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How to avoid 3 mistakes that cost me $20K failing my first startup

How I built something nobody wanted

Any indie hacker has experienced failure in creating and closing startups that end up wasting their time and money. Add to this the subsequent feelings of frustration and anxiety that come with failing.

Startups fail because they have no paying users or customers. You can avoid or reduce the chance of failure by following the principle YC has summarized as "build something people want". If people want something badly enough, they will pay for it, and your startup will have a bigger chance of succeeding.

The cornerstone of this principle relies on founders starting with the problem, not the solution. But, as a founder, I didn't follow that principle; I failed at my most recent startup. I had no real idea of the problem I aimed to solve, so I built something that nobody wanted.

Sometimes, you may think that you're solving a problem, but you're not. It all boils down to the decisions you make and to how you execute your ideas, especially from the earliest stages.

As a founder, the decisions you make aggregate to each other and compound. To obtain good results, you want to make the right decisions early on so that their results compound on success.

On the contrary, failing to make these right calls will most probably hinder the success of your startup. Some early screw-ups can put you at a no-return point towards failure. I made many poor decisions and mistakes at the idea validation stage. I could've managed them better, but I failed to recognize them. With time, they grew into more complex problems.

Although it may sound counterintuitive, even the idea validation stage relies heavily on how you execute. That's because the "start from the problem, not the solution" process may not be as straightforward as it sounds for first-time founders.

Just now, 15 months and more than $20K spent later, I'm able to see the flaw in my execution. Hopefully, to prevent first-time founders from making my mistakes, I will zoom in on my experience with my latest startup. You will see how the mistakes I made combine as smoothly as when acrylic paints are mixed.

3 mistakes that I made

1) I did not structure the problem

I thought I'd started from a problem. I had my hunch, but I didn't put in the work to structure the problem cohesively and clearly. Tbh, but mostly unconsciously, I didn't want to get evidence that I was wrong.

Therefore, I didn't have a solid path that could guide my efforts. For example, it would have been helpful for me to answer these four questions: a) what is the problem?; b) whom does it affect?; c) how many of them?; d) to what degree?. But I never sat down to think deeply and honestly about those questions.

By answering those questions I could have structured the problem, at least at a hypothesis level. Defining the problem means putting it into words that can express (to yourself and others) what the heck you are trying to solve.

Being able to answer those questions requires you to put on the hat of humbleness and curiosity. It means assuming from the start that your hunch might be wrong but that you are willing to put in the work to get to the truth. If you are intellectually honest, you need that humbleness and curiosity to get to the truth.

2) I started with the solution

From my hunch of a problem, I devised a perfect solution. My startup consisted of a Dribbble or Behance-like platform for content writers. I wanted to give writers a space to display their portfolios and gain visibility; this would eventually help them get more gigs. But it was a solution that was perfect to no one but me.

The idea I had developed came from a supposed issue or challenge I felt from working in content marketing. I had two years of experience working in roles related to content marketing, either as a full-time writer or as an inbound specialist. I felt that producing content was a pain and that finding great content writers was a challenge.

I thought I had a competitive edge from that experience. I used it to convince myself that I knew what I was doing. But I had never worked as a freelance content writer, I had never hired one, and I had never managed one.

Therefore, I didn't know the "broken" part of working as or hiring a freelance writer. In the end, any successful startup is just making its users ease a process and get a job done (check out 16:47 of this video). But I didn't know what needed to be fixed.

It was easy for me to get confused by that situation. But working in an industry doesn't automatically grant you an understanding of the problem. You have to experience that problem yourself to get there. Or at least know someone who is experiencing it. For me, everything was only in my mind.

I just thought "this could work better" without knowing if "this" was a problem for anyone. It led me to incorrectly assume there was a need for a better way to connect businesses that wanted to create content with writers that could deliver it. That was the first mental trigger that made me jump towards thinking of a solution.

Thinking of a "solution" doesn't necessarily mean that you have a concrete product in mind. In my case, by assuming that the only way for businesses to get content was by connecting them with writers, I limited myself to finding a solution only within this domain. That is also an error.

Then, thinking about the solution made me think about a product to build. "I could build this platform on my own in a month." That was my second and definitive mental trigger to develop my solution. As a naive and first-time founder, I couldn't resist these two mental triggers.

