

Ask HN: What have you done after a failed startup? - lakeeffect


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sergiotapia
I've personally launched and tanked two projects so far. In both occassions it
was a matter of my competitor having more money, meaning more dedicated
programmers putting in dedicated time.

I have a full time day-job and a family, so I could scrunch in some time
whenever I could and successfully launched:

Oracle of Legends

Dotademy

Both were database websites for League of Legends and Dota 2 respectively, it
was met with lots of love and kind words and usage. At it's peak I was looking
at 25,000 daily users, with thousands voting on couterpicks for the
champions/heroes. It was a "success" in my book.

Unfortunately around that time a website called Lolking was picked up by the
Zam Gaming network (they own Wowhead, etc) and obviously that now had a team
working on it as their job.

A team of devs working full time > a single dev working a couple of hours a
week.

I learned a lot, had fun making it, but was sad when I ultimately pulled the
plug. Who knows, I may revisit the websites and launch them for an
international market. So far none of the big websites has localization and I
know the latinamerican crowd is huge, so there's that. :)

All in all I spend 60$ for 4 months of hosting, nothing more.

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azal
It depends. If you have enough savings, you can take the much needed time-off
and clear your mind and then work on another problem to solve. If money is the
issue then get a consulting or freelancing gig (plenty of info on HN how to
get 1). Write a guest blog post on why your Startup failed. Also there are
plenty of people looking for Co-founders. The worst mistake is to not start
something new because you think you may fail again.

~~~
eddy_chan
The part about not starting something new out of fear of failure is the best
advice ever. Even if your startup 'fails' you would've gained a hell of a lot
skills out of building it, call it 'personal capital' and the best thing you
could do is reinvest it in a new startup instead of letting it go to waste.

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eytanlevit
The first thing I did was "Sit Shiva", which is an adaptation of a jewish
mourning ritual to startup life.

I think that a failed startups feels quite similar to losing someone.

I still tear up when I talk about my previous company, but sitting it out
enabled me to better handle it and now I'm very pumped up and working on my
3rd company.

Btw, I've blogged about it:
[http://www.eytanlevit.com/post/32192713706/sitting-shiva-
on-...](http://www.eytanlevit.com/post/32192713706/sitting-shiva-on-my-
startup)

------
KalobT
I created a social network called Unadu. It gave the users a voice, along with
every other current aspect of online networking. It gained a little traction
in my area with only a few hundred users over a 4 month span. Over the last 3
weeks there was virtually no activity. When you fail, fail fast right? So I
retired the network and immediately went on to working on the next project. I
learned a lot; mostly where my strengths and weaknesses area.

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albahk
I applied for a job back in my old industry and now working there. I have a
wife and 2.5 year old daughter so in the grand scheme of things it was the
only real thing I could do. I will save a bit and learn a bit more and do it
smarter next time.

------
webuntu
I think you need to define "failed".

I've been working on my startup for some time. I haven't been profitable (or
funded) yet, but it's far from being a "failed" venture.

~~~
tim_moon
Definitely. What defines "failed" depends on the person. I've been working on
mine for some time as well. Considered it "failed" after cofounder issues led
to nothing getting done (no product/MVP). Ex-cofounders just enjoyed talking
about building something, and had unrealistic expectations of startups (e.g.
$160k+ salary, $8 mil seed rounds, etc).

I've come to believe it's a "failed" venture once I reach a point where I've
exhausted all of my ability and options. I haven't reached that point because
I can just learn to code to build it. I was relying too much on finding
technical cofounders because I didn't consider myself technical at the time.

Quite frankly, we were wantrepreneurs. Coming to terms with myself over that
really helped in moving forward.

I've been building ever since and have someone willing to pay once it's done.
Best thing is - I've realized that I enjoy building :).

