
Ask HN: Is it time to give up, or is it time to push on? - Curll
Boring details: I started a company in July aimed at creating a new fantasy sports platform, focused on stat-heavy leagues, dynasty leagues, niche sports, eSports, and tabletop games.<p>Our CTO was hired away last month, our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress has been made on the product. Lead developer doubts we&#x27;ll get a product out before baseball season.<p>Haven&#x27;t been able to find a replacement CTO&#x2F;lead architect to help lead the development side.<p>Angels and VCs say we&#x27;re too early, need usage stats to invest.<p>I&#x27;m not going to be able to make rent for January.<p>Stress is getting to me. I&#x27;m thinking I should just shut the whole thing down, but I&#x27;ve got that voice that says, &quot;Giving up is way harder than trying&quot;.<p>Any advice would be appreciated.
======
tptacek
This isn't a hard question to answer. Your prospective investors really aren't
going to invest without customer traction. You have no product, and you have
just a month's living expenses left.

Even with a hail-mary play that gets you some a semblance of a working product
_and some users_ in December, you still won't have a trendline to show
investors.

If plodding forward doesn't really cost you anything, because you're basically
insolvent anyways, sure, keep plodding forward.

Otherwise: draw up Plan B. Doing something else doesn't mean you can't return
to your fantasy sports platform later on. It just means you need to figure out
a way to start getting paid, and that needs to be a priority.

Due respect to the rest of the comments on this thread, but how much you
believe in yourself really doesn't have much to do with your decision.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I had similar thoughts, my late fighter pilot friend used to say "Even the
best pilots crash when they run out of gas."

~~~
nstart
I'm going to treasure that quote. Thanks for this one.

------
austenallred
This is the hardest question to answer. My startup was once at a point when
any sane person would have given up, and yet here we are - alive, growing,
funded. Before that there was a phase when I was all in. I was living in my
car in Silicon Valley because I couldn't afford rent, stressed out of my mind,
had no product, and could tell that we were a long way yet from having
product, traction, and being compelling to investors (or even an accelerator).
And I had zero dollars in the bank (actually significantly fewer than zero
dollars).

So how did we get from point A to point B? I got a job so that I could pay the
bills and think straight. My co-founder and I parted ways, and I ended up
finding another. We built out the product and got enough users for an
accelerator to take a risk on us, then for investors to do the same. Now, a
year later, I have the perfect team with enough money and the right product.

It sounds like, if you're honest with yourself, you're a long way away from
being a palatable investment. My guess is that you're even farther than you
think you are, because that's just the nature of the beast.

If I hadn't taken the time to postpone - not give up, but realize the
circumstances we were in weren't conducive to building a company - I'm sure we
would have failed. If you're not going to make it, accept that fact, and do
what you have to do to get your ducks in a row.

Sometimes "Don't give up" looks a lot like giving up, and that's the hardest
part. But if you really believe in what you're doing, you do what you have to
do, no matter what that is.

Just my two cents.

------
andy_adams
If your devs are learning Node & Angular on the job, it's time to find new
devs. I've picked up far too many freelance projects where the devs just
wanted to try a new framework, and Node/Angular are top of the list for "cool
things to try".

If you're going to continue, find a dev with lots of experience in an
old/stable platform (Rails, Django, etc) who can crank out version 0.1 in a
month or two.

When you're this early, you don't have the resources to be educating your
developers. They will bail before they're productive, and you're left footing
the bill.

~~~
_RPM
I think the problem is right here. Do they have a fundamental reason for using
Node/Angular? It could probably be attributed to Survivor Bias by the non
technical management. First question to ask is why are you using Node/Angular?
If another technology stack can produce faster results, then..

------
benologist
"our two other developers are learning Node and Angular, but not much progress
has been made on the product."

Why are they learning this stuff now while you're under a deadline and have no
product?