3) I did not put my users in the center

"Talk to your users" is another common and helpful piece of advice when building a startup. It's a necessary step that, unfortunately, I skipped. But what did I get wrong here?

I did talk to potential users when I came up with my idea. I talked to 2-3 freelance writers that I knew and might benefit from my solution. I arranged one-hour interviews with them.

But everything I asked them made aimed to confirm that my idea was necessary to them. I even vaguely remember a writer saying that she didn't see any benefit in my solution; I didn't consider it. That's confirmation bias.

Instead, I should've gotten deeper into the real problems that they had. Specifically, I should've validated the pain I supposedly wanted to solve. I never asked myself: Is this problem real? By walking that path I might have been (and most probably) stumbled into a real issue that needed to be solved.

Still, I built my platform. It took me a month of work to develop it using Bubble.io. I love that tool. But what is great about it also makes it dangerous for no-technical founders. The fact that you can quickly build a great prototype or an MVP can give you harmful self-confidence. If you don't know what problem you are tackling, you might get caught up in a development frenzy.

When I finished developing it, I had no real users waiting for it to use it. Zero. Not even myself. I think that's the worst freaking mistake that I made. It's the cherry of the previous mistakes that I made early on.

I’m not at all saying that you shouldn’t build an MVP. My point is that when you build one, make sure that, at the very least, you'll use it and benefit from it. Even better if at least 2 or 3 people can also use it and give you feedback. What’s important is that you have to be honest about it with yourself by asking: Is this going to make my or someone else’s life better?.

What I should’ve done instead

Any experienced founder knows these mistakes intertwine subtly. So much so that it is hard to tell which one is the seed for the other one.

These mistakes led me to develop and act within a vicious cycle. Since I didn't understand the problem clearly, my solution didn't have any relation to reality. And because my solution wasn't related to reality and I wasn't talking with any users, every day that I worked on it got me farther from solving a real problem.

The way I see it now, I never stepped from an idea validation stage to a solution validation stage. Therefore, my idea never became an MVP that could help its users. As I said, I built something functional for no one.

The truth is that, inside me, I was delaying the moment of confronting reality, of getting someone to tell me that what I built was "nice" but that they didn't see any use for it, of starting a conversation with users and getting feedback from them. The funny and sad part of this process is that a small part of me felt I was doing things wrong.

My advice for first-time founders when starting a new project is to take the time to write your assumptions in simple sentences, something easy to communicate. Then, keep those assumptions as questions; don't jump lightly to confirm them. Finally, earn your users, don't just look for them vaguely. They will be the ones who will confirm or deny your assumption. Let any information emerge from them. And, most importantly, be humble and honest with them and yourself.

  1. 3

    Learning to turn off your engineer brain which sometimes is more excited about building a new product instead of solving an actual problem that people have is one of the biggest downfalls I see in hackers.

    I think the part that hits home the most for me is listing out your assumptions. Your assumptions are either right or wrong. Spending hard-earned energy to build something for an invalidated assumption is a bad use of time.

    Something else that's important is also not just validating the idea but also the actual vehicle for the solution. As an engineer, the pull to get coding is so insanely strong that I now force myself to not code until I've spoken to 10 people about the idea. I'm building Allyance (https://www.allyance.co) now and I didn't start coding until I had 50 signups and it's going much better than my previous projects.

    1. 1

      Hi @CinematicEngineer, thank you for your comment.

      I couldn't agree more with everything that you just mentioned. In fact, for my next project, I'm taking a similar stand to the one you are taking.

      Are you working in Allyance on your own or with someone else? Could you share any updates on your experience with that project?

      Cheers,

      1. 1

        Thanks for the response! And it's pretty much just all me right now. I did the designing, coding, copy..etc. It's been fun forcing myself to do so much non-coding stuff. The heavy focus on talking to users and coding less have been critical. Getting close to 100 signups and I'm in communities where I'm actually talking to users of the product. I'm also spending more time thinking strategically about market positioning and the underlying economics of it all. I'll be making a post soon on some of the learnings that came from it!

        1. 1

          Have you looked for a co-founder @CinematicEngineer?

  2. 3

    " I wanted to give writers a space to display their portfolios and gain visibility; this would eventually help them get more gigs."

