call it startup yet), but been deferring it since i haven't translated my website in english.

if i might add, for the Programming part: don't develop your startup with cool tech/language/framework you just heard yesterday. it's fun, but you'll get sidetracked big time.

Hey man, I've already written blog posts in english about a project in french, and people here on HN were really enthusiastic to share their comments, and I learnt a lot from it - so I think you've got nothing to lose. You don't need to translate your whole website in english, and you know, people can use google translate (not sure how it works for Bahasa Indonesia though ;-) )

hey tommy! thanks for the encouragement, let me clean some stuff first, expect to see my Show HN soon! i'm glad to be part of this community.

"I knew everything"

I can't tell if this is serious, or if it was intended as some self-deprecation or something. Obviously the person knows they didn't know everything. But I can't tell by the writing if it's earnest or sarcastic.

Given the context, it's pretty clear that he thought he knew everything at the time, but now realises he didn't.

One of life's more painful, but essential, lessons.

I thought it was clear, then I just wasn't sure.

So how much did this tuition cost you?

greatly put: my job is not programming. My job is delivering value using programming.

You didn't fail you learned

well at least you have came out significantly wiser

welcome to club hacı :)

but know you know.!

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