How I killed my start-up (a post mortem)
ryanleland.com
ryanleland.com
5 months in seems fairly soon to throw in the towel. Did you lose interest in the concept, or was there some other reason for abandoning the project?
It's great that he was able to see that and not sink any more time into an idea with no future.
Businesses make money.
Just look at exactly what he is saying. He is talking about his lack of user traction as a reason for why his startup fail. i.e. "my startup failed because i don't have enough users".
Businesses fail for one reason and one reason only. They spend more money than they make.
How is this a business?
Imagine if every business was operated on the same principles as these magic-beans business model start-ups.....
True, but that's not the definition of a business. Facebook and Twitter are certainly businesses. The "get users, figure out monetization" path is a real-business path (though I happen to think it's riskier).
Seriously? 5 months? That's it? I would have killed for any media exposure and even 100 signups after 5 months. It took me at least that long just to get some small-time bloggers to take me seriously.
Unless you've seriously f-ed up (like emailing your entire userbase telling them "I quit, eat me."), then you've still got a userbase and a decent idea. I really doubt that it's commercially viable (didn't see a single mention of a revenue plan), but if you're just doing it for fun then push forward.
I have watched traffic, and the habits of the users. The bounce rate could be lowered by tweaking some things, but there is not enough to bring users back on a weekly, or even monthly basis. I am open to suggestions, and will continue to watch my traffic. I have too many other decent ideas to sink more time into a fun site that has no business model (and don't tell me ad-supported is a valid option).
That's the first thing that went wrong. I still don't have a clue what it is. Hackers hate marketing, but you can't ignore the part where you figure out how to describe your product in a way that makes sense/resonates.
But before anything else, think about your goals first, before you just jump straight into another idea. If you can think back to that first time you wrote that first line of code, and all the excitement you felt from the vision you painted in your head... you'll realize, this idea ain't over yet. You just forgot parts of the vision that was essential to making it a success....
Why not spend some more time fixing the problems of what went wrong?
I can say this because I'm just as guilty of doing this as this guy -- if not more so. And that's one of the reasons I'm now no longer going solo.
Definitely doing it alone is a recipe for failure. Two people are way better than one. When you get discouraged (which you are right now), it's the end because you have no moral support.
Any takers?
When you go through a real thinking process and tether yourself to a set of goals that your idea tries to solve, and write down why your solution is valuable, it will do MORE THAN SUFFICIENTLY pull you up during the down slopes, and will also help you objectively analyze your next steps.
He's not failing because he doesn't have another dumb shit next to him telling him to "keep going!" He's failing because he didn't start with a solid foundation and vision.
It's really hard to be second mover without a significantly better algorithm or lots of money. In the search engine space, Google had that better algorithm and Bing has lots of money and an equivalent algorithm. He had neither. So unless he was able to come up with a working "compatibility" algorithm, it was going to be a really though haul.
Chalk it up as a lesson learned. Good luck on your next startup. I appreciate the honesty. On my startup, I have to keep focusing on making the product work well rather than being distracted by those other "gaping loops" like scaling, marketing and monetization. Those are useless without the product.