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Ask HN: How Many Startups/Projects Have You Failed At?

14 points by denniskubes 13y ago

How many startups / startup projects have you worked on that have not been successful? Just trying to compare. 1 2-5 6-10 11-15 15+

lsiunsuex 13y ago
1 years ago with a good friend - in development for 2 years; no $$$ coming in and I had quit my job to pursue it with my girl friend at the time taking out a loan to cover my bills... complete waste of money but taught me what failure tasted like and i learned ALOT about how not to start a business. This time I have 2 going at the same time, with my partners more on the sales and money side than technical side. I hope to be successful this time :)
ohashi 13y ago
2 Startups in the last 5 years. Projects I don't count. Those are for fun.
chewxy 13y ago
I killed a lot of zombie startup projects for my startup, Pressyo. Many of them didn't get off the ground because we couldn't secure the basic distributions. Here is a list: ProjectPY - a digg/reddit clone but much saner. This was the first project. We failed because we never tested the market. We took too long to go live. ProjectTF - a derivative market for daily t-shirts. Didn't work because we couldn't work out/secure a deal in the back end. edgeyo - a marketplace for startups and entrepreneurs, kinda like a public secondmarket + angellist. We worked 3 years on this, but ultimately got to nowhere. A lot of effort was wasted on this. Too much burn out too. We took a break after this. ZOMBIE SpellTrade - A novel auction for Magic the Gathering cards. Think of options exchange for MtG cards. This was at the height of Jace the Mind Sculptor. This one failed because we needed to bootstrap the market, and tried to talk a few LGSes into doing it. Everyone got the idea, but no LGS was willing to take the risk of holding magic card stock for options. This is an example of waste: we built everything in preparation for the LGSes to come on board (they were happy to come on board) Strangers for Dinner - This was the first project since we killed edgeyo. Kinda liks zokos, but for dinner parties. Over 2000 people signed up. But planet Earth is really really really big. It was very difficult to match people whose preferences were 5-10km from themselves. ZOMBIE That felt good somehow. I feel we've learned quite a bit
147 13y ago
About five. I've yet to make a single dollar with any of the projects I've made. Right now I'm working on something super simple and focused. It's called Monkey Bar, it's just a web app that lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups. I'm hoping by focusing on a narrow niche, Mailchimp users willing to pay to grow their emailing list, I'll be able to finally get a sale.
- bradhe 13y ago
  > lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups Those two things seem to be...disconnected...to me. HelloBar worked, I guess, though...
orangethirty 13y ago
In this year alone 4. In total since I started 20-ish. Not all have been tech. Most have made money.
ibudiallo 13y ago
I have some projects that never saw the light. Two coupons websites, 1 tutorial website, and a freeware download site. I have learned a lot from it though. Now I publish my project with bare minimum and add features gradually
sfrechtling 13y ago
A lot. Mostly one day projects that I lost interest in after I built version 1.
JohnHaugeland 13y ago
Four deaths, two half-deaths one stillborn because of a missed dead-date, two mild successes. Working on another. :)
goyalpulkit 13y ago
One dead already, another might die soon too :)
amongmany 13y ago
Failed at the first one (it's still alive and used, but it's not a success). Working on a second right now that I'm approaching completely differently and I'm really excited about.
JayNeely 13y ago
Three so far. Over the course of about 5 years. 6 months to a year and a half on each. Wrote post-mortems for the first two: http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mortem/ http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mort... http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-shutting-down-my-second-startup/ http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-... Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets from it to move in a different direction. Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done. Don't give up.

14 points by denniskubes 13y ago

How many startups / startup projects have you worked on that have not been successful? Just trying to compare. 1 2-5 6-10 11-15 15+

lsiunsuex 13y ago

1 years ago with a good friend - in development for 2 years; no $$$ coming in and I had quit my job to pursue it with my girl friend at the time taking out a loan to cover my bills... complete waste of money but taught me what failure tasted like and i learned ALOT about how not to start a business. This time I have 2 going at the same time, with my partners more on the sales and money side than technical side. I hope to be successful this time :)

ohashi 13y ago

2 Startups in the last 5 years. Projects I don't count. Those are for fun.

chewxy 13y ago

I killed a lot of zombie startup projects for my startup, Pressyo. Many of them didn't get off the ground because we couldn't secure the basic distributions. Here is a list: ProjectPY - a digg/reddit clone but much saner. This was the first project. We failed because we never tested the market. We took too long to go live. ProjectTF - a derivative market for daily t-shirts. Didn't work because we couldn't work out/secure a deal in the back end. edgeyo - a marketplace for startups and entrepreneurs, kinda like a public secondmarket + angellist. We worked 3 years on this, but ultimately got to nowhere. A lot of effort was wasted on this. Too much burn out too. We took a break after this. ZOMBIE SpellTrade - A novel auction for Magic the Gathering cards. Think of options exchange for MtG cards. This was at the height of Jace the Mind Sculptor. This one failed because we needed to bootstrap the market, and tried to talk a few LGSes into doing it. Everyone got the idea, but no LGS was willing to take the risk of holding magic card stock for options. This is an example of waste: we built everything in preparation for the LGSes to come on board (they were happy to come on board) Strangers for Dinner - This was the first project since we killed edgeyo. Kinda liks zokos, but for dinner parties. Over 2000 people signed up. But planet Earth is really really really big. It was very difficult to match people whose preferences were 5-10km from themselves. ZOMBIE That felt good somehow. I feel we've learned quite a bit

147 13y ago

About five. I've yet to make a single dollar with any of the projects I've made. Right now I'm working on something super simple and focused. It's called Monkey Bar, it's just a web app that lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups. I'm hoping by focusing on a narrow niche, Mailchimp users willing to pay to grow their emailing list, I'll be able to finally get a sale.

bradhe 13y ago
> lets users create a bar that goes onto the top of their website in order to increase email signups Those two things seem to be...disconnected...to me. HelloBar worked, I guess, though...

orangethirty 13y ago

In this year alone 4. In total since I started 20-ish. Not all have been tech. Most have made money.

ibudiallo 13y ago

I have some projects that never saw the light. Two coupons websites, 1 tutorial website, and a freeware download site. I have learned a lot from it though. Now I publish my project with bare minimum and add features gradually

sfrechtling 13y ago

A lot. Mostly one day projects that I lost interest in after I built version 1.

JohnHaugeland 13y ago

Four deaths, two half-deaths one stillborn because of a missed dead-date, two mild successes. Working on another. :)

goyalpulkit 13y ago

One dead already, another might die soon too :)

amongmany 13y ago

Failed at the first one (it's still alive and used, but it's not a success). Working on a second right now that I'm approaching completely differently and I'm really excited about.

JayNeely 13y ago

Three so far. Over the course of about 5 years. 6 months to a year and a half on each. Wrote post-mortems for the first two: http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mortem/ http://socialstrategist.com/2008/10/28/news-armada-post-mort... http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-shutting-down-my-second-startup/ http://socialstrategist.com/2010/12/04/lessons-learned-from-... Haven't written anything for the third yet; we may still use the tech & assets from it to move in a different direction. Failure is frustrating, but I've learned a ton from the work each time, and way more rapidly than I have through anything else I've done. Don't give up.