Do these guys have previous experience with other languages/frameworks/etc
that would let them focus on building instead?

~~~
Curll
It is a fair question. The former CTO set the stack and was helping those two
along. They're Ruby converts.

After the CTO left, I asked if we should switch and they said switching to
Ruby was more work than it was worth. The backend is pretty far along in Node
right now. And we've got an Angular dashboard that we need to connect.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Another lesson that may apply: fad driven development isn't necessarily a good
idea. Sometimes "old" (i.e. established, tested, widely used) technologies are
better choices than whatever the latest fad offers.

~~~
mackwic
I think you mean "easy to hire"-technology. One time it was Java, then it was
PHP, now it's becoming node.js and angular. Maybe it's a bit soon, but it's
far from insane to bet on these technologies nowadays.

~~~
Iftheshoefits
Yes, that is one very big reason to go "oldschool:" there are more developers
who have more experience. It is nuts to follow fad driven development on a
tight budget and hard time deadlines without significant understanding of the
technologies involved. I'd argue that it is nuts in general to go with fad
driven development. Choosing a technology structure based on fads is a dumb
idea. One should choose a structure that makes sense for the project and team.

------
fsk
Give up. Your current team is incompetent. They are padding their resume with
node/angular experience at your expense. They should have a working demo after
2 months.

~~~
jader201
_> They should have a working demo after 2 months._

While I agree with your sentiment, this sentence sounds like an
overgeneralization. I can't imagine it would be that easy to put together a
working demo of a fantasy sport site in two months, even with the best talent.

~~~
wpietri
What kills me is that this sort of mystery is not in any way necessary. The
planning methods from, e.g., Extreme Programming, are 15 years old. So that
nobody else has to suffer like this, here's my 30-second intro to a basic
version:

Everybody sit down at a table with a large stack of index cards, all of one
color that isn't white, and n+1 sharpies. Talk about the product. As you go,
every time something buildable is mentioned, write it on an index card with a
sharpie. 3-7 words is enough; the cards aren't documentation; they're just
tokens representing conversations. Every card should create business value
that is visible to all stakeholders. No "set up the IDE", no "learn node",
just business value cards.

After 30-60 minutes, put the cards in strict linear order of business desire,
ignoring technical dependencies. Now take a bunch of cards, write "RELEASE" on
them, and insert them into the order every time something shippable is
necessary, including investor demos, user tests, private betas, and the like.

Next, look at the top 10-20 cards. For each one, ask the developers if it will
take a week or more. No wizardry needed, just gut-level estimates. If the
answer is yes, tear up the card and replace it with cards that are all smaller
than a week of effort. Congrats! Now you have a plan that is enough for
developers to get started. Make a permanent home for the cards on a table or
wall with three columns: backlog, working, done.

Each week on Monday morning, everybody should sit together, look at the
backlog, and take an hour to discuss everything that will likely get worked
on. During the week, when people start on a card, move it from "backlog" to
"working". When everybody agrees that it is completely done and the business
value is has been demonstrated, move it to "done". And the end of the week,
sit down together again, review how it went, count the cards completed.
Protip: keep the number of cards in "working" as small as possible.

After a few weeks, the business stakeholder can look at the number of cards
completed each week, look at the backlog, and make reasonable guesses as to
how long things will take. And after a few weeks seeing the team deliver
business value each week, they'll have a good notion of how effective their
team is.

There are nuances (about which I'm glad to answer questions), but that's
enough to get going. I've built a number of products this way and helped
others do the same. Please, founders: adopt some simple short-cycle iterative
process. It's not hard, it doesn't take long, and it will save you immense
trouble.

