My App Failed - My Brutal 6 Months Building a Startup

Last year I became the lead software engineer at a tech startup with 2 co-founders.

And today I am here to tell you about how that startup failed miserably so that you can learn from my mistakes and not waste 6 months working 70 hours a week on a startup with a grand total of $0 to show for it.

CHAPTERS:
0:00 Intro
1:29 The idea
2:35 The Mistakes
6:17 Why We Quit
7:26 What I Would Do Differently

Tags: Startup Failure, Building a Startup, Failed Startup Story, Entrepreneur Struggles, App Development Journey, Lessons from Failure, Brutal Startup Experience, Startup Challenges, 6 Months Building a Startup

[zdrux]

This video is 100x more valuable than another "I made this great app and everything worked great, and now I'm a millionaire" type of video.

[adityajain]

Nothing to Laugh brother, I know you will reach your Goal. Thanks for sharing your story.

[mister_meat]

A basic, but important data collection lesson: you must eliminate bias when collecting data to make better informed decisions. Bias can ruin the data and misguide you in your data driven decisions.

[facethefear]

Yo congrats on actually starting a startup most devs never do even tough u didn't get a million dollar app u actually started a startup a success in my book.

[jcy]

Maybe the 3 active users are actively trying to uninstall the app but it's too complicated to uninstall.

[rb]

Thanks for that honest insight. This helps far more than a video of a successful startup, because far more startups fail and you can learn more from them as from some special case where it finally worked.

[alastairtheduke]

I would add that you should talk to potential users BEFORE you build

[korbendallasmultipass]

We are on the way since two years now with our side hustle to build something meaningful. It is a lot of work with zero revenues. But a lot of fun and I learned a ton of stuff which I can use for other projects. So not time wasted. You tried it. That is the most important point here.

[factorfitness]

Probably the feedback you needed to hear was, "that's cool and I'd use it, but I'd never pay for it." But most people aren't going to tell you that unless you ask multiple times.

[perfectionbox]

Knowing history is good too. The app you built is actually a very old idea and solutions had been tried before. In the 80s and 90s e.g. OS designers talked about "project workspaces" that would know which apps and files were part of a project. The problem was that it was almost always more trouble than it was worth: people had to manually add documents to the project because the system couldn't reliably figure out on its own what to add/remove. Also, multiple desktops arrived and solved 95% of the problem. And what's interesting is that despite knowing about them, most people who could benefit from them still don't use them. So my advice if I may: talk to old people. 🙂

[vishalontheline]

I just spent half a year building my own app. Of course, it isn't getting many users. The upside is that I use it every day and it is very useful for me and it feels amazing to use something that you created and not get tired of it.

[humandude]

5:50 also there are already tools built in most OS's to fix that - in windows you have virtual desktops, in mac you have work spaces. This exactly solves the problem you described.

[Sdk-pv]

My startup failed too!! 97 percent of startups FAIL, and it has ruined me financially and I wish I would’ve never gone down this road. It was one of the best and worst things I’ve ever experienced in my life. This is such good 11:18 advice

[carlosortiz]

being able to identify the problems is what will increase your possibilities of success in maybe even more important projects. We learn more from a failure than success

[worldcomingtoanend]

Problem is whenever I have tried to be honest with friends and tell them the truth I get rebuffed and hated for it. So its wise to beg for an honest feedback from friends and assure them that u will even prefer a negative feedback than a positive feedback. That way I have seen them relax and open up.

[mandisaw]

Most successful businesses are started by people in their 40s-50s because they already have the necessary domain experience to understand the pain-points. Making an idea "blind" without understanding the target domain is bound to fail, or at least struggle.

[strgo]

If you can code, then talk to businesses to truly understand their pain points and before you start coding, secure some likely customers willing to commit to use the product even before you start coding. If they do commit, you’re on the right track

[TAOTAO]

Brave to share this exp. Many thanks. Wishing you success on the next one!

[atepatty]

This is why experience is important. For people who does not have enough experience on dealing with business / users, they are not able to sort down pain points from a "nice to have" versus "a must have". A painful experience but still a good learning point.

[janisjansons]

Even bad experience is an experience. Often such is even better than those with, say, mediocre success.