It's easy to share WINS. But what about FAILS? Here's one of mine.

It's easy to share our WINS. 🎖️

But what about our FAILS? 😭

Most people who've "made it" had some pretty big failures along the way.

Here's one of mine.

In 2014, I had an idea for a "curated" Expedia. Feature only unique hotels, and market to vacationers, specifically.

I chose the name "Vaycae" (vaycae-tion), bought a domain, designed a logo in Microsoft Paint, and joined Expedia's "Travel Agent Affiliate Program." By using their API, I could focus on marketing while their platform handled bookings -- all white-labeled under my brand.

But I quickly learned that actually curating these hotels was too time-consuming. So I morphed the platform into simply an Expedia copy. Visit vaycae(.com) and book a hotel, flight, or rental car anywhere. Expedia shared a tiny percent of every sale with me.

The platform looked great (screenshot below) and worked like a charm!

Except that I never did make a sale. I spent ~$5K on this project. It flopped within a year.

I gave up the domain in 2017.

Looking back, I had NO idea what I was doing. But I learned a TON about APIs and early no-code tools -- skills I use today.

Anyways, what's one of your fails? Don't be shy, or I'll have to start tagging friends whose failures I know ALL about. 😁