The 3 most important things I learned from my failed startup

@yakattack thanks for sharing such an amazing post I really like your Outsourcing point!

keep up your good work.

There are some great learnings in this post, and I'm sure closing the business wasn't an easy decision for the author.

I've made even more mistakes with my own business and have written about it here.

I think at the end of the day for early stage founders we should de-risk a business as much as possible by:

1. talking to customers to understand them and the problem they face
2. communicate this understanding of the problem and how our solution addresses it via marketing (including a good landing page that "speaks") in the words of the customer
3. executing on the correct product or service based on our understanding of the problem

Any other points I'm missing?

Thanks for the insights Simon. I'm still learning and I've failed more than I'd like to admit.

This is very helpful. Thanks for sharing, Simon.

Author of the post here.

Nice to see this posted here. Thanks! Happy to answer any questions you have :D

Basically this blogpost is not done yet (as you figured only 2 mistakes are in there), and will furhter grow over time (when I again can sit down and continue writing)

Hiring section on Indie Hackers

Gonna keep that in mind 💯

I think outsourcing is so underrated. Founders think they need to either be in control of everything or that they can't afford to get someone else to do it. Anything I know that I'm not good at OR anything that I know someone else could do quicker than me at the same or better quality standards, I outsource. This is being a smart founder in my eyes.

Very interesting article. I know you say the main problem was that you'd created a feature not a product, but arguably, I'd say that was just part of the problem. It seems that your target market was just so small. This is a lesson in not creating something so niche that you'd never be able to make enough money from it based on how many people would actually buy it. It's something that should be clear from the get-go unless it's a completely new product/feature.

Anyway, sorry to hear things didn't work out for you. Sounds like you put a lot of time and effort into it, and it's never nice when we have to call quits on something we're passionate about. Hope your next idea does better.