~~~
nstart
I know the basic principles of extreme programming. But I ignored it (like
most hotheaded fresh young devs are wont to do) till I rediscovered it some
time earlier this year. Do you have a go to book that discusses these
practices? Already have a couple in my reference stack, just asking because
you seem to have grasped the practice so well.

~~~
wpietri
For programmers looking to learn about XP, the book that I most recommend is
the _first_ edition of Extreme Programming Explained by Kent Beck, the white
one. (The second edition, the green one, was rewritten for a broader audience;
also interesting, but I don't think it speaks as well to programmers.)

But the book is ancient at this point, so I'd treat it more as a point of
historical interest. We've learned a lot and our technology has changed
greatly, so it's not something I'd recommend implementing as written.

Another easy place to start is here:

[http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html](http://www.extremeprogramming.org/introduction.html)

It's also out of date in some ways. For example, it talks about using a shared
integration computer, but Git + AWS + Continuous Deployment have made that
kinda ridiculous.

But what I think of it as the core of it is still quite solid. In particular,
the notion of thinking of a project not as a waterfall but as a series of
self-correcting feedback loops has been immensely helpful to me. What XP gets
really right versus, say, Scrum, is focusing on the minute-to-minute developer
experience as a driver of quality and economy. Test-driven development, pair
programming, sustainable pace, collective code ownership: when pursued
vigorously, these have made a huge difference for me both in terms of project
outcome and personal experience.

My general tip for process change is for people to pick their biggest problem
and then start solving it in a way that shortens feedback loops. So if
somebody's getting lots of bugs in QA, then I'd encourage them to automate
their tests so that developers get bug reports sooner. Or here, if the problem
is long periods without knowing what's going on, it's breaking the work down
into little chunks and delivering the next most valuable thing every few days.
Humans are really good at optimizing short-feedback systems; we do a lot of it
automatically.

Feel free to write me if you have particular questions; people were very
generous in getting me started. I'm glad to pay it forward.

------
ebbv
5 months should have been plenty to come up with something. It sounds like
your initial goals were way too complicated. You need to aim small for a
version 1 and then add features later. You have now learned one of the first
lessons of software development.

------
kordless
There's one awesome thing that is apparent here which is that you already know
the answer to your question. Read your words: "boring details", "hired away",
"not much progress", "developer doubts", "find a replacement", "too early",
"need usage stats", "able to make rent", "stress is getting to me", "shut the
whole thing down".

Your last comment is the most telling: "Giving up is way harder than trying."

When I say something is hard, what I mean is that it challenges and scares me.
I live my life by one motto now: do the thing that scares you the most. It's
worked so far for me - good things are happening already.

I think you should try doing what scares you the most. Is that keeping on
keeping on, or quitting?

------
kissmd
But frankly: 3 devs * 5 months and you have nothing? This is a no go for every
investor, i am sure.

~~~
Curll
To be fair, the two current devs have been on board full time for just over a
month and a half.

But, your point stands.

~~~
bhouston
Most competent web devs can have something working relatively quickly -- even
if it is an early prototype - like a week or two from a good developer. I
would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using.
Learning as you go, especially for the main devs, is highly problematic -- the
chance they produce a pile of shit is very high.

Having a few junior devs around the experienced devs is okay, but only
inexperienced devs (in the technology at hand) is a really bad situation.

~~~
cabalamat
> I would recommend hiring someone who already knows the stack you are using.

