
Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now? - mlevental
I&#x27;ve been working on a startup for ~9 months (as the technical cofounder) in the event tech space (B2B tradeshows) and I&#x27;m pretty sure we&#x27;ve failed to do anything productive (find product&#x2F;market fit, find a problem&#x2F;solution fit, learn anything valuable, etc.). We still have ~100k left but the main investors&#x2F;advisors (from the 220k friends&#x2F;family&#x2F;fools round) pretty much feel like it&#x27;s time to pull the plug. My personal opinion is that that&#x27;s the most responsible thing to do (return money pro-rata) but there are simultaneous voices (paradoxically same investors) pushing to keep going (continue running pilots, building out the team [we just finally found a bd cofounder], crafting a pitch for a seed round). I don&#x27;t know what to do since in my understanding we&#x27;ve failed at the most important thing: finding product&#x2F;market fit. others on the team (advisors) believe that that&#x27;s not the case and we can keep raising based on negative results.<p>re pilots: we got 5 pilots (some paying some not) by basically being persistent and doing really really high touch sales. two of them ran this week and they were miserable failures (for every reason from poor marketing&#x2F;education to last minute catastrophic product failures). absolutely all of the metrics skew heavily towards 0.<p>i realize i&#x27;m being vague and maybe there&#x27;s not enough detail in the post to give substantive advice but regardless any would be appreciated.
======
rajacombinator
Read your OP and all follow up posts in the thread. My advice is take 2 weeks
vacation (travel somewhere), and do not work during this time. You need to
step back and digest what you’ve learned so far. Don’t feel guilty about
taking this time, it’s necessary for making an important decision.

If you come back after 2 weeks and feel the same way, shut it down and return
funds to investors. Your investors and advisors are very very naive (how did
you raise 220k as a solo founder with no product? How did you spend 120k in 9
months!?) and it would be unethical to take advantage of them by continuing in
something you no longer believe in. You’re closer to the business than they
are, your judgment about whether it’s time to pull the plug is more accurate
than theirs.

On the other hand, if you come back with a fresh perspective and want to keep
trying, do so and inform investors appropriately. And try to reduce your
absurd burn rate.

~~~
nautilus12
Arent you advising them to take a vacation during the most critical juncture
of the business? Isnt this just promoting more of the perceived or real
iresponsibility that led the business to where it is now? Seems like if they
are serious about the business they wouldnt be able to take their mind off the
issue. Id only take a vacation if Id decided definetely that i was shutting it
down to decompress and think about my next thing

~~~
Retric
Without product market fit there is nothing time sensitive about the business
other than burn rate. Taking two weeks off would be a hail mary pass that
might work but would probably fail.

~~~
swami26
Well said.

------
hhw3h
Jason Lemkin recommends giving it 24 months to start a B2B SaaS. B2B SaaS is a
long road despite the big splashes sometimes seen like Slack or Intercom.

[https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-
up-...](https://www.saastr.com/if-youre-going-to-do-a-saas-start-up-you-have-
to-give-it-24-months/)

Also watch the CEO of Segment talk about their journey to product market fit.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pl5GG8RQ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pl5GG8RQ4)

~~~
threeseed
Slack was developed internally for years at Tiny Speck before being released.

So they aren't like most startups who generally start their 24 month period
with a lengthy period of product development.

~~~
hhw3h
great point. So in fact Slack's superficially meteoric rise was prefixed by a
long incubation period within Tiny Speck. So if you shift the timeline to when
the precursor internal version of Slack was developed it supports the point of
most B2B SaaS companies needing 24 months to prove real traction.

------
hoodoof
>> the main investors/advisors (from the 220k friends/family/fools round)
pretty much feel like it's time to pull the plug

Given your statement above, there's really no question beyond this point. You
promised riches and success to family and friends and it is not currently
looking like you will do that, and their message is "stop please before its
all gone". Do so.

If you still have money and it is from family and friends then stop _right now
- on Monday (tomorrow)_ and give back all that you can. If you burn the rest
of that cash then for the rest of your life those relationships will exist for
you only in the light of that money. It would be different if the money you
had was from an angel or VC who are taking calculated risks.

Your family and friends relationships are worth infinitely more than any
startup.

You should instantly kill all business costs, go get a job, and continue
marketing what you have built on the side.

~~~
superplussed
Yeah, the "fools" line is an indicator that you are burned out and have lost
your belief in the mission. You'd be lying to yourself and others if you
continued.

~~~
techstrategist
That's a pretty common expression and probably doesn't indicate anything
additional about OP's mindset.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/richwinley/2015/08/21/friends-f...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/richwinley/2015/08/21/friends-
family-fools-who-will-you-get-to-fund-your-startup/)

~~~
markbnj
I didn't read the Forbes reference because ad block, but I'm willing to bet
that is a pretty common expression among _observers_ of the tech
startup/financing scene. Coming from a founder who's been cashing the "fools"
checks... well I can only hope it's a lot less common.

------
Maro
Hi, I had a startup fail after we (I had 1 co-founder) invested ~4 years into
it. Some thoughts:

A startup failing is not a rational thing. At this time emotions (regret,
fear, stress, depression) take over, it's a tough time to handle. If it's
tough for you, take comfort in knowing that it's tough for everyone. When I
was going through this, I couldn't handle the stress, so it spilled over into
my personal life, and in the end I also got divorced a few months after the
startup failed. Avoid that by not prolonging the process.

Talking to too many people isn't that helpful. Most "naive" people (who
haven't done this, who don't understand how tech companies work, etc) will
just tell you to push on. They will do so simply because it's baked into our
Culture, that when somebody is in trouble you should be positive to them, tell
them not to quit, the way you would fire up a runner at a Marathon race. But a
startup is NOT a Marathon race, because training for and finishing a Marathon
is purely up to you, but that's simply not true for a startup. (As a Marathon
runner, this was one of my misconceptions going into my startup.) Here on HN
we're okay with failure, but outside this bubble it's not that okay. So if you
talk to people (friends, relatives) you'll get roughly the same if you told
them about "I'm dating a girl and it's not working out that great" or "I have
a new job but it's not working out that great", most advice would be pretty
useless and just along the lines of Try Harder. So you have to learn to ignore
these non-expert opinions. The fact that they may be investors sucks.

It sounds like you really don't believe it's going to work out. Don't spend
another 3-6 months proving to whoever's left (clients/investors) that it
doesn't work, just so they "let you" off the hook. As somebody else said, go
on a vacation, and if you still want to stop it, stop it.

One final thing: when I was going through this, I was constantly projecting
bad outcomes, which in this first world scenario is a few tough/uncomfortable
conversations/situations with people. In the end, some of these happened, but
overall it was maybe 1-2 hours worth of conversations, which really weren't
that tough/uncomfortable in the end. In retrospect, the fact that I stressed
over it 24/7 for months (so, 100s of hours) was really stupid and irrational,
so don't do that.

One final trick: imagine yourself 3 years down the line. EVERYTHING WILL BE
ALL RIGHT.

