My first startup cost me the price of an LV bag
I always thought the hardest part of a startup was the money. Turns out the real cost is time, focus, and trying to fix the things you broke last night. The money part feels cheap compared to that.
I made a small tool called Reezu. It lets you send large videos and stream them at once. If you try it and something feels odd, tell me. I am still paying the time bill.
Shameless Plug :) https://reezu.com
Thanks for sharing this — real startup costs aren’t just financial, they’re emotional and opportunity costs too, and recognizing that early is a big part of growing as a builder. What often makes that kind of investment feel worthwhile isn’t just the money spent, but the clarity of what you learned — about user needs, positioning, or your own decision-making patterns.
One pattern I’ve noticed from founders who recover and iterate is that they turn those early “expensive experiments” into hypothesis checkpoints — before spending big again they define clear success signals they expect to see (traction, conversion, retention, willing-to-pay interest). That makes the next round of spending feel much less like a blind bet.
Curious — looking back, was there one assumption you made early on that you now realize you would test differently before spending on it again? That kind of insight is gold for others trying to avoid the same trap.