Or choose a stack the developers know.

~~~
pc86
Usually I would agree with this, but he states elsewhere a big part of the
back end is already completed (Node) and they have a dashboard (Angular) that
is (mostly?) complete and needs connected to the back end.

The two devs also come from Ruby and stated it'd be more work than it's worth
to move to that stack.

------
gwbas1c
Just remember this: You don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.

It takes a long time to find a CTO; and if you can't make rent in January, you
aren't going to look very appealing. Even if you find a CTO who's into fantasy
sports; given your company's (cough) debt, a potential CTO might think it's
easier to start over, without you, your code, and our developers.

If you like the startup scene, you can go work for an early stage startup.
Chances are, there's a sports-themed startup that you'll be able to do very
well in.

You can also keep networking until you find the right team of people to work
with. Remember, you don't need to be the guy in charge to be successful.

------
waterlesscloud
How far away is baseball season, 4 months? You can't have an MVP by then with
several months already under belt? Is your Minimal Viable Product minimal
enough?

If you plan to continue, you might need to look at chopping your launch
features down a bit.

------
silverbax88
1\. Solve your financial problem first. Get a job to make rent, even if it's
seasonal. Once you know you can eat and sleep somewhere, it will be easier to
step back and be objective.

2\. Decide if the market is there "if everything was perfect". Nothing will be
perfect, but if there is no market even in a perfect world, well, walk away.
If you think there is a market even in an imperfect world that you want to go
after, then that's your answer. But your second step is deciding whether to
move forward on the project. If you aren't going to make the baseball season
(which is likely), decide if it would be better to target the 2015 football
season opener or the 2016 major league baseball opener.

3\. PM me anytime, I have a sports media company and I am very tech-savvy, I'm
a longtime coder, I've worked for major corporations as an architect and
manager, and I've worked with/advised multiple smaller 'grassroots' sports
companies. I'm not offering to build your platform, but I am offering someone
who you can at least bounce ideas off of that will know your market. And I'm
not building a competing platform. I might not be able to solve your problems
of today, but if you decide to move forward with it, I might be able to
provide objective advice about your market and tech.

~~~
Curll
Thank you for the offer.

HN doesn't really have a PM system, as far as I know. Feel free to shoot me an
e-mail, chad@shadosports.com, and we can chat a bit more.

~~~
silverbax88
Sorry, I must Reddit too much. I'll shoot you an email.

------
JSeymourATL
Pivot Today: Keep your team together, assuming they're good guys. Find some
contract development work to bring cash-in. Carve out time to work on your
e-sports platform as a side project. Recommend reading Alan Weiss on acquiring
clients> [http://www.amazon.com/How-Acquire-Clients-Techniques-
Practit...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Acquire-Clients-Techniques-
Practitioner/dp/0787955140)

------
sebastianconcpt
Reality check: Curll, if you can't fix your cash-flow problem in 30 days, then
you already know the experiment requires a strategic pivot.

It doesn't help to question that.

It will have an emotional impact for you but fighting facts will not help you.
Deep breath and change the perspective to see _how_ you need to pivot. Don't
narrow possibilitites. On the contrary, expand them. You might feel blind or
stuck for a little but do some Customer Development (essentially listening) to
get inspired again.

You need the cash-flow problem fixed and is better if you can fix it by
yourself delivering direct value (AKA, your paying clients).

Even if you have to do something else (diversification) and everybody tells
you that you should focus, if it's not working then is _not_ working (AKA
pivot needed).

Remember that you can always do the self-angel strategy (AKA bootstrap) and do
that project as secondary thing instead of primary. Might not be so exciting
but it will protect you (and reality around you is asking for it).

Do not surrender to peer pressure on cheap advice (perhaps including this
one). Stay questioning and trust your subconscious intuition and discern.

What would you say to you if you were to advice your son on this?

Best!

------
jboggan
Been there, done that. Had to make the choice between paying Heroku or my
landlord, I moved out and started couch surfing and crashing with my parents.
Eventually that wears thin - actually immediately that wears thin.

You have a highly in-demand skill-set and I suggest you go use it and restore
your finances and your sanity. The tech world isn't going anywhere.

Spend the next 3 years applying all the lessons you've learned which are no
doubt numerous. How would you have done things differently to avoid your
current predicament and lack of runway? You get another chance - and in the
meantime you can take a load off mentally and financially.

Edit to add: By the way, you're successful for even attempting this. Don't
hang your head in shame or beat yourself up for wanting to quit, or think that
something magical will materialize if you just hold on. View it as a step to
something greater and move on. You'll have great stories to tell the people
who've been safely ashore the entire time.

------
thalesfc
For me you are using the two frameworks harder to prototyping - this is more
truth for node, in fact. (this is my opinion, take it on your own).

What I would do in your place is simplify your code. This is, change to ruby
and do not use any front end framework (remove angular for now) and just stick
with a simple bootstrap integration.

------
goodgoblin
In the spirit of "any advice" :)

How did you fund the initial 5 months?

The reason I ask is, if you don't have a ton of people to support at this
point, you might want to move into "hibernation mode" and get a job to pay
your bills while looking for folks you can count on to help you advance your
vision and get to a point where you have traction, users, sales, etc,
something that would be appealing to an investor.

If you already have taken money from an investor though, your options will be
more limited.

Take a hard look at the market you are trying to penetrate and give yourself
an honest assessment of what your chances of success are. Would you invest in
yourself if you were angel or VC?

Think about how long you would have to spend on this idea to reach that goal
and decide whether it is something you really love or not because 'success'
can involve an arduous climb of 7 years or more.

------
kissmd
postpone.

get some money in the old way. if it is still in your head after 6-8months and
dont let you sleep, you can still continue.

------
simonebrunozzi
If you live in the Bay Area, I would be happy to give you 30-45 minutes of my
time and listen to your situation. Sometimes these things can be better
clarified/understood in person.

I've been helped by HN members in many ways (mostly online though, and mostly
indirectly), but in this case I feel compelled to "give back".

I have a few years of mentoring experience, and I can safely promise that with
whatever suggestion I will come up with, I won't make your situation worse :)

[edit] just as a last thought, in case we won't meet - it seems that with such
a short runaway, there's not much to do. The question you should ask yourself
is rather this one: should I simply give up, or should I "regroup" and try
again in a few months (e.g. with a short consulting gig in between, to get
some cash flowing)?

