
Ask HN: Have you launched a failed web business? - marktangotango
Or maybe you launched something that is just languishing, not even paying for it&#x27;s hosting? In retrospect, were there any warning signs the business would fail? Could you have done anything different to help the site succeed?
======
jakobegger
I made an app for a friend that completely failed. We worked on the project
for a couple of months during which I built an MVP. But we never got any
users. My friend tried all kinds of things to advertise it (press releases,
looking for distribution partners, etc) but nobody seemed to care.

Early warning signs: Nobody was interested in it. If you can't get a single
one of your friends to use it, that might be a sign you are doing it wrong.

Edit: My friend is still working on this. He's invested a lot of time and
money into the idea, and keeps finding things that will get him closer to
success (if I just get this one strategic partner on board...). He's spent a
lot of time on all the formalities of setting up a company and following all
possibly relevant regulations, no matter how costly. I really like him, and I
like the idea, but in the end there's no point in it when there are no
users...

~~~
akg_67
> He's spent a lot of time on all the formalities of setting up a company and
> following all possibly relevant regulations, no matter how costly

This is common mistake most first time entrepreneur do. I did the same in my
first go around. Focusing on company formation and things that don't directly
impact product or customer. But next time I wisened up and waited until a
customer sent us a $2,000 check as advance payment. "Hey someone sent us a
check to a company that doesn't exist. We need to deposit it in a bank
account. I guess we need to setup a company for bank account."

Keep in touch with your friend even if you don't want to get involved right
now (though it is a learning opportunity). Dedicated people like your friend
are hard to come by and typically figure out and succeed if not this time,
maybe in next go around.

~~~
jakobegger
> Dedicated people like your friend are hard to come by (...)

Yes. That's why I liked working with him so much. But when your MVP doesn't
gain any traction, you must pivot or accept that it doesn't work. Dedication
and determination is a double edged sword when it leads you to double down on
the wrong idea.

~~~
akg_67
While I don't know this specific situation, I have seen both situations where
either people quit too soon or didn't quit soon enough. A lot of these things
are much more clear in hindsight than when they are in progress.

------
jrnichols
Does a web hosting company count? Some years ago I was basically running a
hosting company off a single T1 and then into a colocation cage. But it was
never making me any money, and eventually expenses were adding up. I slowly
wound things down to what I had started out doing and am just doing some small
scale hosting for a few friends.

What could I have done different? I don't have any business sense. I didn't
calculate costs vs expenses, I just ran with what I thought was best. I also
lacked the technical expertise for the networking side of things. Also what
really killed off my dream was the quick rise of bargain basement web hosts
like 1&1 and Dreamhost, offering unlimited everything for dirt cheap prices. I
could never compete on that scale. I tried to pivot somewhat and offered more
"personalized hosting & support" but again, couldn't compete on price.
Potential clients would say "Why would I pay you $20/mo for web hosting when I
can get unlimited space and a free domain for $1/year?"

It was a big learning experience for sure. I learned a lot about business and
that it's not always as easy as "just be your own boss."

~~~
milankragujevic
Given I'm currently paying about $60/mo for a bunch of OpenShift (basically
like Heroku, but from RedHat) instances that barely utilise the service at
all, I'd totally pay you $20/mo for personalized hosting. Basically meaning I
want someone who understands English and doesn't act like a badly programmed
chatbot when I need support... Because that's what you get with the cheap
hosting providers. I'm sorry you had to close down...

~~~
jrnichols
Part of me has thought about starting it up again, even if it's just a decent
tax write off. But I'm too far behind on things as far as security knowledge
goes.

Another thing that really felt like a knife in the back was Google Apps.
Trying to get a small office to go with a locally owned web host is difficult
when their response is something along the lines of "Well I can just use
Google Apps for free. Everyone knows Gmail! It never goes down!" Google's
offerings are difficult to compete with. I think people underestimate just how
widespread their influence is.

------
Mz
Many years ago, I registered some business names at the appropriate county
office and set up a business bank account and that sort of thing. I had all
the window dressing, but no actual business. Never made a dime.

So, I still blog and what not. It is still not wildly successful (in terms of
income), in part because my highest priority is still dealing with my chronic
health issues. However, I am getting better at things like figuring out what
the value position is and also figuring out how it will lead to money.

So, rule of thumb: If you do not have paying customers, you do not have a
business. At best, you have a time consuming (potentially expensive) hobby.

Whatever thing you like doing, if no one is paying for it, it isn't a
business. _Paying customers_ of some kind are the heart and soul of business.
The leather brief case and yada, that is all window dressing.

In essence: Don't confuse style and substance.