Good luck :)

~~~
eight_ender
As someone who worked as a CTO at what I like to call a "zombie" startup I
agree with the poster above me, and it hurts just to recollect the history.
You can keep this shit up indefinitely. We're in a weird environment where,
with enough endurance, a startup, even one with a miserable high touch sales
cycle and poor business model, can live month to month like some sort of crime
family looking for the next big score.

If you go this route you'll score a contract or two, and you'll think you're
growing. You'll hire on a brilliant employee and then fire them a few months
later when the money dries up. Your heart will break. Your workload will
increase.

You'll start leaning on contractors because FTEs need consistent revenue, and
your shit investors insist on offshore labour because they don't know any
better. Contractors suck and their code sucks unless supervised, so you'll
decide to do it yourself. Your investors will get unhappy and your partner
will find another naive low tier investor to buy them out and start the cycle
over. Your share in the company will drop each time you do this.

Your counterpart will spend 1/3rd of their time appeasing the investors and
the other 2/3rds attempting to be a top shelf B2B sales exec / account manager
which they are not. They will get absolutely abused in the sales cycle and
concede to shit they shouldn't. You will continue to burn the candle at both
ends like a good technical leader in a crisis and then burn out, believing the
entire time that technical superiority alone will win the day.

I'm painting a really bleak picture here, but only because I got out after
three years of this when I finally realized the nature of the endless cycle of
a cockroach startup. The company I worked for is still going, against all
odds. Fuck maybe they go forever. I know people who still work there, and from
all accounts it's an endless groundhog day of zero growth and pain.

Don't be that startup, if the business model is in peril this early on don't
extend the pain, just pull the ripcord and, above all else, try to learn from
the experience.

~~~
mac330
> Contractors suck and their code sucks unless supervised

I have worked both as an contractor and as FTE for product/service companies
(and startups), and I'm a bit tired with fighting with this prejudice.

The core business of software houses is ... making software, and making it
such way that a client is happy with the outcome, pays for what he really need
and returns with more projects.

Startups / product companies focus on various business domains and software is
a byproduct of their operation. Byproduct that is often driven by chaotic
business decisions. Good software houses enforce specification on clients
(real specification, not wishes) to make sure they know what they want or
need. Good software houses implement and follow correct software development
process that enables success of a project (not pseudo Scrum with slapped
Kanban sticker on it).

I could can add the many FTEs are stuck for years with deprecated
technologies, they don't have practical overview and hand-on experience with
new technologies and paid, off the shelf solution. Large part of startups
literally burned resources on reinventing wheels, because FTEs where convinced
that they can do something better than using a ready solution, or they had no
idea that such solution existed.

Software houses are familiar with dozens of technologies because they create
and maintain dozens of different, large and small projects from various
domains.

~~~
Daft_but_happy
Most startups fall into one of two categories, either they have the financial
side covered or they have the technical side covered, they hardly ever have
both.

The financial people need contractors, but they have no clue how to find a
decent, honest one, and even if they luck out and find one, they don't know
how to work with one. Either way, contractors get a bad rep.

I've seen some horrible ones who honestly deserve a bad reputation and more,
but I've also seen some really good ones get a bad reputation due to
impossible deadlines, poor or no specification or thrashing due to changing
the specification of what should be delivered several times a week.

------
dominicr
I have about 10 years working in the tech side of large B2B events, so
comments are based on that.

It’s fine to start a business in an industry you’re not crazy about but most
people who make a success this way know there’s a ready and waiting market to
earn money in with an existing product. People need plumbers and roofs need
tiling.

Most “start-ups” should be founded on the principle of “We’ve identified a
problem and we’re the best people to provide the solution” and even then most
of them fail. Even pivots are based on that principle (“what we built didn’t
solve a problem but we identified another problem we can solve”).

It sounds like you’re gone the route of “I’ve identified a market that I want
to provide a solution for.” The events industry is big, which means there are
a lot of people thinking the same. During my time I integrated our system with
several companies that no longer exist. Many of these products didn’t solve
actual attendee or organiser problems or desires and so uptake or return was
very low.

Attendee needs are fairly simple and limited (easy to buy tickets, get
information about what’s on, and easy conference experience) and they rarely
want anything more (e.g. only a tiny fraction or marketing types actually want
networking apps).

Conference organiser needs are many and they want to use as few suppliers as
possible as each additional supplier means extra work on integration. So most
of the businesses doing well in the event space are companies that can provide
a large, near holistic product for them which covers a lot of needs. So to
complete against them you’ll need a lot more resources than it sounds like you
do.

Reading between the lines it sounds like you already know what you need to do.
If you’ve lost the drive and conviction that this will be a success then and
unless you can find a real problem you can build and sell a solution for
quickly and easily, then it’s probably time to call it a day. Try again in a
bit and if possible without the pressure of money from family and friends.

~~~
ghaff
Re: networking

I don’t know how many networking apps (including hardware devices) I’ve seen
over the years. They’re at best a novelty and more commonly unwelcome. I
suspect the friction with just scribbling down an email, exchanging a business
card, or later connecting on LinkedIn is superior to people using the tech to
mass spam people.

~~~
mgkimsal
what would be the most useful is something which everyone would need to use.
phone app that tracked your location and time, and would show you the info on
people you stood near for... maybe a min of 30 seconds? location tracking may
not be good enough for this indoors all the time, but for me, that's the one
thing that I've wanted at conferences - a way to remember who i was talking
with without interrupting the conversation to ask for cards/emails (especially
in larger group discussions).

~~~
dominicr
Thinking that the answer is making something that everyone "needs" to use is a
problem. For example "to enter the conference they need to install this app
that also tracks them" is a common thought but it's a bad idea as forcing your
end users into a fixed action is bad UX. Mostly it just annoys attendees who
will then try and find a workaround.

The result of networking apps is some sales people generate a lot of very low
quality leads at the expense of the event's reputation as most delegates don't
want spam.

For messaging apps 99% of messages will be sent by 1% of delegates: the pushy
sales people. "Hey, want to meet to discuss my amazing product!"

As you say, another option is is "tell me who I was talking to" but again the
sales people pollute that experience. B2B events are about selling but there
are sales teams who'll scan your badges as they're saying hello
(electronically or visually) and then email you forever afterwards. I imagine
that "tell me who I stood near" would result in sales teams walking around the
entire venue, on the lookup for anyone that looks important to loiter near. Or
they could just hide a device in the toilet and get everyone ;)

We tried allowing delegates to build a contact list to message and then also
notify when those people were at the same networking event just once. It
really wasn't much value to anyone other than, you guessed it, pushy sales
people that our VIPs would rather have avoided.

I don't know if it's still the same but Grip's "tinder for events" used to
rely on both parties showing mutual interest before allowing communication.
That's the best mechanism that I know of but I wouldn't be surprised if the
messaging connection rate was incredibly low.

~~~
mgkimsal
"need" wasn't meant in that way (as in, requiring use for access). I was more
meaning "the only way what I'm thinking about would work well is that it would
require everyone to be using it".

re: emailing - the 'tell me who i was standing near' \- yeah, some might abuse
it for email. if there was some in-app functionality to allow for
'connecting', both parties might have to agree to 'connect' there to exchange
contact info (and yeah, there would still be some social pressure to do so
that some people couldn't resist).

Ahh... you just mentioned mutual interest - that's what I was getting at.
Yeah, a 'tinder for events', based on geo location/time.

------
throwaway95118
I raised $10M and it wasn’t going to work. We had spent 20%. Board wanted to
change course, I said let’s give the money back. I said you’ll have to fire me
if you want to keep raising money and change course and they did.

4 years later after they raised another $60M they sold the company for $15M.

Sometimes you don’t win.

Sometimes it’s better to back out and start anew.

Give it all you can but there’s no honor in dying trying for something that
won’t work.

There’s a song lyric by Matt Johnson of TheThe:

If you can't change the world. Change yourself. If you can't change the world.
Change yourself. And if you can't change yourself....change the world.

If you can change the world I will work with you.