~~~
Curll
Thanks for the offer. I'm in Boston, however.

Regroup seems to be the way to go; much appreciated.

------
startupfounder
Sales fix everything.

Cash flow fixes everything.

If you can't generate cash then quit or pivot to something that does quickly.

Cash flow and traction leads to investors not the other way around.

Are you generating cash now? how much? what are you costs?

Focus on one thing and do it really well. I know you hear this all the time,
but be the best SF Giants fantasy league.

~~~
sebastianconcpt
Agree with all the first part but if he focused and didn't got useful results,
continuing to be focused will only help him to do the wrong thing righter.

He's intuition is telling a lot, it's pretty clear that he needs some kind of
pivot. And I would seriously consider diversifying to fix the cash-flow
problem.

------
RangerScience
> "learning..."

is a gigantic red flag. They should be learning the problem domain, not
technologies with which to solve the problem. I'm with the folks saying
they're wanking around on your dime and time to learn a thing they're
interested in - which would be great, if you weren't about to starve.

I don't really have a lot of experience with which to base this, but...

I can't comment as to whether you should abandon your idea. I can comment that
you should abandon your current plan for realizing it: That plan has become
untenable.

Also, learn to code, at least enough to approximate competency. (Or use the
wine trick: Ask for details, and look for coherence and passion - someone who
knows wine can tell you /all about it/. You just need to know enough to judge
coherence, not accuracy)

------
byoogle
Ping me – I _might_ be able to help: I run a (new but fast-growing) consulting
co, work for equity, have fantasy sports on our project wish list (you have to
have a unique take, though).

That said, I think the top advice here is good.

(My contact info is at the bottom of 10x.co.)

------
xpto123
Don't get bankrupt for this, its not worth it. Shut it down temporarily, try
to make the MVP really minimal in your spare time.

The product you describe seems to have huge scope. Try to make it really
focused, like an an NFL only fantasy league (the most popular sport).

You should really get developers that know already Angular and Node, those
technologies are just not learnable overnight.

Other than that it seems like a nice stack, I personally would go for a
backend based on socket.io and mongoose.

Any change of having people working remotelly to reduce office costs?

------
cgrusden
If you want, contact me at corey@sofetch.io, and we can talk about how far
along you are? If the platform is 50%+ finished, we may be able to take it on,
knock it out, and consume a hefty % of equity.

I run sofetch.io, we build and design web and mobile apps.

------
fleaflicker
There's no glory in jeopardizing your wellbeing. And it's hard enough to make
money in any market, especially one as competitive as fantasy sports, where
all the big players have massive audiences already built-in.