~~~
ImTalking
Exactly. In my latest venture, which I have marketed for a couple of months, I
told someone that I finally have 1 paying customer and he kind-of laughed. I
said the absolute hardest thing in business is to get the first customer that
will look at your invoice and sign a cheque. Everything is downhill after the
first paying customer. He really didn't understand this.

------
patrickgordon
Yep!

Me and one other guy built a web app called FitQuick which was basically a
2-sided marketplace to find personal trainers. Idea being you could use it to
find PTs who offer group sessions in the park near you, for example.

I learnt that apparently you need to actually talk to people to figure out if
someone would want to use (i.e. pay) for your product in order for you to get
anywhere.

We ended up building an MVP but up until that point we didn't actually have
any input from potential users so we were pretty off base and it just lost
momentum because we were so deflated from no one wanting to use it.

I also got insight in to how small businesses and in this case PTs operate. A
lot of them are terrible at running businesses and seemed more interested in
working out than making their business a success. I'm not sure entirely what
my takeaway here is, but I will remember this next time I do anything that's
B2B.

In terms of warning signs there were probably obvious ones that we didn't
notice because all we cared about was making a 'cool' product. When the penny
dropped for me was when I went to demo it to a PT manager at a gym (we kinda
pivoted) and she turned up 10 minutes late and then proceeded to do
administrative paper work while talking to me and only half paid attention.

\--

In truth, it took a while for me to get over it because it felt like I was
being shat on despite giving it a go. What I've come to realise is that no one
cares if you're giving it a go except you and I shouldn't have expected gold
stars for participation.

I'm building something else now and have 2 actual users (non-paying) who are
consistently using the product and providing feedback, so that's really,
really, really rewarding. Here's the shitty-free-heroku-dyno version if you're
curious: [https://simplerm.herokuapp.com](https://simplerm.herokuapp.com)

------
csallen
Siasto.com was a project management tool I built with a cofounder that never
took off. In retrospect, the biggest issue was that we simply never found
product-market fit. The product was too vast and ambitious for me to do a good
job building as a solo developer. When it didn't strike a chord with
customers, it took too long to learn what was wrong and make changes.

Shameless plug here, but I launched IndieHackers.com a couple days ago. There
are lots of successful businesses on it, but I'd love to include some "failed"
businesses, too. Otherwise there's too much survivorship bias, and readers
won't learn how to see the biggest warning signs. Email me at
submit@indiehackers.com if you're interested!

------
alanz1223
After I graduated High school. I devoted nearly all of my time to working on a
web application aaggregator meant to be a platform where people could discover
and share web apps. The site would also have hosting capabilities so that you
could deploy your project on site. Think of it like a github pages with a
featured projects page for interactive content. After launch I posted it on
several forums hoping it would catch on with developers but in the end I only
ended up having about 10 people register.

In retrospect I attribute my failures to 1) Not being in touch with what
people wanted, or gathering feedback throughtout the process. There were a lot
of extra features that I implemented which consumed a great deal of time that
never even ended up being used.. So I should have launched a MVP and took
things from there. I was scared of launching since I beileved my project wasnt
ready even though all of the core features were implemented.

2) Lack of marketing/logistics knowledge. After I was done building the site,
I truly didnt have the cash or knowledge for giving it the exposure it needed
to gain traction. I naively thought that after launch my product would just
organically grow itself, by word of mouth without having to put much marketing
effort. Very stupid assumption.

