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11 Comments

How many startups/products you made before getting a successful product?

Hey IH,
This question came to my mind recently. Thought that i should ask it here :).

#ask-ih

on July 5, 2019
  1. 4

    I've tried probably 10+, 1 or 2 got mild success, 6-7 I left in-between. 1- Currently working on.
    Although it wasn't really a successful happy ride, I have learnt a lot, frontend, backend, serverless, android app, aws, desktop app, pretty much touched everything especially on technology, it was worth it all. I'm very hopeful about the current one I work upon, will share the mvp with fellow indies soon.

    1. 2

      Thanks for sharing.

    2. 1

      I agree... I guess 10 is the magic number lol :)

    3. 1

      Do you have a sum total of the amount of money you've spent on all? I mean hard cash, even though your time is valuable.

      1. 1

        $0 (if I'm not counting the domain name and AWS / hosting + SaaS charges etc. which would probably be ~$400). I tend to do everything myself being an engineer, although I probably should try to delegate more. I wonder if you've an advice for me.

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      This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

      1. 2

        Hi Jas, I'd say in the last 2.5 years or so I've gotten more intense, and that covers ~80% of it. 2 of these were relatively little projects, and came before that.

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          This comment was deleted 3 years ago.

  2. 1

    Something like 4-5 before the successful one. It's hard to say exactly because some products were just a pivot from the previous one (and when can you say that a pivot is a completely new product?) ;)

  3. 1

    What do you consider "success"? I feel like that is all relative.

    1. 1

      For me, success for a product would be getting people to use it regularly or made some profit out of it.

      1. 1

        Let's see then:

        2 successes out of 4 where code was written. (UberNote and Referral Rock)

        Of the 2 failures

        • One was a prototype that never got initial customers for social buying campaigns
        • One was a prototype for a visual shopping app for tablets and phones

        There are probably at least 2-3 other ideas that I put other work into... like to get a grant and may have at least made some screenshots.

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