After I was frustrated and felt pretty useless- What I've Learned
The last post I made on HN was an upset rant about my cofounder and I being disappointed over our second startup. Had I known that I would receive so many replies, I probably would have considered not posting it. However, doing so was probably the best thing I’ve ever done so far as a startup entrepreneur. I was strongly encouraged by many others who understood my situation and was given advice by others while being yelled at and criticized by most. It was precisely the combination of all the criticism and encouragement that really totally reevaluate my situation. There was so much wisdom and intelligence embedded within those comments that it really struck a chord with me.

(Link to previous rant: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3439277)

I’ve read every single response and while I didn’t get a chance to respond to them (I began working on another startup due to the motivation received), I wanted to leave feedback now and talk about how I feel now, or rather stuff I’ve learned now having two unsuccessful startups. Thank you for all the support you’ve given a fellow HNer.

37signals talks about building a product that solves a problem of your own because there’s bound to be others like you trying to find the same solution. Like many mentioned, it wasn’t so much creating only products that would’ve solve a problem of your own. Given that feedback, I still think that it’s solid advice. By it being a product that can solve a problem of your own, you know exactly what you’d want and create an awesome product for it. But that’s where it gets pretty confusing. What you want isn’t necessarily a necessity for others, especially when it comes to features. Because you’re choosing a product that you want to solve so much, you blind yourself with what you think are core features that MUST be within the app – making the app extremely bloated with no focus. Another point to make is not to begin a startup with biased emotions. Most of the ideas I’ve had were simply created to make some fast cash, but wasn’t really going to solve a problem of mine. By doing so, I cheated myself because I wasn’t as motived nor would I believe in the project as much as I would have if it were a real problem. I understand that in the last post, many were upset because I was still dreaming of making it big and making a lot of money. While I understand that it could be seen as a destructive attitude towards a startup, I disagree. I find that for me personally, the best motivation is to aim for just that. My motivation for making money comes from spending money. Because I have expensive wants, I naturally have a higher goal of how much money I’d like to make. I entered the startup community because I desired the opportunity no matter how farfetched to improve my overall financial wellbeing before getting married and being committed to a family. I had a quite well paying stable job previously, but I quit to pursue exactly those kinds of get rich quick dreams. Thank you though for voicing your concerns on this matter though, it truly means a lot.

In a way, looking back at this post as suggested, I am glad that things happened with Grooovy the way it did. I knew that what really counted was the knowledge and experience you’ve gained whenever you actually do mess up on a startup (from having already failed another one prior to Grooovy), but it still didn’t help with the feelings of disappointment. I think it’s only natural that you feel terrible after something doesn’t work out for you but it’s important to snap out of it and decide on your next step because otherwise you’d just be wasting time being depressed over something that already happened. (In other words, no use crying over spilt milk.)

We had spent so long on Grooovy that we forgot to enjoy ourselves and do what we really wanted to. Right after reading this post, we got the idea to put together a list of all the apps that we had wanted to work on for our own fun but couldn’t because of Grooovy. The way we see it now is that we’ll launch an app every 3-6 weeks, so keeping it short while enjoying what we do. We just finished our 1st app on that list, Flux – an app that provides you with a different conversation topic each week, designed to stimulate engaging conversations to questions that have no ‘right’ answer. We’re extremely thankful for Grooovy because Flux would have never been possible without what we learned along the way. It took us less than 12 days to fully design, develop and test the app and it turned out more beautiful and easier to program than we had ever expected. In fact, most important of all, it felt great to finish something we really looked forward to doing, it was extremely fun. This was what we had been looking for and missing this entire time. This is who we are and what we want to do, making apps that mean something to us and not wasting time making assumptions of what others might want or require in the app.

(For those interested, feedback is always appreciated: http://www.grooovy.me/flux). In case you google flux, please note that Grooovy has three OOO’s in it. We’ve worked on the copy a bit to get to the point and get rid of the marketing gibberish as most of you have suggested.

The last point I wanted to make was a quote by @maro: “A true friend points out your mistakes, even at the risk of losing your friendship.” This is extremely important because most of the beta testers we had for Grooovy were acquaintances and people who we weren’t extremely close to. They all spoke well of our app probably because they didn’t want to insult us in any way. The few close friends and family that did test it were a little hesitant, but we chose to ignore it, given that they probably didn’t understand what the app was about. That was merely a lie to appease our conscience. Had we listened, we would have put more thought about the core or the focus of the app instead of features that we thought was going to be important for scaling. (Another lesson, don’t waste time building your app for scaling in the future. Think about it, but don’t overuse precious time on it.)

I wanted to also take some time to clarify what Grooovy had been about. We’re different from meetup, eventbrite, and grubwithus because we wanted a commitment-free hangout. I’ve used all of them but it never solved the problem I had. I didn’t want to commit to groups of activities that I need to go back to every week (I don’t have time for it.) It sucks that everytime I do show up, people ask where I’ve been or why I didn’t show up the last week. I wanted a quick casual, let’s grab a quick bite or a drink whenever I have time (even if it’s 12AM midnight at a local milk tea hangout in town), not having to need an plan events far into the future. The vision I had for it was a spontaneous, very casual but fun way of meeting people without needing to overpay for a meal (I personally don’t have that kind of money.)

I have a lot more to say, but I realize that it’ll be more appropriate to actually blog about it. I’m glad I spoke out because I’m sure there are others like me out there, depressed and angry at themselves for having failed a startup. It is because of the amazing support that I got from HN that’s made me find my focus again. Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to read my post, and especially those who went above and beyond to reply to my post and offer to talk with me in case I needed someone to talk to (@nate) and taking the time to proof and offer suggestions for the copy on the website (@thhaar)- I’m really grateful for it. Thank you.