~~~
fizx
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man.”

― George Bernard Shaw

~~~
usiegj00
"I don't start new businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put all
their money and their friends' money into starting them. They wear out their
souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. They're what you call
enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them; and
they haven't enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to
let the whole show go bust, or sell out to a new lot of fellows for a few
deferred ordinary shares: that is, if they're lucky enough to get anything at
all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the new lot. They put in
more money and a couple of years' more work; and then perhaps they have to
sell out to a third lot. If it's really a big thing the third lot will have to
sell out too, and leave their work and their money behind them. And that's
where the real business man comes in: where I come in." \-- George Bernard
Shaw, Heartbreak House, 1916

~~~
lioeters
This quote is so uncanny in its relevance to investors/entrepreneurs and the
topic at hand. At first I couldn't believe it was not satire. The character
continues:

"But I'm cleverer than some; I don't mind dropping a little money to start the
process. I took your father's measure. I saw that he had a sound idea, and
that he would work himself silly for it if he got the chance. I saw that he
was a child in business, and was dead certain to outrun his expenses and be in
too great a hurry to wait for his market. I knew that the surest way to ruin a
man who doesn't know how to handle money is to give him some. I explained my
idea to some friends in the city, and they found the money; for I take no
risks in ideas, even when they're my own. Your father, and the friends that
ventured their money with him were no more to me than a heap of squeezed
lemons."

------
gautamb0
I'm on year 2 of my startup, and around month 9, I felt similar to you, so I
can relate. Real traction began around month 20, and its still modest. Here
are a couple of issues I see:

1\. 9 months isn't long enough, as others have said. There are exceptions, but
those are the exceptions. I can't think of any startup in recent history truly
reaching product/market fit within its first couple of years. Facebook, I
guess. It's not abnormal for it to not happen years out. pmarca's material on
it suggests this, as well.

2\. You not only raised money very early, but you raised it from non-
professional investors, as far as I can tell, so you're un-nerved about losing
their money, while they want to push you to turn their thousands into
millions. Raising more money at this point is only going to exacerbate
everything you're going through.

3\. High-touch sales are absolutely the norm in B2B. Your efforts are a good
thing. If you take a lot of the typical YC advice at face value, you'll be
lead to believe that you should be measuring your conversions, etc, and having
a nice hockey-stick shaped growth curve. This is absolutely not going to be
the case for a B2B company on month 9, unless they've struck platinum. There
was a startup school segment where Kevin Hale (IIRC) advised the founders not
to measure sales, since they'd likely be in the single digits for the first
year and not yield anything meaningful. Instead, you should be measuring your
own outreach. Any other metric is going to be close enough to zero to be
meaningless at this stage. Your product is going to be crappy, your
presentations and pitches are going to be awkward and sloppy.

At the end of the day, you have the best idea of your chances for survival.
With what you've mentioned so far, there's promise, but it'll be up to you to
make it happen. Even if you stick it out for a year or two longer, the odds,
of course, are still against you.

------
spyckie2
One thing I learned about startups is that you have to detach yourself from
the success and failure of your work and concentrate on two things:

The first is runway. How much time and resources do you have? How are you
generating runway? Runway is the master summary of your revenue, expenses, and
investment. If you are good at managing runway, you can exist forever until
you find a good idea. Being good at runway is knowing when to raise, when to
focus on revenue, and when to invest.

The second is willpower. This is not motivation. Your willpower should be a
combination of many things - your stubborn personality maybe, your insistence
on finding a solution, your determination to succeed, your obsession with the
space that you are working in. Motivation should never be relied on as it's an
emotional state and not a character trait.

Willpower is your tank size. Morale is how much fuel is left. Make sure to
upgrade your tank and keep it full.

Managing these two things is the primary goal of founders. Finding product
market fit is the goal of a startup, but your responsibility as part of the
founding team is, using the runway you have, to maximize the combination of
time, skillsets and expertise to generate as much forward moving business
activity that you can.

As a founder, you should also get into fighting shape. This means that you
need to step back and look at yourself. Learn to detach yourself emotionally
from failures and success; none of that matters, there is only your current
state of productivity.

And learn to guard the resources that matter; specifically in this case, your
morale. It's run dangerously low. When it is this low, you can be
unconsciously reducing the morale of the team as well, which you should never
do. (If you quit, quit gracefully, don't drag the team morale down in order to
shut down).

------
Clubber
>to last minute catastrophic product failures

You have to have a product that works. People are trusting part of their
business to your software. Depending on your software, they also have to spend
a lot of time and money with integrations, training and all that. It's a large
commitment that isn't easy to reverse.

If your software was working perfectly and provided obvious, quantifiable
value, do you think you would have reeled in those clients? If so, slow down
the features and concentrate on stabilizing the software. To do this
effectively you need to have both an eagle-eye QA person/team _and_ an
existing beta client. The more beta clients the better, because people will
use (and break) your stuff in ways no one in your company imagined. While you
are doing this, make sure the people who are demoing it know a happy path and
are disciplined enough to stick to that and can explain away the problems. For
them to be able to do that, you have to have a committed relationship with
them, especially before demos. You also need to be in constant communication
with your clients and make sure they know you are turning things around. You
need to show them proof with quick releases on the most painful items and
constant improvement. Proper triage is big in the beginning and majority of
this phase.

You also might want to ask your investors who are bullish on the product if
any of their other investment companies or connections have any need for your
software. They usually have connections that you and I probably wouldn't.

That's the best advice I can give given my experience. There is a lot more in
the details but that's the top points. I've been the head technical person in
2 turnarounds now, but they had existing (but angry and fleeing) clients. We
had the software stabilized within a year, but it's a grueling process. Expect
nights and weekends for the first 3-6 months, depending on where you are, then
things will go more smoothly.

~~~
mlevental
>You have to have a product that works.

it was completely outside the scope of my product. we have a mobile webapp
that doesn't work in a uiwebview (ios). simple solution: pop out safari from a
button. catastrophic failure: conference apps insist on keeping users in app
and so those buttons load up the site in a uiwebview. in fact at the last
moment (one day before the conference) i figured out a pretty viable solution,
slapped it together in 6 hours, made calls to make appropriate changes on site
(at the conference), and it should've gone okay.

>quantifiable value

this is what i think we're missing

~~~
numbsafari
It’s totally inside the scope of your product to work. You sold someone on
your expertise and ability, but hadn’t done enough homework to know that your
web app wouldn’t work in one of the most important ways their customers would
interact with it?

There’s a lot to learn here, but step one is owning up to your own mistakes
and not blaming others.

~~~
mlevental
I did know and it was exactly why I warned that customer that a uiwebview
wouldn't work and that they needed a button. what I didn't know (because I was
not privy to their conversations with their other app provider) was that that
button could only open a uiwebview.

------
codingdave
I'd give the somewhat cliched advice of whether you believe you will fail, or
believe you can succeed... you are correct.

If you do choose to go forward, the fact that you have failed so far is not
relevant. You had pilots. They failed. You know why. Dig deeper into the
causes of the failures. Fix them. Get feedback from the customers, and fix the
product. Fix the operational issues. And try again.

That is no different than the actions you would have taken from a successful
pilot -- to listen to the customers, evaluate what happened, improve on it,
and do it again. Iterating on a product is a process that doesn't end. You
always take a step forward, no matter where you are today, and you end up in a
better place in the future.

Whether or not to walk that path is completely up to you.

