Failure is not as scary as you think it will be

There is one defining moment in your life when you ask yourself a question: “What if I fail?”. On the one hand the concept of killing your project might seem irrational, but on the other hand the failure can drive you to a significant success. In our case, we’ve failed fast many times. So that’s why we’ll share our failures with you and the lessons we’ve learned.

When we started basically leading a startup a lot of thoughts crossed our mind. Imagine working on something that from the beginning brings you problems and makes you thinking if it is not the most efficient way. You may not get the results you’ve expected but remember that the key to success is in learning which doesn’t mean doing only right things but also making mistakes.

Yes, we do make mistakes

So going to more specifics, let’s begin from our first failure. At first, we created the new code snippets. We built our own building blocks which could have been reused on your website. The thing is that the code must be modified to suit the application and we definitely failed it.

Firstly, we didn’t talk to users. It’s a huge mistake when you’re doing something for specific group, you should research their all needs and then adapt perfectly your idea to their expectations. After we had launched our snippet we found out that it’s not universal enough. More simply put, our snippet didn’t go along with every web developer. It didn’t fit with fonts, colors, esthetic and structural values.

But through this failure we learned an important lesson, which is:

Talk to the users, get to know what they need and keep asking them about their ideas.

The bigger question is why didn’t we find Product/ Market fit once again?

The next idea we came up with and also ended up like a completely failure was a Template converter. Before you make a template, make sure that your idea meets the needs of your potential customers. Unfortunately once more time, we made a new tool and we didn’t have Product/ Market fit. Basically, our customers weren’t getting value out of the product and usage wasn’t growing at all. What we’ve learned is the short process that startups should do at the beginning of every project: start with a hypothesis, talk to the users, define and test your value hypothesis, talk to the users again, prove it, build it.

The Template converter was unclear and too complex for the audience. For technical users it was too primitive and not professional, but for non-technical users just too complicated. That code was overengineered. Well, yeah, there’s some piece built into the system that doesn’t really need to be there, and the person reading the code can’t figure out why it’s there, or even how the whole system works. But, despite setbacks, we kept going by changing direction and working smarter until next defeat.

Come onnnn!!!

The reason why we failed the third time is because we used to innovate things in order to achieve our ambitions, but not exactly to respond to the needs of our customers. As you may know, the web hosting market is huge and pretty much difficult, but it didn’t stop us from checking it out. So, we set up a new tool, which was basically a place to quickly host your websites by using Google Drive as a great alternative with one click.

The first shot was the creation of the simplest and fastest form of the product. It contained not many options and configurations. Unfortunately, it’s common practice to build a website with a bunch of primal and not complicated options. As a consequence, we encountered an obstacle- the people didn’t know how to use hosting and what files must to be deployed. In short: we screwed up the first stages of design working and the product was fundamentally unacceptable.

Some common things in all cases:

1. There was no Product/Market fit. What I call finding Product/Market fit is generally identifying a compelling value hypothesis.
2. We didn’t talk to our users properly in order to research their needs and expectations.
3. After figuring a failure out, every product was completely removed from all possibly channels and communication.
4. Every single tool was existing around 6 weeks so we can definitely say that all of them failed really fast.

It’s all about failing fast

Let’s imagine that you’re doing something wrong for a long time without any feedback. Consider how many projects you began and then gave up, because you became frustrated when someone told you that the whole project sucks.

Failure can take many forms. It could be an unsuitable business model, valueless relationships, misguided career choices or unmanaged decisions. If something is failing, try something else. Learn what is not working and immediately implement new solutions.

So here are the key positives we’ve observed over one year of dealing with many cases

1. Think brave and positive. If you set up in advance that you’ll fall many times and you spread everything doom and gloom, you will afraid of taking risk. Consequently, you will not push your team to experiment. You can build and create a great environment in your company where people are not afraid of brainstorming and sharing their innovative ideas.
2. Learn to fail. Don’t feel guilty if something goes wrong. People can dramatically limit their creativeness by only being too careful or cooperating with not supporting coworkers. Remember that a good company should have a tolerance for failure. Eventually everyone makes mistakes :)
3. Achieve what you want. A good leader can help you get clearer about your goals and about what you’re capable of doing in order to achieve them. But it’s your life so take the matters into your own hands. Firstly, build your dreams. What are you passionate about? When you understand it ultimately you become completely unstoppable.
4. Focus on developing your skills. It can easily allow you to communicate your message clarity and ease to a far larger audience. Many skills are not just for scientists but mostly for highly motivated people who want to challenge themselves and be given more opportunities.

Maybe when you think about failing fast you fear an imperfect outcome. It’s OK!!! Throughout our very many failures, we came away with some important lessons, lessons that hopefully turn out to be an inspiration for you :)

Drop us an email at team@sheetsu.com. We are happy to talk with you.