

Did you learn anything from your failed start up? - trevorgeise

I&#x27;m curious to get the communities take on whether you learn more from start ups that have failed, than start ups that have succeeded.<p>Here is my thinking:<p>I&#x27;ve read many of the &quot;keys to success&quot; type of books, e.g. &quot;Good to Great&quot; or &quot;The Art of the Start&quot;, but the information always seemed either inapplicable or flawed. Ultimately it seems very challenging to know why we have succeeded, but our brains are very capable of designing reasons in retrospect. It&#x27;s my understanding there are a wealth of studies that support this theory. In &quot;The Black Swan&quot; Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes into some nice detail on the topic. Basically, we create narratives that make sense. &quot;Our company was successful because of our culture&quot; - that sounds good, but who knows if that really was the cause. The solution is not to look at all the companies that were successful to see if they also had a similar company culture, but to look at the companies that failed to see if they also shared that trait. If they did, then that trait is not THE key to success. But successful entrepreneurs(&#x2F;people) are very prone to create a narrative cause to their success, and attribute that cause to actions - instead of chance.<p>Have you learned more from your failures or your successes. If you have had a failed start up, did you walk about stronger? Do you think you would have learned more had you been lucky and successful? Could it easily have gone either way, or was it doomed?<p>Thanks for your thoughts!
======
livestyle
Very thought provoking.

The biggest lesson I learned with my failed ecommerce startup was not
understanding who my customer was.

We started out as a B2C and before we knew it we had other biz's wantint to
use our site (think costco for autoparts).

We were so focused on being this huge retail source that we missed our best
customers.

Sadly when I finnaly woke up to this reality we were $400k in the hole and 3
years into things.

I suggested a pivot before I knew what a pivot was. My partners voted to stay
focused on consumers. We cratered 4 months later.

Lesson learned= Know your customers and what they value.

~~~
trevorgeise
Interesting. Did you raise capital for the company? So what would you have
done differently, or asked another way, how do you approach a new business
idea now. Do you start with consumer research? Just focus on a light weight
MVP to look for market validation?

~~~
livestyle
Sorry just saw this.

Yes we raised from angels. It was a painful exp.

Challenge your assumption. In my case coming from a b2b background I had the
pain point of having to call around to a bunch of different sources to get
parts. I wrongly assumed consumers had the same pain point.

I move much more methodically now in terms of who is my actual customer.

Hope this helps.

------
jorcsa
Hi, my biggest learning from my failed startup was that I should show respect
towards what I am doing. About two years ago everybody started to speak about
startups. It sounded so sexy to become a startupper. So I wanted a startup. I
found a nice idea I sat down write the whole strategy alone planned all the
way till IPO and till sunbathing on my huge yacht. Than I went to a developer
company and spent all my money to have the Final Product created. I have not
even told my mother what the idea was. To say it short I didn’t have a clue
about startups, not to mention lean, idea validation, etc. I lost all my money
and the project was a total failure. Than I „stood up” and spent a year on
learning, reading and discussing the industry. I started to respect my own
time, money and efforts. A month ago I had a new idea that still looks
promising. Having my previous learning and being in the „advantageous
situation” of not having a lot of money to spend, now I follow lean, think and
rethink, test each assumption and talk with as many people as I can. Overall I
become a much more opened and friendly person. My friends keep on saying I am
a new person (in a good meaning).

~~~
trevorgeise
Thanks Jorcsa. That's great. Someone once gave me this piece of advice - "work
very hard to find out why your start up will fail. if you can't, you've found
a good one, but the quicker you can find out why, the quicker you can move on
to the next one."

------
omnivore
I think I learned a lot about how the market works, about timing, about how to
pick partners and about managing expectations. It was an invaluable experience
in terms of realizing that you shouldn't internalize all of the hype that gets
spewed about how to make a startup work and that everyone's journey is based
on a lot of variables that may or may not cause you need to do a lot of
reflection before, during and after.

~~~
trevorgeise
Thanks for reply. So it sounds like in your experience there is a lot of
chance, or randomness, at play, but what you can control is your expectations
(don't buy hype). Is that right? What were your take-aways about timing and
picking partners? Curious how you do things differently now.