~~~
3pt14159
Most times there are shades of the true answer spread across multiple HN
comments. That isn’t true here. This (the comment I’m replying to) is the only
realistic way of looking at it. You need raw grit. My brother hit his tendon
with a hatchet an 8 hour hike from civilization deep in the Canadian
wilderness. He hiked back. Every step hurt. Sometimes you just need to move
forward step by painful step. If you don’t you will fail. Sometimes it’s ok to
fail. Sometimes it’s not. If not, just keep moving forward.

~~~
lsc
If the alternative is to lie down and die, yes, it totally makes sense to grit
it out.

If the alternative is to get a cushy job at Google... spending a lot more time
failing to run a company is often a bad idea for all involved. I personally
spent a decade of my career trying to run a business, and it turns out? I'm
just not very good at running a business. Had I worked regular jobs during
that time, while living on what I lived on? I'd have enough money to retire at
this point.

You need to be mindful of your opportunity cost... sure, if you are management
material, you can probably pull some of your experience running the failed
company into your next job. If you are looking for an individual contributor
job, though? Running a business that only did okay looks to future employers a
lot like unemployment.

------
Blackstone4
I know a team who completely threw out their original idea and a co-founder
after 6 months. They started from scratch and created a company with a $1m run
rate revenue after 5 years.

Right now you have a team and funding. That's normally really hard to setup
i.e. persuading people to join you to start a company and get funding. Take
what you have and run with it. You might need to change the product or dump it
all together.

------
Havoc
Brutal truth:

You have zero confidence in your own product.

So yes, shut this down as gracefully as possible.

Taking on the entire world is hard enough even if you do believe in your
product.

~~~
justboxing
Good advice, but it's not that OP has 'zero confidence' in the product. He/she
says how it failed the most important test.

>... in my understanding we've failed at the most important thing: finding
product/market fit

~~~
fastball
How is that not zero confidence?

They built something, sure, but the technical cofounder believes it has very
little/no utility. That's telling.

~~~
justboxing
Having confidence in something, and finding out that your target audience
doesn't want it, or need it are 2 entirely different things.

Per his OP, the technical founder has not explicitly stated whether he
believes that the product has zero utility. Rather he's saying that he found
out (from data I suppose) that there is no product market fit for it.

~~~
PeterisP
Isn't "no product market fit" and "zero utility" pretty much the same thing
for a startup? OK, there are things that have some utility for some people but
(almost) nobody is willing to pay for that, but for a startup, that's as good
as zero utility, if there's no market, then the thing is worthless.

------
tptacek
Time is an even scarcer resource than money.

You don't have much money.

You don't believe in your product.

All signs point negative.

If you're looking for permission to cut loose, you have it. Work on something
you believe in. Don't waste any more time on an unworkable startup.

~~~
mud_dauber
Agreed. There’s no shame in pulling the plug at this point, in fact it’s the
honorable thing to do.

------
itsasecret
Be more optimistic, it’s easy to be negative. This is what I took from being a
startup employee when I was an aspiring founder.

I went from a science undergrad (with some coding for simulations of
experiments) to SWE at a startup where everyone knew each other. It was a very
convivial and trusting atmosphere. Eventually I made charts for board
meetings, and dug into the financial data. I was so surprised! So much churn,
so few customers, so few sales, so much support and work per customer, all at
a 3yo startup. I knew the last round of funding money was drying up, and I
thought, man, this thing is gunna end. But money came through, many rounds
more. At every time I talked with the cofounders and anyone like investors or
board members at the company, wow, optimism.

My lesson was that I was too skeptical from the natural sciences. Businesses
are about people, and people can be convinced, some immediately, some over
time, or since there are a lot of people and a lot of money in the world, you
might find more receptive people and money later. So it is about putting on
the face and convincing whoever with confidence (if that is what you’re into).

So cheer up dude, you made it his far, you can keep going. I moved away from
my company to my own hustle, but man, that company is a boomin. I won’t say if
it’s profitable, but it’s a great place to work, everyone is happy, somehow
investors still seem super happy, more people are being hired, and there is
some customer testimony that is very positive.

I think there is a difference between a startup and a business, made possible
by the swell of VCs, and this means you can chase your dream longer, as long
as you find the right investors.

------
simonebrunozzi
First of all: honor to your for the courage of founding and running a startup.
Being a founder myself, I know how hard it is compared to many other
alternatives.

Second: I doubt you "have failed to learn anything valuable". If you sit down,
take pen and paper, and try to list things you've learned since the beginning,
I bet you that you'll come with several items in just half an hour.

But, to your point: you want to shut down and return ~half the money to
investors. That's very responsible. Others would like to continue pushing,
possibly to get to a point where you can raise a larger round.

I have to say, it's hard to find PMF (Product-Market Fit) just by spending
$120k in a few months. The fact that you haven't found it yet does not mean
you're not on the right path.

You have been vague (I guess you don't want to give away too much about the
company identity), so it becomes hard for people like me (and I guess others)
to try to help you in a meaningful way.

The only real piece of advice that I want to give you is this: when you have a
strong feeling about a decision, when it comes from deep inside you, don't
ignore that voice. Somehow, we tend to know what's the right choice even if
rationally we think we don't.

------
Ceejaymax
First of all, don't worry too much. It took me 10 years and 2 startup failures
before building one that is now > 10M€ in revenue. So failing is part of the
process.

Here is what I'd recommend: 1) take a week off and rest. The startup way of
life is very demanding and being exhausted can impair your judgment to answer
the very importance question that all founders face at some time: Should I
quit? Or should I pivot? Or should I persevere. 2) evaluate what I believe is
the most important startup metrics: market traction. After so much cash
burned, you should have at least an idea if your solution is truly disruptive
or if it is just 'nice to have'. If it is 'nice to have' I recommend you quit.
3) if you decide to quit or are not sure, return the money to the investors in
order to preserve your credibility for any future venture project.

Remember that being an entrepreneur is not a one-shot journey. It's a way of
life. With time and experience you will get better at it.

------
djyaz1200
You might want to seek out some folks at Crowdcompass or other companies in
your general category and see if they want to hire your whole team, maybe even
pay you to continue doing what you're doing... that's kind of a middle option.
If you decide not to move forward I'd be glad to consider you for a job at our
company because I respect how you're handling this. Whatever you do I wish you
the best of luck. If you'd like to chat I'm at... dave <at>sendsmart.com.

------
montrose
Whether you should quit or not depends on (a) whether your idea has any
potential and (b) whether you're suited to starting a startup. It's hard to
tell either of those from your question.

The question I'd ask is, why did you start working on this idea? Was it
something you yourselves needed? Or was it a made-up idea, meaning something
you assumed other people wanted (but that perhaps they don't actually)?

If the answer is the former, focus on the problem you know exists from your
own experience, and find the people who desperately need it. If you did, there
must be others.

If the answer is the latter – that you're making something you hoped and
predicted other people would want – then you're basically casting about at
random. And though I resist ever advising people to quit, if there's a time
to, that's it.