~~~
Curll
Sush, you. I ain't giving up that easily :)

Though, perhaps we should merge.

~~~
fleaflicker
Always happy to talk and help if we can ... Ori at fleaflicker.com

------
general_failure
All you need is to find the right find of partner? Get someone in as a partner
and give him lots of stocks. Make sure he knows is his technology and makes a
promise to deliver (put it in the contract).

------
650REDHAIR
Can you get a part-time job to pay bills until you can sell the product?

------
FolioSwarm
I don't think you've been at it long enough to quit. Here is an idea. Can you
build something smaller that will generate revenue quickly instead of a much
larger fantasy sports platform site? You obviously play fantasy sports so what
if you wrote down all the things that drive you crazy about the big guys sites
and apps and create a small solution for each problem on paper and then fix it
with an app. Or look on a few app stores and find all the problems via viewing
the low ratings on all the other apps out there. This is where the pain is and
fantasy sports players will use whatever they find as a solution to their
problems. What if you just build a small app that helped people get an
advantage over other players that was easy to create, costs a couple bucks on
an app store (or links to add rev. that can be dumped into an account that is
linked to a top fantasy platform) and can be done before baseball season. You
may have to do some Wizard of Oz stuff to start making money and get traction
until you have some dough to hire a better team, etc. Here is an idea that may
work: In my business, investments (actually building an SaaS product in
FinTech) there are all these sites that for lack of better words are called
"Guru" sites/apps. There are probably 5 sites and 5 - 10 apps out there. It
sounds corny, but what people/companies have done (Using public filings) is
find what the big guys (Hedge Funds/Institutions) are buying and then wrap a
service around it. So if Warren Buffet buys MSFT they send out an email to all
their subscribers telling them that Warren Buffet owns this now and they pile
in. People will pay a lot of money for information. Some sites are slicker,
where they have a good GUI with portfolio holdings of every single hedge fund,
every single trade, weightings, etc., where you can slice and dice data a
hundred different ways. Some have gotten as far as trading your accounts based
on their (The Gurus) trades. So what if you built the simplist version of this
where all the baddest ass fantasy players were tracked (Trades, allocations,
etc.)and you sold a service where they get emailed when players are moved,
allocations change, trades are made, etc., but the hook is you have to track
the best, or maybe even professional athlete's picks (who knows more than a
professional athlete about other athletes?) or maybe coaches, who knows. But
keep it small, it has to create revenue immediately so you can pay rent and it
has to be non-existing and something you could possibly sell to a big
competitor (or put on their site to generate split ad revenue or something)
because lets face it over time you could have a site with every widget, app,
stat cruncher, etc. like a mall for fantasy players that need the best tools
to kill it against all the guys in their office. Start thinking outside the
box, but it has to be quickly built and must generate revenue quickly and then
do what you want to do. Maybe follow an MVP regimen to get it going. Just some
ideas, you could always build a quick picks aggregator that takes all the
picking sites lists and makes a master list. Or generate a new way to rate
players with a number (1,2,3,4) or alphabetic system (A,B,C,D), or turn
players into stocks and make them into charts, quotes, graphs as a way or
means to analyzing them better. Don't create a "market" for players though
because it's been done and the Gov. doesn't like these sites/apps because they
resemble gambling. good luck - Jordan

~~~
jerf
You are speaking to someone who is going to run out of rent in two months. I
see no suggestion you gave that has a reasonably-high-probability path to
providing rent-quantity money in that timeframe. You have a few suggestions
that involve money, but I'd estimate their most-likely return in one to one-
and-a-half months to measure in the dozens of dollars.

This is not a great time to be overestimating the odds of making money.

~~~
FolioSwarm
I think getting a job at this point is obvious. I guess I should have said
that in the beginning.

------
panon
Fail fast and often.