3)planning and organization. I took on way too much technical debt for the
project to the point where I cant even modify it. I built the site at a time
where I was also learning web development and it was my first project ever. I
ended up minifying the code, and was not even a Git user at the time. The
variable names were lost and I only have the minified output. This is probably
my biggest technical mistake.

So in hindsight these are probably the largest factors that contributed to my
project being a complete failure, and honestly have discoraged me a bit from
following some of my other ideas due to the fear of failure, which might just
mean I am more concious of where I spend my time or it might be something that
is holding me back. I am not quite sure.

~~~
jtrtoo
Sounds like you learned some truly valuable lessons applicable to future
endeavors. That's precisely why you should not be discouraged; you're better
prepared than ever before. Good luck, whatever your future holds. :)

------
edoceo
Two things I've found at the top of the list: Team & Traction.

My previous go (c2012) we failed cause we couldn't keep the team engaged.
Silly distraction from little disagreement, not going in the same path.
Ultimately led to a low quality product and then lack of customer

I've thrown up a few over the last few years. Just trials to gauge Traction.
When nothing pops I bail.

There is an awesome book about Lean Customer Development which has loads of
good ideas on the traction side.

I've also found that potential investors put Traction and Team at the top of
their evaluation.

------
wtracy
[http://www.linuxonaposter.com/](http://www.linuxonaposter.com/)

(Excerpts of) the Linux source code printed on a poster you can hang on your
wall. Not one sale to date.

It's a niche market, and I haven't found a successful marketing strategy yet.
(I donated one to the local LUG's raffle, and a couple people fought over it
... but apparently nobody wanted to pay actual _money_ for it.)

When November rolls around, and people are starting to think about buying
Christmas presents, I might go buy some Google ads.

~~~
jtrtoo
Unsolicited feedback: less code so it's more readable across the room & sex
the design up a bit.

------
imaginology
I spent years making a website/webapp similar to metacritic, which aggregated
new releases of new movies, games, apps etc, except the data was crowd-
sourced, like wikipedia. It worked great and looked good. However, it never
made more than a blip on the internet. It stuck around page 10 of google and I
couldn't get any visiblity for it. And without being able to build a community
it would never work so I had to pull the plug, which was very depressing. I
wasted a large amount of my life working on that.

------
logicb
Along with a friend, I made an app for getting team feedback after the team
meetings. It was done in short span during holidays for a hackathon. Also
submitted here. Got some feedback but not many sign ups. Since I am not good
at marketing what I did, we dropped the idea.

Had some pivot plans to change it to be a customer feedback platform for folks
who are always mobile and dependent on their calendars while meeting with
their customers. Not much enthusiasm left, hence dropped.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8855648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8855648)

Every now and then would see something and get inspiration to reignite this
but didn't go back.

------
SmellTheGlove
Nope, but I'm probably about to! It's not an app so much as it is an offline
service - travel planning to Italy. Not "here's your plane ticket and hotels"
but what to actually see/do/eat/drink when you're there, for those that want
to get beyond the tourist traps. I'm thinking that for the amount of time off
we (don't) have in our lives, some might be willing to pay for some custom
planning based on experience (versus who's paying for the most Yelp/TA reviews
or placement).

~~~
personlurking
> but what to actually see/do/eat/drink when you're there

I assume this would be high-end, correct? As in, it's based on the client's
preferences - someone who's willing to pay for that kind of attention to
detail. I would also assume the information is delivered by some sort of tour
guide (though a thorough-enough app could work here, too).

I was just in Italy and during the Roman part, I divided my time into
sightseeing (75%) for the first week and relaxation (25%) for a few days
after. The former, while beautiful, was monotonous and tiresome, and the
latter was a slice of heaven. My enjoyment of the two, percentage-wise, was
the inverse of how much time I spent on each. Which is to say, the relaxation
part (which consisted of hiding away in a Roman neighborhood and only
interacting with Italians, in Italian) was way nicer than the sightseeing.