------
syntaki
I’ve been in a similar position as you. I’ve spent the last 8 years building a
b2b company. It’s a hard long road. I can hear the unspoken panic in your
writing. It feels like you are flailing around and giving up already. You
really need to analyze the reason you guys are failing without all the emotion
if possible. You say that you didn’t learn anything valuable. That is
absolutely not true. Think back to why you thought this was a good idea in the
first place. Think about all the lessons learned with your failures. You
actually got people to do some pilots. Making money is freakin hard. Ignore
the prsssure from investors for a moment. They knew they could lose their
money. You need to personally decide if you keep going or do something else. I
can promise you it won’t get any easier though if you stay in the startup
world.

------
mrhektor
One of the most important things I learned while being in a somewhat similar
position as you a little while ago, is to stop concentrating on sales at this
juncture, and concentrate on the product instead.

As a solo-cofounder, your focus will keep shifting from sales to engineering,
and it's very very hard to do both. I recommend stopping all new sales, align
your entire company on stabilizing the product, and your existing customers
will become your sales team.

As others have said, it would be helpful to take a break with your team, craft
a new product-focussed strategy, and make deadlines for delivery.

Lastly, remember that you've actually achieved a lot (getting paid pilots is
hard as a startup). Even if you do quit (I recommend giving it some more time
though), I think you have learned what NOT to do in your next venture. Good
luck!

------
apapli
It seems like you have had some progress but lack strategy, or a vision - ie
what is your business here to solve. So instead you are placing lots of bets
to see what works.

Look up the EOS methodology, or read the book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg,
it’s a good read with lots of helpful tools.

Ultimately if you like your team, want to do something to change the world,
have the support of your backers, perhaps do some services consulting and sell
your time for money.

This approach will give you income, and at the same time you can start
noticing problems in your clients you can help them solve with a product.

It’s the easiest way to get started, and the revenue provides you a longer
runway. The client logo’s and case studies help with your credibility too.

~~~
mlevental
>This approach will give you income, and at the same time you can start
noticing problems in your clients you can help them solve with a product.

this has occurred to me

------
tibbetts
Don’t stress as much about investor capital as about your own time. Investors
probably like what you are doing and they probably have (more or less) plenty
of capital or they wouldn’t have given to you. They mostly won’t want their
money back pro-rated if there is an option for your team to keep trying hard.

You have finite time on this earth. If this startup is no longer the right
thing to be spending your time on, if you don’t think this or anything like it
will work, then it is reasonable to quit and do something else. But I would
second other people’s suggestion that you take a week or two to recover from
what seems like burnout and seriously consider what the right next thing to do
is and whether this corporate vehicle and these investors are part of the
answer.

------
grizzles
There is quite a bit of advice in this thread, some by people who've been in
your shoes and some who haven't. So be careful about the advice you follow,
it's easy to make a bad decision at this point in a startup.

My advice. Go (back) to consultant mode. It failed. You know this, it's in the
OP. Don't give back the cash, they invested in your ability to grow something.
Show them they didn't make a mistake. Work on something totally new and don't
feel constrained to do something anything even remotely close to the old idea.
Don't start building another software monstrosity. Find a real problem and a
way to solve it. You have a year of runaway to sell something that can grow
into something real. That's not too bad.

------
totoglazer
Do you think the new cofounder will substantially change your ability to have
5 successful pilots in the next 3 months?

Are you excited about the space? Do you think you are uniquely able to
contribute? Do you still think the market is there?

If your answer are no to all or most of the above, it sounds like maybe you
should close up shop. I think returning VC money is dumb. Returning friends &
family might be worthwhile.

~~~
mlevental
>Do you think the new cofounder will substantially change your ability to have
5 successful pilots in the next 3 months?

substantially? hard to tell. he is hungry, and smart enough (from what i can
tell), but he's no magician (who is anyway?).

>Are you excited about the space?

no. we are not building tesla-spacex-oculus. it would be very hard to be
excited about b2b tradeshows. i am excited about potentially building a
successful business.

>Do you think you are uniquely able to contribute?

not as of yet.

>Do you still think the market is there?

yes.

>I think returning VC money is dumb. Returning friends & family might be
worthwhile.

there is no traditional vc money. it is only fff money.

~~~
keithnz
why do you think the market is there?

~~~
mlevental
tradeshows are 500B global market.

~~~
keithnz
I more meant for your offering.

If the market is simply tradeshows, then surely there is many ways to pivot in
this market?

------
melvinram
Have you made progress in trying to understand your customers and their
problems?

You mentioned that 1 or more customers in the pilot are paid-customers. If
someone is paying you, either they are forking out the money in the hope that
you're going to solve a problem for them or they are forking over the money
for other reasons (ex. as a favor to you or due to past relationship.)

Do you understand why the paid pilot customers were willing to pay you?

~~~
mlevental
the pilots that signed with us signed because the pain point is real and we
did a good job pitching them/they are extraordinarily impressionable. the
problem is that a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned
out to be pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst
users).

~~~
tom_mellior
> a key assumption necessary in actually delivering value turned out to be
> pretty much false (basically we saw almost no adoption amongst users).

I'm leaning out on a limb here, but if this means what I think it means, you
have developed some app that tradeshow visitors are asked to install to reap
some benefits that don't interest them. If that's kind of what you are doing,
pull the plug now. People don't use that kind of thing.

~~~
mlevental
you're very close and

>People don't use that kind of thing.

