

Shit I Learned Burning through My Family's Life Savings on a Failed Startup - MediaSquirrel
http://kevinjmireles.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/business-lessons-from-the-land-of-hard-knocks/

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JoshTriplett
An interesting article, but the title left me with a question that the article
completely failed to answer: what about the lesson "don't spend your family's
life savings on your startup"?

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weichi
Whether or not "don't spend your families life savings on your startup" is
good advice or not really depends on the amount of the savings, the age of the
individual/family, and the family's earning potential, etc.

Losing all of your $20k savings at age 25, DINK family: hurts, but not life-
changing in any way (as long as your spouse is OK with it, and you'd better be
damn sure they aren't lying to you when if they say it's OK)

Losing all of you $200k savings at age 35, two small children and stay-at-home
spouse: extraordinarily painful and will impact every decision you make for a
long time.

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ojbyrne
In both cases, it's possible that it will advance your career to the next
level, which can make up for the loss in the long run. Work hard, save money,
take calculated risks, don't be doctrinaire.

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akkartik
The author had an invaluable experience, but I think the blog post doesn't do
it justice. None of the section headings is actually that surprising; it's
unlikely he started a business without being aware of _all_ those lessons in
the broad strokes. Be ruthless, yes, but why was he unable to be ruthless even
when he knew he should be? "Fail fast"? What did he do that violated that?
What was he thinking, failing slowly?

I wish he could come up with a way to give us more concrete details that add
nuance to the broad lessons. Memories will fade, and if all he's saved of them
is this blog post, the lessons will follow the life savings. And _that_ would
be tragic.

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Kevinjmireles
Check out my posting Product Adoption: Lessons on how to maximize product
adoption and avoid common pitfalls:
[http://kevinjmireles.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/product-
adopti...](http://kevinjmireles.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/product-adoption/)

I appreciate the encouragement and challenge to write some more. I'll see what
I can do to live up to your request but no guarantees as I'm trying to put
some of the lessons to use=).

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avner

      Know when 80% is good enough

I consider this an important strategy when executing most tasks. It is an on
field guideline in the Marine Corps to aim for a 70% solution to problems in
some cases. It is sometimes a better strategy to implement an imperfect plan
than to roll out _the_ perfect plan by the time it's too late.

~~~
conover
Voltaire summed it up by saying: "The perfect is the enemy of the good."

~~~
kimfuh
"Just do it." -- some shoe company

~~~
SapphireSun
Nike

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adamtmca
I just read Rework. There is a chapter called "learning from mistakes is
overrated." It cites a Harvard business study that showed that startup
founders who launched a startup and failed had about the same odds of success
in their second startup as someone who was launching their first.

While I've learned valuable lessons from my (many) failures it's a nice
reminder that there is also a lot to be learned from our successes.

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fizx
Now I'm curious as to what the startup did.

~~~
Kevinjmireles
Software for collision repair shops....

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jbyers
"The issues that bother you at the beginning will be what kills you later."

This section describes a people problem, and I think the headline should be
narrowed to that realm. Otherwise, a good, honest list that I believe will
ring true to many HN readers.

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10ren
This is great stuff, kudos to Kevin.

The "looks like/is a goose" one reminds me of looking for a "market
alternative" (from the book "Crossing the Chasm"). The market alternative is
how potential customers _presently_ deal with the problem the new product
solves, and it has a name and an existing budget. This helps to communicate
what the product is to the customer.

If it's hard to find such a market alternative, it's a sign that the product
isn't ready to 'cross the chasm' into the mainstream - that is, it won't be
attractive to _pragmatists_ (who just want a percentage improvement on
existing methods, with minimal change). It's still in the non-mainstream pre-
chasm realm populated by _techies_ and _visionaries_ (who think the tech is
cool in itself, or who can see a new way to use it to make money,
respectively).

It might also be that the target market selected isn't suitable, i.e. there
might be another application of the technology and for another group of
customers, for which there is an existing "market alternative".