~~~
SmellTheGlove
Mid- to high-end is my target, but it really depends on preferences. I'm
generally not going to take care of flights unless it's an award booking, and
I'd have a separate fee for that. I can take a budget and suggest
accommodations, but I don't want to dip into low end because the low end
budgets I've worked with had mid/high expectations and that's sometimes
impossible.

Delivery is flexible: My default is a PDF with a daily list of suggestions,
plus some maps to find your way, and anything interesting/relevant that I can
add based on what I know of the client. Others plan to be online, so I go over
how to get a SIM and service closest to the point of arrival, and also send
everything electronically - particularly useful with the maps, since they're
Google Maps based. I'm considering adding a Slack channel to ask questions,
but I can't come up with a reasonable SLA on responses other than "best
efforts".

This is basically for the crowd that is willing to pay a bit to filter out the
noise in the online reviews and arrive at a plan so that they can go enjoy,
whatever enjoyable means to them I work with. I also do pretty well with
families with children.

That said, I am planning for an initial consult, phone, IM, whatever is
easiest for the client. We through length of trip, pace, preferences/travel
style and budget. I come back with suggested accommodations, things to see and
do, where to eat. I'm trying to stick to Italy because I've traveled it a
bunch, Italian is my first language and I still speak a couple of dialects,
and I have a pretty solid network of folks there who can help me fill in the
gaps on what's good, what's a tourist trap, and what used to be good but has
become a tourist trap (that last category sucks). Totally custom, though,
meaning I'm not running out the same PDF for each city or anything. While I do
project initially to get a lot of Rome-Florence-Venice first timers, which is
great, I'm hoping I can help some repeat clients with trips in the South,
which is massively under-explored by American tourists.

Your travel style sounds a lot like mine. So far I've mostly worked with
clients that want to basically live somewhere else for a couple of weeks. For
instance, in Rome I'd probably suggest a couple of AirBnbs in Monti, a
neighborhood close to the sights but not really touristy, or out in Trastevere
if you're cooler than me and don't mind crossing the river to see stuff. And
food recs for each day, as well as how to score a reservation, etc. For some I
get more hands on and do some of the legwork, but I'm leaving that out of the
MVP for the web presence.

I'll do a ShowHN once I get the technical side to look better than shit.

~~~
personlurking
Sounds interesting. A few years back, I wrote down a travel guide app idea
here on HN which describes some functionality that might be of interest to
you.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7617048)

My one fear, as far as what you're describing, is that making every single
trip customized would require a lot of your time (assuming you're also
managing the business end). But, that being said, it's of course possible to
create client types/profiles with the data already plugged in. For ex, "High-
end Adventurous" which would then be matched up with the City profile. The
initial consult could work in tandem with the "data-driven" side, sort of like
how translators use Translation Memory programs to ease the load.

In bocca al lupo, mi sembra un'idea figa.

------
xackpot
I launched 2 websites before my current startup. 1\. Drawmics.com. It was
about social comic creation. It failed because I couldn't find enough creative
people to post comic on the website nor could I get them to create comic on
it. There was no organic traffic and people wouldn't share the comic. Didn't
know how to sell. 2\. Findero.us. It was location based QnA iPhone app. People
could post questions defined by radius of city/state/country. Failed because I
sucked at user-acquisition strategies.

Now that I am on my third start-up I could see what different things I could
have done with my previous 2. 1\. Build a product that solves a problem,
however small, for a big audience. This means that you have to work on your
product until you find that problem. If there is none, it will not work. I
remember I read something about finding questions before finding answers.
Questions are more important than finding answers. 2\. Once you know you have
the solution, go aggressive with user-acquisition and then fine-tune the
product. People will complain about missing features, but you want scale
before you go for product enhancements if you are solving a real problem.

------
virken2
yes, i launched a site that did some pretty cool stuff with photos, but i mis-
read the customer, they are too lazy to do anything with them, they expect the
cloud to automajically suck up whatever drivel they capture, waste untold
amounts of diskspace saving it, and that the world will beat a path to their
door for it - take a hard look at your customer - make sure they are willing
to do their part in your value proposition

~~~
solipsism
_make sure they are willing to do their part in your value proposition_

What an incredibly self-centered way to think about your failure.