is exactly one of the key hypotheses that needed validation/falsification.
what we are facing now is whether we really falsified it given poor
marketing/education on the part of the organizer.

~~~
djur
I worked in this market for a long time, and the biggest single problem with
making software for conferences is that your users aren't your customers.
Furthermore, your customers only have a rough understanding of what the users
might want. Event attendees don't tend to provide detailed feedback to
organizers.

This is why event apps tend to suck -- they're designed to appeal to people
who aren't going to use them. To be successful, you have to actually figure
out what users want _and_ convince your customers that you know better than
them. This is incredibly difficult.

Also, organizers generally aren't invested in promoting your product. They buy
your product in the hope that it will magically make their event more
successful. It takes a lot of one-on-one training and coaxing to get most of
them to participate. This is an extremely support-heavy market, and thus
labor-intensive. Even as a startup, you rapidly end up needing dedicated
customer support staff.

Also also, as it seems you discovered, there are a ton of pitfalls with
building a product that is intended to be used by large groups of people, all
at once, in a time-sensitive context, in a single enclosed environment, on
their variously capable mobile phones. That makes failures nearly always
catastrophic, and it erodes the average experience as well -- there's always
people with some sort of bizarre cheapo phone that breaks in obscure ways, and
those people also complain loudly and frequently.

------
RantyDave
Bail. Your heart has left, you still have a very long way to go and you won't
make it. This is not failure, this is being a grown up. I'm sorry.

------
erikb
Looks to me like you are 1/3 into the project. Why give up now?

Lesson 1) If a person didn't do almost exactly what you are doing (and most
didn't) their advise is bullshit. And as you already see quite a few people
even give you advise in both directions. People always think they know what
they are talking about. In 95% they don't tho.

Lesson 2) Everything is 5-10 times harder than you think. If you already have
5 failing customer projects, that's awesome. Most ppl don't get there. Even
some of them are paying. This is btw how getting product/market fit, or how
did you think it happens? Magical numbers appearing in a nice little
dashboard? Nope. Product/Market fit is more and more people slowly starting to
pay you.

PS: High touch with first customers is nothing. Very normal. Not worth even
mentioning.

------
ada1981
Congrats on your willingness to feel your feelings of failure fully, and to
ask for help. True success in life is our ability to be with our entire range
of emotions and experience and not the attainment of any outcome.

I had thought I failed this past fall on a project to buy a tropical Island. I
went deep into the emotions and confronted them.

From that space I got a strange flash of insight, shot an inspired email to
the owner of said island with creative terms and an offer.

Last week we signed the contracts on the property and are moving ahead
([http://Majagual.org](http://Majagual.org))

We are turning the place into a sacred space to help visionaries find
inspiration and healing and get clarity.

I’d be happy to gift you a “golden ticket” to the island to support your
journey (now or in the future).

------
kd5bjo
> we've failed to do anything productive (... learn anything valuable, etc)

Whatever you decide to do going forward, this experience of running a
struggling company is valuable. If you continue on, you've learned many things
that don't work -- you can focus your efforts on other things. If you start a
different business, you've been around this block before -- you'll spend less
time figuring out the mundane parts of running a business and more on your
revolutionary ideas. And, if you end up as a regular employee somewhere,
you'll bring a unique perspective that new grads can't-- your understanding of
business goals will help you make better technical decisions.

------
gtirloni
I'm sorry you feel that way but I think you're being too negative when you say
"nothing productive" has been done or that pilots were a miserable failure.

Yes, things failed but at least you know more about the market, how to (not)
build things, etc.

Consider pivoting into a similar area using your newly gained skills instead
of shutting down. Also, if investors feel like the money should continue to be
spent, that's a business decision and you shouldn't feel bad about it (unless
they are super ignorant of business and invested for emotional reasons. If so,
then educate them and it's their decision in the end).

Best of luck!

------
slackoverflower
I think you can really benefit from HN advice on your actual product. Want to
link to your website/landing page here?

------
Jefff8
I've worked in the same market as you, I think, from the hints in your
comments.

I've run or had a hand in running conferences and trade shows, as well as
having built software and systems to keep the show on the road, from
registration systems, management systems, surveying and apps. And I know the
business side of startups too.

Perhaps you want to have a chat. HN has my email.

Without knowing anything, I'd speculate that if you aren't finding traction,
then it's related to the structure of the conference/exhibition market which
is a tough space to crack.

------
philcrocket
I've been involved in many (failed) startups. I'm actually going through the
same situation you're going through right now. We have some pilots but the
money isn't raining from the heavens yet.

I definitely agree with the suggestions here to take some time off. Sometimes,
especially when you've been living and breathing this stuff for 9 months, you
need some time away to rejuvenate. I did that a few years ago with a trip to
Nicaragua when I felt like I couldn't ship the product I was working on. After
a week of not thinking about it we went on to shipping the product and moving
our production line to China. The startup still failed in the end (for other
wonderful reasons) but that introspection time is 110% worth it.

One thing that resonated with me recently was to keep your network up. If you
fail you fail but you'll have a group of people willing to help you out if and
when it happens. If you continue and then thrive you'll still have a great
support network when the stress hits hard.

A friend said it well on a recent episode of the $100 MBA Podcast.
[https://100mba.net/mba973/](https://100mba.net/mba973/)

Also, remember sometimes the failures are great insights into what is working
and what isn't working. If you have had this many potential clients at this
point nothing says that there aren't more out there that you can surprise,
delight and serve.

Best of luck.

------
legostormtroopr
Without knowing much about your business, I’ll just say B2B work can be a
tough but more importantly long road. So 9 months may not be a long enough
timeframe to judge failure.

My B2B startup focused on government clients, and we’re about to close a deal
that took 2 years to close. Many times in that period I wanted to quit, but
believed it was better to keep moving forward.

Only you know your business and market fit, and if you think it’s run it’s
course then fold, otherwise fight a little longer and work with the success
you’ve had so far.

------
arudland1987
rajacombinators advice is probably the best on here TBH.

Always remember this: nearly everyone is bullshitting you. What I mean by that
is a very small number of people are actually worth listening to. Look at
these comments on here. I would disregard 99.99% of the advice you receive.
Ben Horowitz has a great story of this, when he finally sold Loudcloud and
came to find out everyone he spoke to during the hard times was full of shit
and ended up going bankrupt. Be very careful who you listen to.

Now - the truth is 9 months is not enough time, this fail fast approach is
complete BS IMHO, you need 5-7 years to make something work. Unfortunately
LEAN has completely screwed with what people think is required. Now when I say
5-7 years, I don't mean 5-7 years on the same idea. I mean 5-7 years for the
LTD/LLC/Inc to get to cash flow positive. So this could be pivot numero 50 by
the point you get there. Fundamentally you have to rationalise your product
the following way, are you really ADDING value (people are receiving more than
they pay for the product/service) and do your potential customers actually
give a shit. Things are much easier when customers really really love your
product, I know it's obvious. But it took me years to stop listening to my own
BS. As founders we rarely see the 100% truth due to the failing of our biases.

Giving back capital to investors is the last thing you should ever be thinking
of doing. I would cut every single cost down to near zero (in the biz) and
make sure you're own personal expenses are extremely low ($1k-1.5k/mo). That
way you have time to make this work.

NEVER EVER GIVE UP.

------
robbyt
Perhaps you're not enjoying the work, or you're burned out because you're
working too hard. Take a step back and think about WHY you want to quit NOW.

Keep asking yourself why, why, why, and find what is the real root cause. Do
you want to do something else? Are the failures you've had demoralizing? Do
you think it's impossible to fix the product? Is your market smaller than
initially expected?

------
point78
Contact me for marketing. It doesn't matter if the product is the best thing
since sliced bread, if it's not marketed it will fail.

~~~
faitswulff
> Contact me for marketing

I'm not OP, but how?

~~~
danieltillett
This is slightly off topic, but I have noticed that about half the time on HC
when someone says contact me that they have no contact details in their
profile.

~~~
JshWright
I suspect that's because HN doesn't make it clear that your email isn't
publicly visible on your profile.

~~~
fastball
I can't think of a single website where your email is publicly visible on your
profile by default.

------
wheelerwj
how are you throwing in the towel with 50% of funds left and encouragement
from your early investors?

get back in there and find a way to make it work! come back in three years
when your broke, your early investors hate you, and you’ve had at least one
divorce.

just kidding. its hard to be a startup founder. it takes a lot of time and
energy. some good suggestions here, take some time, regroup, come back
refreshed. Keep your burn low and talk to your customers about why they left
and ask the people who never signed on why they didn’t.

perhaps equally important, if you insist that you’ve already failed and you
don’t have the motivation to push forward, please stop wasting other peoples
money and give it back. or at least hire someone who will try. do not phone it
in. one warning though, if you tap out now, you may very well ruin your
reputation and another shot at a funded startup. the early stage investors are
prepared to lose their money on a stallion, but not on a deadbeat. either way
they will remember you.

------
dawie
You and your team should watch this 3 times right now:
[https://youtu.be/_6pl5GG8RQ4](https://youtu.be/_6pl5GG8RQ4)

It’s about finding product market fit after a few different products. It talks
about how their new successful product (150 staff) is a small feature from one
of their other products and how they scaled that!

Do it!

~~~
sah2ed
You can do better than this.

The OP mentioned _7 hours ago_ that they had _already_ watched this video,
last week.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16949765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16949765)

------
eurticket
I hope you find the right answer.

Selfishly I want a start up to develop cheaper goods for offices, like desk
lamps... why are those so expensive?

