

Ask HN: How many times have you failed? - albert_prada

How many times have you failed in Business?
How did you feel?
Did you start again?
How to you get that "I can do anything" spirit?
Can you describe the experience?
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exline
1 complete failure. We lasted a year spending all our savings and had to fold
up shop. It sucked quite frankly but turned out to be a great learning
experience. It also helped me branch into consulting and the startup that I'm
currently at.

The worst part was not pulling the plug soon enough. What kills me is I think
the idea is still a good idea (vertical search engine for tv/movie content
with alerts for shows you want to watch, close caption searching,
recommendations, community site.) I see parts of it being built by others but
still not as good as what we had 3 years ago. I would use the app today if it
still lived.

The major learning points from the failure are 1) Bootstrap the company. Don't
require VC funding to get started. We spent to much time chasing after money
and not enough getting users 2) Get customers to pay you money is a lot easier
than getting ad revenue. You need a lot of users to make advertising pay off.
You only need a few paying customers. 3) Listen to your gut. We followed the
bad advice of an adviser that caused us pivot in the wrong direction and kept
us working when we should have pulled the plug. 4) Release early, release
often. We waited to long to release and start getting users.

So the business itself was a failure but I learned a lot of good things and
I'm in a better position 3 years later than I would have been if I didn't do
the startup.

------
LeBlanc
It depends on what you mean by fail. I've had a few bootstrapped business
ventures not work out, but I wouldn't consider any of them failures because of
the things I learned, the connections I made, and the fun I had. As long as
you can pick yourself up again and learn from your mistakes, it is not a
failure.

