Startups are like relationships and failure is like a breakup.
When I was first met with the idea — a consumer marketplace to book event venues, I thought yeah that’s exactly what I could have done with a few months ago when I was mindlessly going through a manual process to find a venue for my charity fundraiser event.
My co-founder and I both worked full time jobs so work began in our spare time. I knew how to design apps and my friend knew how to build them but we didn’t know much else. We drafted the entire app — all the views, functions, interactions etc etc. In about 6–9 months we finished the front end but still no proper functionality working a part from a pretty looking mobile first web app.
This would go on and we would learn about product market fit, we would bring in someone to work on the business side of things, we would change our roadmap several times, we would change code bases and so on. So many things. Months rolled into a year and nothing solid launched. We would see competitors rise around us.
We sucked and we failed at ever even launching properly. It took a very long time for me to accept it. There is hope which drives us but the hope I had was completely false. Like a bad relationship I believed in continuing even though all the signs said no.
I’ve come up with some reasons based on my experience. They don’t mean me or some person in particular, it’s very complex.
1. Commitment
We worked full time jobs on top of trying to do this. Some of us had financial and other responsibilities so couldn’t dedicate the time or was tired from other life’s stuff to give this the dedication it needed or maybe some of us kind of liked the idea of startups but not the work.
Learned — Commitment doesn’t need motivation or desire, commitment is when you do something even if you hate it like maybe training for a marathon. You still do the workouts or you know on race day you will suck. Don’t bother with going into a startup if it’s going to be the last thing you care about. You’re wasting your time and the time of others in your team who could perhaps do better on another project. Youth and energy is really valuable so take responsibility for it.
2. Physical Environment
Startups are hard without a network it’s extremely hard. Without being surrounded by the right environment it’s pretty lonely and everyone thinks you are crazy. There is a reason why Silicon Valley is where tech based startups have higher chances of success — the ecosystem is there. Without mentors, access to experienced people, a support network, like minded people etc it’s an extremely lonely place which can lead to demotivation if you don’t have incremental progress.
Learned — Apply to a startup incubator, more specifically apply to one that will give you the network and mentorship you need. Do the research, see which ones will network and connect you best. Ycombinator
3. Progress
Lack of a network and commitment lead to the other fatal injury — slow progress. You’re hacking away building, changing, building, changing, building, changing, building…….. death. That’s right slow progress is the death of motivation. When motivation dies so does the desire and interest in your startup. You need incremental wins in the myriad of struggles. Progress however small retains desire.
Learned — Give yourself no more than 6 months to build the MVP (which should be very basic) and to find out if the customer actually wants this. If the development exceeds this and two years later you still have nothing then my friend you have wasted a lot of time + energy albeit lessons learned. Leave. End. Dragging it out will only lead you to burn out. I now believe in doing fast experiments to see if something is going to work. Keyword: Experiment.
4. Leadership
Founders that need motivating? Founders that ask for what needs to be done? Founders that don’t want to do certain types of menial tasks? Founders that don’t want to do tasks out of their comfort zone? Any of the above sounding familiar means poor team.
Learned — In a startup every person in the founding team needs to be a leader for any kind of progress. If you go in expecting someone to assign you tasks or motivate you then being a part of a startup isn’t for you and you would do better as an employee.
5. Team
We were meant to fit together and compliment each other. A designer, backend engineer and a business developer — a perfect startup team on paper. What else do you need? Somehow it didn’t work. I suspect it was our personalities and desire of how much we wanted to do this. This can be related back to commitment and physical environment and I now believe personality has a big impact. I’ve known people to go successfully from being an employee to running a business. They organised their time to work on their startup, be an employee, run their family and pay the bills until it took off. That is commitment.
Learned —If the founding team doesn’t have the right personality, goals, commitment and skills then find an alternative team or you will waste your time and energy. Isn’t it a wonder why investors always look at the team?
6. Idea
So initially the idea was a good problem to solve however I only experienced it once and never again. Soon it would be a problem I couldn’t care about solving. I didn’t care about venues… I cared more about taking a startup to success. Maybe if we had produced some goods whilst dragging this dead horse around I might have had more interest.
Learned — Work on ideas that fit your problems and interests so you can be motivated to solve them when times are hard. And times will be hard like you wouldn’t believe.
So folks that’s six reasons. I am sure there are more in this complex map of dead ends and beautiful summit views. When I realised I was burnt out and couldn’t drag this charade out anymore I called up my co-founder and said I was out. He agreed he was too, the other did the sensible thing and left 3 months ago. Maybe I should have been good at leading and pulled the plug earlier as the truth was I knew this was not working more than a year ago but continued on false hope and desire. I really wanted it to work.
My relationship ended in failure. In the end I regret the time and energy spent the most. If i could have learned all of this in six months then I could have probably avoided burnout and mental drainage however there were many lessons learned that will equip me for the next problem I try to solve and the team I put myself in. That includes really understanding myself and how I best fit.
Somewhere in this journey I realised the probability of successfully climbing Everest is higher than a startup. As long as there is no objective danger and the weather is your best friend: Everest = experience + money + gear + fitness.
See you at #Everest2020.
