Hi,

If you could you freeze development for a small amount of time (other than keeping servers/lights on) and take some time out and basiclly take deep breath and relook over everything.

Its kind of hard to talk generalised and understand why you need to be secretive but financially long term if it is not flying then sometimes the easiet thing to do is pull the plug and work on something else whilst using the code/tool/ and most importantly knowledge and experience you gained.

If you've been working 20 hours a day, 7 days a week and perhaps feeled burn out then take deep breath and take time out, perhaps get some perspective on whats happening.

You could alwatys do like a weekend thing, get some beers/drink/pizzas/bbq, and relax and go over things with everyone being able to talk freely about what they think. Trying to get as many opinions as you can, different perspectives on where you and your other founders/team ideas are.

You don't have to set anything in stone but like a focus group and make it as informal as possible. Just for one brief weekend forget about stress/burnout and just focus on the future.

Think about whats working, whats not working, where do you want your start up to be in 6 weeks, 1 year, 5 years etc.

Then Marketing wise, is your site doing well in google/bing organiclly? Can you improve it with better marketing? Have you looked into SEO stuff, making sure your not missing anything?

Is your business idea sound or does it need to be reworked?

Sometimes you can a really good idea and your just going about it in the wrong way, execution wise? (sorry im not trying to be blunt but these things do happen.)

Then there is minute things like is your signup page asking too many questions? Do? you have a trial/free evaulation? Are you publishing prices or are you having people directly contacting your sales team so there is a delay in people signing up/paying for your widget? Does your site work in "the browser that shall not be named" aka IE6 or is it just one giant fancy flash thingy bob that takes 5 years to download when a simple static html page could do same job in 0.005 seconds of a time ?

If your business is making some money, could you afford to let developers work on things they want for 20% of time like say at google in the hopes of incubating new ideas. You'd be surprised at how many things get developed out of someones spare time that just grow or startups changing their business and model mid stream.

To be honest there's so many things that can be preventing your startup from suceeding without knowing more or you could be doing everything perfectly and its just not working such has no real customers. It happens.

Just take some time out, reveulate everything. If things have to change because they are not working then its better to make changes when your small and nimble(?)then when your a mega corp with shareholders.

Just be honest, don't hide away from awkward questions and just remember your not loosing anything by having a rethink. You have all the experience, code and technology that you have gained working on your startup. People often think they've failed because it didn't work out but don't realise what they gained through experience.