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dirtbox
So many of these things resonate for me, I'm troubled by a good third of the
problems, or the seeds of the problems outlined here. Some sterling advice
that I'm going to heed well.

I think the nature of the failed startup is irrelevant as much of the advice
is raw, yet vague enough to apply to many areas. Almost all startups are based
on a good idea, their success or failure rests almost entirely on the back of
the choices you make along the way. Thanks for sharing this.

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greenlblue
I like the goose metaphor and I see it in education all the time. We
constantly tell undergraduates that learning math is not just about crunching
numbers but about learning how to abstract and reason more efficiently and yet
the tests and homework assignments tell a different story so the undergrads
just learn how to crunch numbers.

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Kilimanjaro
Never spend more than $1000 in a startup unless you start getting revenues,
say $100 or $200 and growing.

Then invest proportionally to the revenue.

With cheap VPS in the $20 and say $500 in average design, I fail to see how
you should over spend in chasing a dream highly probable bound to fail.

~~~
jon_dahl
If you're only willing to spend $1000 on a startup, and you count your own
time (which you should), then you're going to have a rough time as an
entrepreneur. Startups require risk and sacrifice. Maybe not bankrupt-your-
family sacrifice, but sacrifice nonetheless.

~~~
notlikely
No offence, but your comment is incredibly silly. There are plenty of
successful businesses that started on kitchen tables with miniscule budgets
and grew organically as the founders learned as they went along.

The cliche of the macho startup entreprenuer working 100 hours weeks and
burning through cash for five years is not how many people become successful.
Plenty of people start quietly in their spare time and build as they go along.

Startups require risk and sacrifice - yes, this is true. But not all
businesses demand your internal organs and your wallet.

~~~
jon_dahl
I hate the macho startup cliche as much as you. 100 hour weeks don't help a
startup - they hurt - and it's never a good idea to dig a hole deeper than you
can get out of.

But if you count your own time, which is worth AT LEAST $20/hour (if not
$100), then you aren't going to get very far if you're only willing to commit
$1000. Even if you don't count your own time, many opportunities require
significantly more than $1K.

Success in a startup comes from tenacity more than anything else. If you
aren't willing to make a real commitment (as the GP was suggesting), you're
setting yourself up to fail.

~~~
notlikely
Ah, yes I agree with you. Success comes from tenacity. But the original
comment made me think all start ups should be sprinters. Some of us are
marathon runners, or even long distance walkers! We get there, slower. But the
persistence is just the same, even more, perhaps, due to the longer time
frame.

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dnsworks
"Fail quickly" always annoyed me. The part that annoys me the most is that
institutionalized tend to view "I failed to the tune of several million
dollars" as validation of somebody's investment worthiness. Sure there are
lessons to be learned in failure. More often than not, the lesson seems to be
"I learned how to convince VCs to give me money for a bad idea and an
incompetent team!"

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Kevinjmireles
Fail quickly doesn't mean let your company fail. The goal is to figure out
what doesn't work.Too many people try to develop a perfect product, etc...
instead of investing the minimum amount required to get feedback and test the
concepts with customers, stakeholders etc... It's better to discover that your
great idea won't work with a paper sketch than to discover the issues after
you've invested 6 months in development.

So fail quickly is about taking risks, making mistakes and learning as rapidly
and as cheaply as possible - so ultimately you can be successful in the long
run.

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zackattack
if it really added 10% to the bottom line, why not take payment on commission?

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Kevinjmireles
Getting people to change their habits is hard. After all shouldn't you be
going to gym instead of watching mindless videos on Youtube? But are you? Read
my post for some key product lessons
[http://kevinjmireles.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/product-
adopti...](http://kevinjmireles.wordpress.com/2006/08/03/product-adoption/)

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charliesome
All I can think when reading this blog post is: Owned.

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MediaSquirrel
@Kevin Proud of you dude! Your first time on HN and you made it into the
Twitter stream. Glad to have u here in blog land!

