

Startup Advice for Hacker News Founders - JohnN
http://johnndege.com/2008/03/31/startup-advice-from-someone-who-lost-a-company/
I recently lost my company so thought I would share some unorthodox advice to Hacker News members.
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mixmax
There should be more advice on startups from people who failed - they bring
key insights to the table.

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jgrahamc
OK. I was at a start-up that failed called "Optimal Networks". Optimal was
sold for pennies on the dollar to CompuWare (who, to this day, continues to
sell the Optimal product line and make a bunch of money from it).

There are many reasons Optimal failed (a dysfunctional founding team, changing
the CEO three times, impatient VCs watching the .com boom pass Optimal by).

But the most important lesson I learnt was: start your own damn company. It's
much more fun to be a founder than one of the first employees.

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trekker7
So when's your next startup going to launch? Second time could be the charm!

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JohnN
haha, not too long I hope!

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wave
JohnN, at what moment did you realize that you were not going to continue with
your startup? What was the tipping point?

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JohnN
It probably set in when I went to a conference for journalism related
professionals. Everyone was scratching their heads and asking how the hell do
we make money from this new new media.

For once I was surrounded by non-entrepreneurs asking tough questions, i didnt
exactly have answers to. Entrepreneurs rarely ask each other tough questions
(they want to make friends and network). These journalism professionals
actually cared about their industry and its sustainability not the hope that
someone will buy their company and make them rich.

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jamescoops
Hey maybe the idea could still have worked but in a radically different form
e.g. some kind of about.com/ adsense content syndication hoover. Maybe it was
the focus on high quality content/ journalism that was the wrong direction -
I'd encourage you to think about other ways it might work if you started from
first principles.

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sonink
isnt this something like instablogs
..[http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/18/instablogs-
negotiating-...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/18/instablogs-
negotiating-3-million-round/)

everyone blogs about successes, but blogs about failures are hard to come by,
and that too straight from the horses mouth.

.. best of luck for your next venture

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kirubakaran
Dead horse? No such thing.

Only insufficiently flogged ones.

