SayHey — My Startup Attempt

Ready? I tried to launch a startup recently called SayHey. The goal was to simplify college. It was a mobile startup designed to make it easier for college students to network with others actually nearby and help them discover what’s happening around their campus like events, activities and deals.

Simply put it was Hashable + Yobongo + Craigslist in one simple product for college students. The startup unfortunately was never launched. Now why did it/I fail? Here are some of the reasons.

- I wasted a lot of time. I wasted a lot of time conceptualizing/designing the idea, wasted a lot of time finding a team and wasted a lot of time just waiting to see what the competitors were doing and not moving forward with the plan.

- I am not programmer — so from the beginning I was in a vulnerable spot. But looking back that wasn’t my greatest weakness. My greatest weakness was not knowing people who can code. So looking for one took a lot of time. And not having a great developer was the main reason why SayHey failed.

- Me and my initial team were not in the same location — in fact we were in NY, LA and Austin — hardly ideal. Communicating back and forth in that early stage was extremely important. Looking back what we had worked on for the first 2–3 months could have been done in a week or two if we were in the same city.

- After the initial team not working out I outsourced the development. Biggest mistake and I highly discourage it. I unfortunately did so because I failed to find someone great local. But working with people I didn’t know and ultimately who ended up being incapable was an extremely horrible experience.

At the end all I can say again is that it was a great learning experience.

Originally published at razeeb.com on Nov 11th, 2011.