A personal note on failure

I feel like giving up on Spotia. I don't enjoy working on it anymore, and I've lost faith in the idea. The "website builder" market is so saturated and most businesses already have a website. Not to mention that customers are very demanding in terms of web design and what they want on their website, and thus it requires a lot of face-to-face communication with the customer and a lot of custom work afterwards. So it's really hard to scale, which I have definitely underestimated in the very beginning. Building the CMS was also crazy, time consuming work. Lean startup, it hasn't been.

Anyway, I don't love working on it anymore and that means that it's time to stop.
Relevant quote from Steve Jobs: "Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. ..."

I failed. And it sure doesn't feel good, actually I feel like shit. I need a hug. My time is limited and I'm back to zero (minus the experience, because of course, failure is a stepping stone to success). I am not sure what I'm going to do now. I do not want to get a job, I am determined to stay an entrepreneur for life. But I have to learn from my mistakes. 


My next startup will be:

  1. Scalable: Acquiring a customer should be fast and cost effective
  2. Lean: I will launch a minimum viable product within a couple of months and iterate the product from the feedback I get
  3. In an emerging market: Easier to succeed

 

Edit: We've pivoted and are now doing development of complex web applications. It's a service-oriented company at this point, and I do realize developing own products would make the company more valuable, but we're looking into it.