

How I killed my start-up (a post mortem) - intregus
http://ryanleland.com/2009/08/post-mortem-you-vs-me-com/

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dlevine
So what happened? You say what you did right and wrong, but you don't talk
much about the history of your company. Without some more details, it's hard
to put that into context.

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?

~~~
jimboyoungblood
From the original article: _I think that the concept of the site was just too
limiting_

It's great that he was able to see that and not sink any more time into an
idea with no future.

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jasonlbaptiste
You mean how he killed his project/website? People love to slut the word
startup around.

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ironkeith
Can you explain the difference? Because I'm not seeing it.

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apsurd
I'll take a shot. In his post there is not one word about revenue, cashflow,
plan for monetization , etc. It's the typical "Let's get more users" gauge of
success.

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?

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laut
The word "startup" wasn't used by the author of the post.

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benhoyt
In the blog post he didn't, though it looks like the HN user (intregus) who
submitted the link is the author of the post.

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MicahWedemeyer
No hockey stick after 5 months? Yeah, time to quit and move on.

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.

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trevelyan
off-topic, but i love your design on obsidianportal.com.

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intregus
OP here. First off, I see a lot of the comments have a very similar theme. 5
months is too soon to give up. Well, I haven't given up, I've only decided
there is no business model without overhauling the concept (which I am not
prepared to do for the moment).

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).

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ngsayjoe
Instead of shutting it down, you should leverage on your existing user-base
for your next project. I actually had a similar experience, I created a hobby
project as I learn RoR, and the project did take off with substantial traffic
generated. However, the idea itself is not monetizable, other than pathetic
AdSense. With this huge user base, I have created a second project, but this
time with a solid business model before I started a single line of code. I'm
channeling lots of traffic from the non-profitable project to the profitable
one.

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webwright
"The idea was that people could create discussions, and vote on things they
prefer. Using that data, I would work hard at calculating compatibility."

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.

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Tawheed
Ryan, don't give up. At the very least, make the "Get Started" button
bigger... I had to squint 5 times to figure out what your site is even about
and how to get started!

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....

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mikeryan
5 months in?

Why not spend some more time fixing the problems of what went wrong?

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adamhowell
That's one of the problems with going solo -- it's way too easy to chalk it
all up as a good experience and move on to the next "killer idea," armed with
what you supposedly learned last time.

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.

~~~
Tawheed
FALSE. This has nothing to do with going solo. What he didn't do was go
through a concrete thinking process in selecting the idea. He probably just
"jumped right into coding" -- I've done this before too, we all have.

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.

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jamesk2
His site sounds like digg's recommendation system or what reddit tried to do
with their recommendation system.

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.

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khangtoh
I wouldn't give up so early, try building your facebook app idea.

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GotToStartup
Wow, this site looks pretty cool. I would not give up so early.

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jimboyoungblood
5 months is a looooong time for a web app (assuming he was working on it full
time)

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catch23
eh, not really. most webapps visible today spent more than 5 months in
development, and usually had a small team of developers. This is just 1 guy
doing it for 5 months. LinkedIn didn't get any growth in it's first 5 months,
and delicious spent a year before seeing much growth, so 5 months is nothing
for a webapp.

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thras
Wow. I was about to start a site with exactly this idea. I guess I'll have to
figure something else out :)

