

Takeaways from Folding Our Startup  - rcolinkennedy
http://grinn.it/WhyWeFolded
We decided to unwind our startup; here's why.  Hope this helps others.
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discover
6\. Pick a better brand name. Sorry but GRINN.IT is a VERY bad name. Why?
Because you have to spell it out for them every time. Just like pownce.

Hey, what's your new site?

grin it, check it out.

Grabs smartphone, types in grinit.com, nope nothing, grin.it, nope nothing.
done.

Keep and understand the distinction between a bad PRODUCT and piss poor
marketing.

~~~
grantismo
In today's domain ecosystem, you're not going to easily find a name which is
easy to spell, pronounce, remember AND is free (or affordable) to acquire as a
domain name. The vast majority of non-technical users are just going to google
for your company, so your example seems a little contrived.

The first part of the conversation would go more like this:

Hey, what's your new site?

grinnit with two n's. So grinn dot it.

However, there is definitely a problem when a search for "grin it" on google
doesn't find your site. Moreover when a search for "grin it photos" or "grinit
photos" is also unsuccessful. That's definitely a problem. If the spelling of
your website isn't immediately obvious (a la reddit), you just need to ensure
that users can still find your site.

I don't think it's a horrible name. Seeing it in print makes it instantly
memorable which is always helpful, they just needed some additional work on
seo for the typos of their name. Calling it "piss poor marketing" is
disingenuous and unnecessarily inflammatory.

~~~
Hisoka
I think you're wrong. Yes, a lot of very good domains are taken, but you can
spend as little as $200 in Flippa.com to get a decent one that people can at
least remember.

~~~
grantismo
I think ease of spelling was the problem I was getting at, not memorability,
but after visiting Flippa, I can see your point.

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cabinguy
I appreciate this post but I disagree with it. I started my company in 2003.
There were hundreds of times that we should have "folded." Last year we did
$500k. This year we will do $1M. Turns out we were just too early, but because
we were too early we made all of our mistakes before the market caught up to
us. It was a tough road but now we are sitting in the catbird seat.

My advice to others is: never give up.

~~~
DevX101
What specifically do you disagree with?

I think the startup ecosystem is woefully lacking in negative outcome posts
like these. It's fun to write about your awesome traction, your latest funding
round, but it's painful and bitter to write about failure. As a result, many
new entrepreneurs get a highly distorted perception of the probability of
success.

These new entrepreneurs look around and see guys/gals of comparable
intelligence and think to themselves, if Jimmy can build a $500M company, I
surely can build a $50M company. After all, he's not 10 times smarter than me,
and I see everyone winning on every post I read.

What this assessment belies is that for every Jimmy, there are hundreds, if
not thousands of other startup attempts that have acheived moderate results or
outright failure.

So I welcome the author's post and ecourage more to do more self-reflection,
if only to give a more balanced views as to really how hard this road is.

~~~
cabinguy
Specifically, I disagree with giving up.

~~~
ajmat
Timing is always an issue, and it's awesome that you were able to grind it out
and stay solvent while the market was able to catch up. We aren't proud of
'giving up' but we stand by our convictions. Every situation is different and
our decision came down to a multitude of factors. We're not applauding our
unwind, but more so trying to convey a little transparency into our decision.

------
alexro
\-- When we arrived at the filtering problem, we realized that we had solved
the collaboration problem. --

True to any consumer-facing startup. When you successfully scale up, you have
to somehow keep the quality.

Note to self : think about this "beforehand" ...

------
jackpine
It's great to see such a positive retrospective. Keep your head up and thanks
for sharing!

~~~
rcolinkennedy
Thanks! Not to be cliche, but it would been easier to keep going - but nobody
wants to be a zombie. Lots of hard choices.