    Out of curiosity, if you were able to land partnerships with media outlets that would use your platform to scout for content creators, then went to content creators and told them "hey our platform has the eyes of these major media outlets, post your work here and you might get a contract for more work"...I imagine that would be a lot more of a compelling solution. Resembles the "cold start" problem Andrew Chen of A16Z writes about.

    Perhaps the angle was simply wrong...people won't spend effort posting portfolios of their work unless they know it has a real chance of paying off. ByteDance had to spend hundreds of millions to jump start its platform...

    1. 1

      Hi Ghidra, thank you for your comment

      There are many compelling alternatives; the one that you mention could be one of those. "Perhaps the angle was simply wrong...people won't spend effort posting portfolios of their work unless they know it has a real chance of paying off." Based on my experience, I agree with that.

      The idea that you mention could work, but I don't have the data or feedback to confirm this.

      How did you come up with that idea? Do you have experience with content marketing or the media industry?

      Cheers,

  3. 1

    Thanks for sharing, I could really relate to that, at least partly.

    1. 1

      Thanks for your comment @mathiasn! What are you working on now?

      1. 1

        Currently working on https://www.accessowl.io and speaking to lots of customers to understand them as good as possible ;-)

  4. 1

    Insightful and useful advice! Very relatable

  5. 1

    Which product were you talking about? It's hard to apply or even think through if you don't give at least a context.

    Startups fail because they have no paying users or customers.

    Well, there are many other reasons for startups to fail because of. From my own experience, and from what I saw the first and main reason is that founders don't have the guts, willingness, stubbornness, and persistence to keep looking for users, market their product, work on it (and it's not about the development).

    1. 2

      Hi @SeaCat, thank you for your comment.

      The product I'm talking about is this:

      My startup consisted of a Dribbble or Behance-like platform for content writers. I wanted to give writers a space to display their portfolios and gain visibility; this would eventually help them get more gigs. But it was a solution that was perfect to no one but me.

      I can agree with the reasons that you mention for why startups fail. "Guts, willingness, and persistence" will be necessary to make your startup succeed. But, in the end, maybe you don't need to be super stubborn if you develop a killer product where you have a well-understood problem; at least particularly in the idea to product-market fit stages.

      What's your experience with failing and succeeding with startups? I'd very much like to know.

      Best,

      1. 1

        maybe you don't need to be super stubborn

        Well, I think you MUST be super stubborn. Any killer product already exists and you will have to compete with them. So, any stubbornness can help.

        I failed many times but just because I gave up. My motivation ended exactly at the moment when I had to show my project to the world and start marketing.

        For me, to be "super stubborn" is the only key, especially taking into account how many projects and startups are around in any area.

        If you want to know more about my current project, please follow me on Twitter (see my profile).

        Cheers and good luck!

        1. 1

          I'll take your point @SeaCat, I can relate to part of that as well. Thanks for sharing your experience.

          It seems that your Twitter link does not work because I led to an existing account. Maybe try to update it so I can follow you.

          Good luck to you too!

          1. 1

            Thanks for letting me know! I recently changed my user name (just one letter) but forgot to update it here. Now it should work.

  6. 1

    This happened to me also. The problem was that I thought I knew what my potential users wanted and needed, but I was wrong. I spent over a year and more than $50k building features that were not needed.

    On my last SaaS, katlinks.io, I did it differently. I started with a simple MVP that took me 5 weeks to build, then got users on it so I could get feedback. A month or so later I had my first paying user.

    I think user feedback should be the main concern from the start.

    1. 2

      Hi @RobertoDigital,

      "I think user feedback should be the main concern from the start.". Indeed, my good sir.

      I'm glad that you were able to learn from your experience and apply those learnings to future endeavors. So much better if you tell me that you have paying users.

      Were you working on your own or with someone else in this projects that you mentioned?

      1. 2

        We don't have a free plan, so yes, every user is paying. We have over 40 paying users now.

        I'm a solo founder, but I do have a full-time developer working with me.

        1. 2

          have you looked for a co-founder @RobertoDigital?

          1. 1

            No, not sure I need one at this point 🤔

  7. 1

    Nice story!
    As a bootstrapper, it's important to build a startup that solves a real problem. Solving a problem gives real audience.

    1. 1

      Hi @mazaayachannel,

      I'm very glad that you like my story and I definitely agree with what you mention about getting a real audience.

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