

Ask HN: How Many Startups/Projects Have You Failed At? - denniskubes

How many startups / startup projects have you worked on that have not been successful?  Just trying to compare.<p>1
2-5
6-10
11-15
15+
======
chewxy
I killed a lot of zombie startup projects for my startup, Pressyo.

Many of them didn't get off the ground because we couldn't secure the basic
distributions. Here is a list:

ProjectPY - a digg/reddit clone but much saner. This was the first project. We
failed because we never tested the market. We took too long to go live.

ProjectTF - a derivative market for daily t-shirts. Didn't work because we
couldn't work out/secure a deal in the back end.

edgeyo - a marketplace for startups and entrepreneurs, kinda like a public
secondmarket + angellist. We worked 3 years on this, but ultimately got to
nowhere. A lot of effort was wasted on this. Too much burn out too. We took a
break after this. ZOMBIE

SpellTrade - A novel auction for Magic the Gathering cards. Think of options
exchange for MtG cards. This was at the height of Jace the Mind Sculptor. This
one failed because we needed to bootstrap the market, and tried to talk a few
LGSes into doing it. Everyone got the idea, but no LGS was willing to take the
risk of holding magic card stock for options. This is an example of waste: we
built everything in preparation for the LGSes to come on board (they were
happy to come on board)

Strangers for Dinner - This was the first project since we killed edgeyo.
Kinda liks zokos, but for dinner parties. Over 2000 people signed up. But
planet Earth is really really really big. It was very difficult to match
people whose preferences were 5-10km from themselves. ZOMBIE

That felt good somehow. I feel we've learned quite a bit

------
JayNeely
Three so far. Over the course of about 5 years. 6 months to a year and a half
on each. Wrote post-mortems for the first two:

[http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-
mort...](http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mortem/)

[http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-
from-...](http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-
shutting-down-my-second-startup/)

Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets
from it to move in a different direction.

Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and
way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done.

Don't give up.

------
lsiunsuex
1 years ago with a good friend - in development for 2 years; no $$$ coming in
and I had quit my job to pursue it with my girl friend at the time taking out
a loan to cover my bills...

complete waste of money but taught me what failure tasted like and i learned
ALOT about how not to start a business.

This time I have 2 going at the same time, with my partners more on the sales
and money side than technical side. I hope to be successful this time :)

------
147
About five. I've yet to make a single dollar with any of the projects I've
made. Right now I'm working on something super simple and focused. It's called
Monkey Bar, it's just a web app that lets users create a bar that goes onto
the top of their website in order to increase email signups. I'm hoping by
focusing on a narrow niche, Mailchimp users willing to pay to grow their
emailing list, I'll be able to finally get a sale.

~~~
bradhe
> lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to
> increase email signups

Those two things seem to be...disconnected...to me. HelloBar worked, I guess,
though...

------
ibudiallo
I have some projects that never saw the light. Two coupons websites, 1
tutorial website, and a freeware download site. I have learned a lot from it
though. Now I publish my project with bare minimum and add features gradually

------
amongmany
Failed at the first one (it's still alive and used, but it's not a success).
Working on a second right now that I'm approaching completely differently and
I'm really excited about.

------
orangethirty
In this year alone 4. In total since I started 20-ish. Not all have been tech.
Most have made money.

------
sfrechtling
A lot. Mostly one day projects that I lost interest in after I built version
1.

------
ohashi
2 Startups in the last 5 years. Projects I don't count. Those are for fun.

------
goyalpulkit
One dead already, another might die soon too :)

------
JohnHaugeland
Four deaths, two half-deaths one stillborn because of a missed dead-date, two
mild successes.

Working on another. :)

