My name is Daniel, and I'm a failed entrepreneur.
In June of 2016 I started HireLoop.io, a collaborative hiring platform for small teams, as a side project. I've decided to shut it down after 23 months, ~10k lines of code, $17.00 in revenue, and nearly $28k of personal investment. Whoa, did I make some mistakes.
All too often we hear about massive successes, but rarely do we hear about massive failures. I heard once that being successful at anything just means knowing what mistakes to avoid.
I'm sharing what I've learned so maybe you can avoid making the same mistakes I made. I'll cover each one in more detail below.
Things I regret
- Overdeveloped -- too pretty, too many features before there were paying customers 🚩
- I was not a subject matter expert in the product domain, nor did I have the time to become one 🚩
- I did not understand the challenges of the market I was targeting 🚩
Things I did too soon
- Focused too much on code quality and test coverage
- Advertised too soon -- AdWords, podcasts, sponsored newsletters
Things I'm glad I did
- Tackled challenging coding problems which I was able to abstract for future use
- Stayed on top of my bookkeeping from the get-go
- Paid attention to what was painful while building/marketing the product
Things I regret
Overdeveloped -- too pretty, too many features before there were paying customers
Definitely a red flag we all read about. I spent too much time making things look pretty. I spent too much time building features I thought customers would want. I'd look at the daunting (for me) task of marketing or selling, and convince myself that building feature X would be more valuable. It was easy to get sucked into this well-known trap even though I thought I knew better.
Lesson learned: Validate early and then add polish later. Sell early, then develop additional features.
I was not a subject matter expert in the product domain, nor did I have the time to become one
I was inspired to build HireLoop because of the challenges I had encountered hiring employees for smaller businesses. I had built a process that worked well for me, but I wasn't really an expert in hiring or helping people hire. I couldn't talk shop with people who hired employees for a living (HR, recruiters). Since this was a side project, I didn't have the time to become an expert.
Lesson learned: Stick to what you know or partner with someone who knows the product domain.
I did not understand the challenges of the market I was targeting
I built HireLoop for small teams who hired infrequently. It's painfully obvious now that these customers were a) nearly impossible to get in front of before they had started hiring and b) would not return for a long time, if ever. This makes for high customer acquisition costs and high churn.
Lesson learned: Have a precise idea of who your customer is and what their lifetime value will be to your product before you enter that market. Ideally, have your first few customers targeted before you even start your MVP.
Things I did too soon
Focused too much on code quality and test coverage too soon
I spend my days in code. I've taken over projects with really poor code quality and test coverage, which makes maintenance iteration a total pain. I swore to myself I would not do the same. The problem is, it doesn't matter much in the very beginning. I wish I hadn't taken my code so seriously until I had validated my product more.
Lesson learned: Validate the product and market first. Afterward, go back and convert your MVP to a v1 product which can be maintained.
Advertised too soon -- AdWords, podcasts, sponsored newsletters -- all with poor results
This is where most of my expenses came from. I naively thought selling was just as simple as getting my product's name out in front of potential customers; as a result, I dumped money into advertising. It turns out, if your product isn't validated or you don't have your product's story polished, you're going to be wasting money.
Lesson learned: Advertising is like gasoline added to a fire. Use your advertising to accelerate and grow your existing flame into something bigger.
Things I'm glad I did
Tackled challenging coding problems which I was able to abstract for future use
Not much more to say here: HireLoop tackled a few problems which I have been able to abstract and apply to other products.
Stayed on top of my bookkeeping from the get-go
After spending my first dollar, I started a Xero account to keep track of my expenses. This ended up making tax filing super easy and stress-free. What tool you use doesn't matter. Take the time to reconcile the money flowing through your business.
Paid attention to what was painful while building/marketing the product
I took notes along the way about what was too hard or time-consuming that I thought there might be a solution for. One of these items, in particular, beautiful PDF reporting, was the motivation for one of my next side projects -- BreezyPDF.