------
kuwze
I have no experience with what I am recommending, so please take it with some
large grains of salt.

I suggest trying to pivot for a specialization, just a niche of B2B
tradeshows. I think looking at the most expensive B2B AdWords[0][1] should be
a quick and easy way to help you in that regard. From my brief research it
seems like if you specialized in 'virtual data rooms' you might be able to
make some quick $. It doesn't look like there are any tradeshows in that
domain, and it has a very high CPC.

[0]: [https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/06/27/most-
expensive...](https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/06/27/most-expensive-
keywords)

[1]: [http://grepwords.com/1000000-top-high-paying-cpc-adwords-
ads...](http://grepwords.com/1000000-top-high-paying-cpc-adwords-adsense-
keywords-2015/)

------
mrschwabe
Unless you perish in a disaster, there is no such thing as business failure.
Only mistakes and fuckups (results of which can only 'change' your business
into some other shape or form).

So do the obvious to sort things out as best you can; to fulfill your
obligations and responsibilities without giving up; be honest with your
personnel, customers, and investors/partners - make arrangements to repay who
is owed all the while being open about your complete situation.

At least this way there is some hope of bringing a bad situation to neutral
ground. You can try and if you give it your best, you can go to sleep at night
feeling at ease cause that is the only thing anyone can ever expect of you -
that you are honest and doing your best.

(of course, your reputation and ability to do business in this way again in
the future may be impacted but such is reality; mistakes and fuckups have
consequences of which you have to accept too)

------
barbegal
I'd say that sometimes the raw economics works against you and it can be very
difficult to change that. As an example take micro-payments, I'm sure hundreds
of startups have tried to make it work but the economics don't stack up in a
way that works. The problem you are working to solve may be unsolved for a
reason. Your investors may be thinking very naively; on the face of it some
problems seem easy to solve but actually are almost impossible.

On top of that it sounds like you're pretty smart and business focused but you
aren't hugely passionate about the problem you're solving.

I would probably advise you to go away and find a different problem to solve;
one that you're more passionate about and one where the economic model stacks
up. If you've got a good team of people then you can probably leverage that to
become successful in a new space.

------
d0m
So my take on it is that your only job as a startup if you don't already have
product/market fit is to find it. And then, if you have it, you focus on
growing.

Then, quite simply, your options are a) Find product/market or b) Quit.

To decide between a) or b), try to think how close you are to getting it. Do
you have a few users that love your product but the pricing is wrong? Did you
find something interesting in the market that you think you can compete on but
didn't execute well-enough?

I would say if you lost your passion and don't think you've got something
interesting enough to get a few users to love your product, then it's time to
quit and (maybe) start over on a fresh idea. If on the other side you're still
passionate about the space and think you're onto something, then keep trying.

------
gerdesj
I've just read nearly all posts here and I think that HN has done you proud.
There is loads of good advice here and very little noise. You have enough loot
left for three salaries for one year at $30,000 and some loose change.

You might be able to do something else eg: basic "IT" if you have people
willing to give it a go an a few technicians on the staff. If money comes in
then who cares where it comes from. Basic IT services are very easy to sell.
Yes it is boring but you'd be surprised how it leads on. My little company has
some customers that you will have heard of, and you are not from around here.
We are boring and I wouldn't have it any other way 8)

~~~
gattafrettolosa
How did you find clients with a boring company? I love "boring" stuff btw, I
feel like I helped more people doing boring stuff (tech support, simple
automation) than the "hip" stuff

~~~
wolco
What a friend did years ago was put up flyers in local office buildings.

------
LouisSayers
So you know what the problem is - the solution is to find product market fit.
Take a couple days off, relax, and then go back to work hungry to solve this
problem.

Get in and talk with the Pilot companies - be straight up and honest, ask them
if it’s really solving a problem for them or if it’s just a nice to have. Ask
what their true pains are.

Monitor your run rates and have contingency plans for dealing with what
happens if funds get low.

If you’re worried, talk to your cofounders and make sure you’re communicating
properly. Express your concerns.

If you truly want to quit, then you can do that but it will have consequences
as well.

Startups can be hard, but the rules are simple. Find a problem and solve it.

------
wizardofmysore
I have worked in a startup which failed, pivoted and now is a billion dollar
company.

My main rule of thumb is that if your current problem statement is failing
then become bigger, in the sense take up a problem that has even more market
demand than the current problem and then add features to your existing
solution to solve for the bigger problem. The chances of you landing a
customer increases this way.

You have targeted B2B sales-shows think of targeting B2C+B2B shows now. Can
your product solve for handling sales shows where consumers go?

Expanding is the key, usually companies contract further and fail, when you
expand the chance of getting a customer increases.

~~~
wizardofmysore
Highlevel features I can think of

From a seller perspective

\- contact management \- emailing and reminders \- text message nudges for
customers \- showing analytics of previous events \- managing previous
customers \- feedback from previous customers

~~~
mlevental
these tools already exist (and number probably in the hundreds)

------
osrec
You must analyse why you're failing. Is your product not good enough? Is your
strategy lacking somewhat? Is the concept itself flawed?

If it's the last one, then it may be time to call it a day. Explain to your
investors that you were unable to validate the concept, so it's best to cut
their losses. It's a tough conversation, but the ethical thing to do.

If it's the other things, I'd give it a bit more time. I've run a few
successful start ups in the past (as well as now), and traction takes a while
and develops in obscure ways.

If you need someone to bounce ideas off, drop me an email (in my profile). All
the best!

------
toblender
It sounds like you are in the dip. See Seth Godin's book on this subject.

[https://www.amazon.ca/dip-Seth-
Godin/dp/1591841666](https://www.amazon.ca/dip-Seth-Godin/dp/1591841666)

I was in a very similar situation for one of my startups, a Shopify clone. We
grew it to 50+ paying customers but stalled.

I ended up giving up all my shares to the other founders and taking a 2 year
trip to Asia. The company managed to survive and was sold.

I don't regret it. Move on, if the team is good, you will reconnect and build
something even better eventually.

------
goatherders
I dont mean to sound insensitive but why did you raise money without "product
market fit?" I hate the phrase but accept its use. 220k for an idea without a
sales or go to market strategy strikes me as terribly tragic. And based on the
details you've shared, most of the burn was on people costs. So you had an
idea, raised money, hired people...and NONE of them were full time sales?

Return the money. Take a vacation. Get up off the mat in due time. But NEVER
ever start paying people (or yourself, most important) without a clear path to
revenue.

~~~
mlevental
I don't know where you got the idea that we didn't have sales - we did.

~~~
goatherders
So what's the problem? Not enough sales?

------
reilly3000
Events and tradeshows are in a category of their own, but anything that goes
wrong in front of an audience comes with a large emotional burden. In events,
there is never such a thing as perfect, but learning to execute well means
less surprises. If you're burnt by recent catastrophes, know that there is
also an amazing feeling that comes when things do go right. If you like/trust
the people you are doing it with then stick with it until you can get a win,
then decide if you want to keep at it.

------
mtrimpe
You're saying your fff investors are giving mixed signals and you're not sure
what to make of them.

We're not your fff investors so we can't unmix those signals for you; our
guesses are worse than yours.

So just do what you'll always have to do when you need to get
alignment/resolve conflicting signals: get everyone into a room and don't let
the meeting end until everyone agrees on the right way forward.

