GoonHow I Wasted 6 Months of My Life Building a Failed Startup
Introduction
Last year, I became the lead software engineer at a tech startup with two co-founders. We spent six months building the startup, ending around December last year. Today, I'm here to share the story of how the startup failed miserably, so you can learn from my mistakes and avoid making the same errors.
This is the start of the story
The Idea
The idea started when an old high school friend of mine invited me for coffee in Finland, where he told me about his idea for a productivity app that would solve the problem of having multiple tabs open on our computers. This would lead to our computers getting cluttered, making it difficult to work on multiple things at the same time.
The Mistakes
We thought it was a good idea, but in hindsight, it was a technically complex app to build, and it took us too long to even get to the point where we could give it to people and determine if it was a good idea. We simply wasted too much time.
Why We Quit
Eventually, we realized that the app wasn't a good idea and that people didn't want this product. We quit and moved on.
What I Would Do Differently
Now, I would do things differently. First, I would only focus on building something related to a problem that I personally understand and have experience with. This would give me an unfair advantage in solving that problem. Second, I would build something that can be launched in 1 month, so I can quickly test and validate the idea. Finally, I would only look at spaces that I have experience in and build something related to that.
The key to building a successful startup
The Process of Building a Startup
If you're building a startup, especially if you don't have a lot of resources, you want to ship fast. This is what people say: "Ship fast, see what doesn't work, and kill it and move forward." Usually, when you're building a business, the first 10 ideas are not going to work, but then there's going to be that one that works. The faster you can get to the point where you try these 10 ideas, the faster you're going to get your first success.
The lessons learned from a failed startup
Conclusion
I hope you can learn something out of this video and have some ideas or insight on what you could do better than me if you're building a business. If you're looking for business ideas that you can build with coding, I actually made a list of five ideas that I think have a lot of potential.
The future of building a business
