Your last fail?
Hello fellow hackers. This weekend, I would like to discuss fails. I am not talking abstract fails, but very real ones. What is something you failed, ruined, destroyed recently? Maybe you missed a deal, set an A/B test wrong, or made a bad launch on PH?
I will start. It's not a big fail, but still. I am running a Longcaller, a site where I write about cryptocurrencies. The rule that I try to follow is "1 week — 1 article". Well, two weeks ago, I failed this rule. I was busy with a lot of other stuff, and didn't have time to post new article. Again, it's not the biggest mistake in the world, but I believe that consistency is important in business, and that day I broke a consistent series of articles.
What did I learn? Well, you should prepare in advance. This week I worked hard on creating a reserve of articles for the next month. If I will be short on time again, I will have several articles to post before I ran out. Then, I can build my reserve again.
So, what's your last fail?
http://www.longjohnlogo.com/
I failed at promoting this business and in being proud of the brand.
After being inspired by the 'Ship your Enemies Glitter ' website selling for $90,000 I created this website.
This was one of my attempts at trying to create "funny" or polarizing copywriting in an attempt to go viral.
I did get one sale from sharing in the /r/entrepreneur subreddit, and they did find it polarizing. The polarizing tone of the website made me a little embarrassed to attach my name to it.
I missed the mark in the tone of the website and selling the service.
I also didn't shamelessly promote it in an attempt to create controversy — I tend to avoid controversy. Not a good match for my personality I guess.
Currently an acquaintance has expressed trading services in exchange for taking over the site. Not sure if that will go through.
I could rewrite the website but I think I would rather spend my time working on something new.
I would be more worried about the actual design of the website.
Here are few things:
-not enough graphics provided - there is like 10 times as much text as graphics - not good for logo design service!
-your site could use better design - text centre mixed with left align, cold colours, hard to read - this is good site for geeks, not for wide public.
-"We design clean, simple, minimalist typeface only logo designs on a budget!" - this is a NO-NO. Too much packed in a sentence. This cannot be your sales pitch.
-"Order My Logo Design" - whois? Am I ordering your, or mine?
-Does the website at least in one place explains why I should pick you over, let's say, Fiverr?
-The colours...
For a random visitor from the general public (since you state this logos are for the general public), this website is more like a huge red flag than a landing page. I hope you don't mind me saying all this because I think you have a nice product with the possibility to grow, but the presentation is just not there at all.
Thanks, I don't mind the criticism.
Tried to spam reddit. It was a really bad idea.
Was said many times before, but if you want to promote on reddit:
you must be active in the sub/community.
or at least provide something really valuable to the community
I work on a cross-platform VR web browser for Android and iOS (https://www.viewport.org/) and have a fresh fail. My last Android release made webpage rendering much faster in the 3D browser (about as fast as rendering in the native 2D Android browser). After shipping this, though, I spent about a month trying to achieve the same performance on iOS without success. Through a mountain of dirty hacks, I was able to trick iOS's WebKit layer into rendering directly to my graphics texture, but there were too many issues that made it unreliable, and I ultimately gave up and scrapped all that work. So, for the foreseeable future, the Android version of my app is going to outperform the iOS version.
A bug in my code and server setup (and coincidence of circumstances) caused the same email to be sent ~11k times. To 13 customer email addresses. On friday evening.
Failed (twice!) to grow Muun (already closed down) past year. At first cowork management suite, then pivoted into community building tools.
First fail, not properly done market research. Second fail: lost interest and two (current ones and promising) other projects were in the way. This is next to a profitable project—so time has to be spent wisely.
As usual: don't start with building your project. Research, interview, ask questions first.
Hey @eelcoj, I am Rich, maker of failory.com! I am quite interested in knowing a bit more about the failure of Muun. Is there any way I can reach you?
I set up an event series for a company, but forgot one of their dates. They cross checked everything and we went live and a day before that date the owner realised there was no date there and he had no customers. Potentially missed out on thousands in revenue.
Was pretty shit, but have since automated the date-setup step
That I didn't monetize sooner.
Let me explain - early this year I made a simple Instagram scheduling tool postedo.com and had decently successful PH launch. About a thousand people signed up in the first few days for a free account. It was just a quick MVP at the time so I didn't implement any payment processing. My plan was to eventually introduce a few plans that would give users more limits and options, right after I take care of some other technical stuff. Well, after 3 months or so I finally added those plans and payment processing. But I gotta tell you, I should've done it ASAP. Back than, every week I got a few emails from users saying that they want to pay for the app, so I saied them just wait a little, guess what? It took me too damm long and they've never upgraded.
I see. I checked postedo and I must say that I love your landing page :)
Thanks, Timur!
Sometimes I like thinking in terms of 'Not Yet' instead of fail or success.
I haven't done much on my side project tolothere.com I am really behind schedule. I also feel like I have abandoned it. But I won't consider it as fail, but a not yet.
My most recent fail was December of last year. I finally killed a SaaS product we've been working on for 3 years.
It was a wedding planning app for wedding planning professionals.
Mistakes we made:
Didn't ask wedding planners what they wanted. We simply made assumptions and ran with it.
Tied to number one. We didn't release core functionalities quickly enough. We spent 3 years incrementally adding features before we launched.
Couldn't find enough wedding planners willing to try out the platform.
Worked on it for 3 years!
It was a very painful lesson. But we definitely learned a lot from our very first foray into the world of SaaS.
Hey @rapidmon33, I am Rich, maker of failory.com, a website where I weekly interview failed startups. I am really interested in knowing a bit more about the SaaS. Is there any way to reach you?
Absolutely.
justin@lazyjar.com
Hey Justin, I have just sent you an email. Have you received it?
I did. I'll respond as soon as I get the chance.
Ouch. 3 years is a long time. Next time make sure to go on a sales Safari before building!
You're telling me. Looking back on it, I don't know how I managed to justify going 3 years without a single drop of feedback. I just cringe thinking about it.
I spent about 2 months building a business plan and idea for insurance agents just to have everything get changed on my first 3 meetings.
If I didn't have resources like IH and family who already walked through building a business who knows how long I would have continued.
Keep going man! I can't wait for this part of the interview when you do make something awesome.
That's the journey though brother! I've had two epic fails for the same reason of building a product before building an understanding of what customers wanted. I think I would have had a third if I hadn't gone to MicroConf and had my eyes opened!