------
andreshb
If the investors were fully aware this is at risk and they backed you because
of the team and not the product/market then I'd use the remaining cash to
build something else where you are the first customer and start over. Reduce
the team to just the co-founders, 100k is still a lot of money for a team of
two or three and you can probably afford one or two more experiments.

------
gkoberger
Hey – I know you're being vague since it's a public forum, however my email is
in my profile if you want someone to talk to.

------
ALee
I personally went through this at the end of the year. I wrote about it and
hope that it's helpful: [https://medium.com/startup-grind/startup-mortality-
what-end-...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/startup-mortality-what-end-of-
life-care-teaches-us-about-startup-failure-7d568c736d90)

------
sontek
Hey! I found your responses and the discussion in general around this
fascinating. I'm currently running an event tech start-up and would love to
talk to you more about it.

It looks like you took an approach we wanted to take but thought it'd be
harder to monetize (as you found out).

Want to e-mail me and lets chat? (info in profile)

------
tyingq
Wow, if you're able to "return funds" and start over, why not? I suspect
that's not the usual situation.

Returning funds means you might be able to tap the same pool again. Continuing
on risks that rare situation.

Sounds like you could pull back, re-assess, and take a second run. How many
get that chance?

------
antirez
9 months is short and is ok to continue even if you are making very little,
however from what I read I would be more concerned about you having or not a
good product, since the pilots went bad. IMHO the thing to do is to analyze
why the pilots failed, and understand if that can change.

------
throwawaydream1
1\. I think giving up at this stage is the the easiest thing to do - and I
think it common due to the uncertainty about the future

2\. Check that you can imagine yourself spending next few years doing what you
are doing, just even more harder

3\. If so, double down, as suggested above ask why, why and why. If needed,
pivot.

------
anonu
My two cents: building a business is hard and 9 months is not enough time...
If you believe in the general concept and think it could succeed, then you
need to leverage The experience you already have and continue trying until the
funds run out or you reach the end of the runway.

------
pbreit
I'd shut it down. It sounds like you do not believe it is working. And tech
B2B tradeshows is not a very good business anyway. Founders get to work on
literally ==any== problem or business they want to. There's little reason to
work on a bad product.

------
SQL2219
Question: did you start with a problem to solve? Or are you a solution in
search of a problem?

------
jrs95
I worked for a startup that raised money 4 times, over 50 million, before they
found product market fit. So while it’s very important, it’s clearly not
impossible to keep going if you believe you can find product market fit
eventually.

------
tim333
Slightly random suggestion here but anyway - why not shut things down, give
most of the money back then go travel (SE Asia digital nomad stuff) and keep
hacking on the app to see if you can come up with some better version?

------
joering2
If you looking for ideas, shoot me an email I have nice cultivated list of
ideas I think worth looking into, however I'm working on too many at the
moment but have no problems sharing (but not in public forum)

------
mathattack
Lots of good advice. One more... Since you are now the sole remaining founder,
take care of your stamina and mental health. If you still have the majority of
the equity, you can give some away for top talent.

------
mortdeus
Pivot to a new idea or try to shop your team around for a small acquisition so
you can pay your investors back. Even if you guys don't have a valuable
product per say, you might have a valuable team.

------
anovikov
This is why i am wondering: why are the very early stage investors giving
money in bulk vs feeding the startup some amount every week as long as they
all agree it makes sense to keep going?

~~~
rdlecler1
Because the founder would be spending all of their time reselling the
investors every week. I don’t want an entrepreneur spending their weekends
looking for jobs on LinkedIn because they had a bad week. You need patient
capital to build and iterate to PMF.

~~~
anovikov
That's interesting, so you see convincing someone paying say $10,000 a week as
long as he sees progress as good, slowly exchanging it for stock at a set
valuation, as harder than shelling out $2M out of the pocket in one bulk
amount?

I have experience of the former (well, it was more like $5K in my case) and it
wasn't hard at all, i struggle to imagine myself raising $1M at once. $5K a
week sounds like too little, but as far as hiring coders go, as i am in East
Europe, it's like $10K in West Europe or $20K in the Valley, not
insignificant.

Maybe that's just shyness/psychological barrier? I struggle to imagine myself
saying someone 'give me a million bucks and we'll build this cool thing and
get rich', but asking for 'decent salaries for these good guys and myself, so
we don't have to go to Upwork, plus covering our AWS costs' is whole lot
easier for me, and it works.

~~~
rdlecler1
Yes, terrible idea. I wouldn’t back a startup under those conditions. And what
if there are multiple investors? Now you have to be schmoozing them up all the
time. As an investor you make a bet on a team to execute. If you’re not
comfortable making that kind of bet then maybe you shouldnt be backing a team
that you only trust with one month of runway. I can tell you, that you’d be
the last investor that an entrepreneur would go to for funding — which would
mean that you get the worst deals.

------
cabinguy
I feel your pain...but a little less so, since I only spent my own money. My
advice is simple: if you believe 100% in what you’re doing, keep doing it! If
not, quit ASAP.

------
alexashka
Find something you actually believe in working on, or go make money (regular
job)

Those are the two options everyone always has. If you're not doing one or the
other, I don't know what the hell it is that you're doing at all, and sounds
like neither do you.

A more meta point - you need to know what your life is about, instead of going
by what's 'responsible', or whatever else. You need to know what it is you're
doing with your life, then you won't be in emotional turmoil, because there
won't be success or failure, just steps along the path.

------
wolco
I think it would be useful to give details. If we knew what the product was
and what didn't work we might be able to help.

------
mch82
What do people use your company’s product for?

If you don’t want to share on this thread, maybe wait a bit & post as a “Show
HN”...

------
harel
Failing something is learning. A lot. Take that lesson and turn it around. You
still have a runway to take off from.

------
yani
You can also spend all the money and give these investors a good lesson - you
will be doing them a favor.

------
jsfunfun
it's not only your decision. straight honest talk with your investors, listen
to what they want, what risk they want to take and decide together ... but
listen you should be able to start a company on $50 ... if not your wasting
people's money

------
paulie_a
Are you selling 24/7? To actual potential customers. Forget selling to
investors.

------
bufferoverflow
Why would you take $220K from friends and family without being profitable?
It's one thing to want to scale your business, it's another to just try an
idea that you're not even sure makes money.

------
ccvannorman
Follow your instincts.

If you're interested in a full time salaried CTO position at a recently funded
VR startup (cofounder level entry, but salaried/optional equity), message me
at charlie@zannorman.com

------
tuyguntn
if you have still 100K and if you really believe in your product (or at least
if you think market needs something similar to what you are offering), take a
risk and outsource technical part of product, do sales by yourself, focus on
sales, marketing.

Contact me if you wish to find remote outsource team for ~6k/month, this will
give you another 1 year of development time. email: {myusername} at google's
email service

------
willart4food
1\. Do no stop

2\. Do not return the money, that's not how investing in startups work

3\. Apply to Y Combinator

4\. Keep on going, think about "pivoting"

5\. Read the book "Founders at Work"

------
ganeshkumar_sr
Build another one. :)

------
burntrelish1273
Tell your investors/angels asap. Sell what's left and return money to them
first. Reuse/recycle what you have. Don't just throw the code or the team
away. Move on. Remember that failure is the default setting for learning.
Learn and try again with something else. Never give up!

------
Gary404
Hopefully you'll find what you are looking for. It's one of the hardest stages
to go through

------
floest
Tough mate, all the best!