Sounds like you not only misread your customers but are hostile towards them
as well. Never a recipe for success.

------
ImTalking
www.lpcentral.net. Very simple site as a central repository to store
mortgage/lender data that any stakeholder could access (rather than spend
their own resources). Everyone was interested. Idea died because a)
lenders/banks are incredibly lazy, and 2) 800lb industry gorilla decided to
pull a microsoft and announce their own vaporware version which has never
materialized.

In retrospect I should have been smarter about the politics of business.

------
fillskills
FillSkills.com - The idea was to allow people to aquire skills based on market
demand. I got market demand by looking at how many jobs are on offer for the
skill, the salary data for that skill and the historical data if available.
Started with software only. Kept building the tech. Spent no time or money in
doing market research or marketing. Was afraid to share it thinking people
would laugh at it or say something hurtful.

~~~
cheez
Gotta tell you: when I looked at your idea, I was thinking "wow, I could
totally use that."

You do have to get used to being told you suck. I've got customers who have
been using my software every day, for almost a decade, who still complain.
Just had a call with one this past week and for the first time ever, he didn't
say it sucked.

But then I got an email from him two days later and the suck was back.

This is life. Don't let it get you down. Every piece of feedback is a "dot"
creating the pointillist painting of what your market wants.

~~~
fillskills
Thanks! That means a lot. I have been getting that from reading HN for a
while. The community here is very supportive of allowing people to make
mistakes and continue improving and growing. I think it maybe time for me to
give this idea another shot.

------
antfie
My first time round was a year spent building prototypes which soon I realised
was something I was doing because the non-tech part of starting up was so
frightening and alien to someone who has been behind a keyboard their whole
life.

The idea was simple: scheduling meetings is a pain, shouldn't this be simple
by now. E.g. I don't care when or where I just want to meet with Susan
tomorrow for 15 mins. You're my Corporate calendar and you know both our
availability. Go figure, I'm busy. It was a search engine of sorts for
meetings: "Susan tomorrow 15 mins".

Whilst this solution never intended to replace existing calendering or email,
etc and just serve as a front-end, I came to the conclusion that companies
already have solutions to booking meetings. The existing system works so why
pay more. My USP was in time savings made => less cost. I gotta say in writing
this it's making me think perhaps there is still something here I should
pursue.. and I later found out another company was doing something similar
after I shelved this.

I knew from day 1 I should have been validating my idea but it was so much
easier to build stuff. I learnt a lot from failing this way: 1) You may have
solved a problem, but it could be insignificant to the target market. 2) You
have to listen to people and build meaningful human relationships in order to
be successful. 3) Find someone else's problem to solve and you're likely to be
on to something. 4) Fail fast, learn more

I just launched [https://conciergeapp.uk](https://conciergeapp.uk) on the
August 5th, after a month of development and then spent a week feeling
miserable because nobody will sign up or reply to emails. It's a simple tool
for facilities to take utility meter readings in private residential apartment
blocks. This tool notifies the residents of their readings, as they cannot get
to the meters themselves in order to tell their energy suppliers. As a
resident it's certainly useful for me.

This is potentially another failed product because it's not important for
facilities management. it's a great tool but it doesn't solve any of their
main problems. This all came about because of a conversation in which I got
excited about something and then engineered a solution for a non-existent
problem. I should have prodded some more to find the real pains.

In the space of 1 month and a week I find myself failing again, but this time
I failed much faster and have learnt the following: 1) Find the right problem
to solve and validate it before you write a single line of code. 2) Listen
more. 3) Get up-front financial commitment prior to writing a single line of
code

------
vram22
Partly related: I just asked a similar question for desktop apps here:

Ask HN: Ever launched a failed desktop app?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12286883](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12286883)

