Hot answers tagged failure
24
I think you need some more rest. You sound a bit burnout and you really should grab a beer and try to sleep about one week or so.
On your problem, if you have Java exp for 10yrs+, you will not loose your knowledge just because you did 1 year something else.
I have worked for 2 years as a project manager were I did not code and then went back to code with ...
23
If you have built and not killed, say 10, projects like this- wouldn't you have either 10 small businesses, or one large one that in total employed 20 - 30 people and were pulling in lots of money per month? Why is everyone obsessed with creating only giant businesses?
There is much less risk in creating 10 small companies than in creating one big one. ...
13
Your question is the primary reason most people don't go to a startup.
If you are comfortable and safe where you are, why risk it, is usually how people deal with talking themselves out of the risk and potential failure.
I have been at 5 start-ups. Two of which failed, two are still around and one got bought. The emotions I went through on the first ...
11
State courts in California have not held that employers are liable for wages. New York state courts have - and even have criminal penalties for wage violations.
HOWEVER, you need to know that the there is a federal regulation called the Fair Labor Standards Act ("FLSA") and recently the Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals held employers liable for wages ...
10
Learning from failures of others is difficult because there are so many reasons why startups fail, if you are very careful you may avoid some traps and hit others that you weren't ready for.
My first start-up failed because I had a bad choice in partners. I was going to do the development, but they didn't have the ability to get customers for custom ...
10
Did you learn to walk on your first attempt? Probably not
Did you learn to ride a bike on your first attempt? Probably not
Did you learn to talk on your first attempt? Probably not
Ok, how about closer to home - you're a developer, right?
First program worked perfectly? You've learnt no technique since?
Startups are no different - it takes many ...
9
My start-up experience (as an employee, not a founder) was absolutely terrifying.
Shortly after starting I found we had 6 employees (total, not including founders and funders). 2 of them were classified as HR. Turns out both founders were from a large corporate background and insisted on running the company as if it were IBM or Microsoft - not a small ...
9
OK - I've been involved in just under double digit start-ups. I started my career, right out of college, at a start-up.
The first start-up I worked with was developing software that needed a $25k sparcstation and extensive training to run properly - this was before pentium chips. We raised $6 million in the late eighties - in a nutshell - we jumped the ...
8
I have failed with a children['s credit card I patented 10 years ago because I went for a market with few potential customers (only major credit card companies) with no drive for innovation (they don't want to try a new card before their competitor tries it out first.
I learned that I needed to learn the market before investing my own money(well, my fathers ...
6
I noticed that you first talk about your professional experience as a "sales engineer and industrial electrician", but then you refer to it as "technical and project management experience". Those are all different fields, and I'm not sure how Project Management fits into this. This gives the impression that you are all over the place, and I think some ...
6
I think the "release early, iterate often, and fail fast" is often misquoted and misused. The origin of this phrase can be attributed to Eric Raymond. The release early, release often makes perfect sense, particularly since we as the developers don't always know what the consumer really wants.
So the idea is to release a minimal version which provides the ...
6
I was a day-one developer / tech lead (1 of 10 people in company) at a startup that eventually crashed due to the manic-depressive CEO. Very disappointing, since the people I worked with were the best coworkers I ever had, and the product had an excellent chance of making it long-term (not rocket-star rich, but dependable growth).
The lesson I learned from ...
5
One startup that comes to mind is theglobe.com. They are essentially what MySpace and Facebook are today. Their failure is rooted in the dotcom bust of 2000, being that they went the IPO route and so forth. But I see it as a social media site as we know it today being way ahead of its time.
But for a textbook example of failing due to an early release, ...
5
First of all -- I am so sorry that things have not worked out. Everything looks great on paper polished with projections; and as you know as the development takes longer, the marketing is harder, the customers don't come, the margins don't materialize even the best of angel intentions can become a nightmare of Devils fire.
You can check with your lawyer to ...
4
This one is infamous, though probably not the type of software you are looking for
One of the problems with your question, Jason, is that many of the failed releases we know about are because they are companies we know and which exist today, so the data will be skewed to show that releasing early is not so bad - companies can survive.
The companies that ...
4
I am not a lawyer so I can't comment fully on the legal aspects of bankruptcy. I did have the unpleasant experience of putting my company into Chapter 7 last year (liquidation bankruptcy). I now have a new company. It's possible that it might make it more difficult for me to sit on the board of a public company or get a line of credit with a bank for my ...
4
The one that gets focussed upon (at least in the UK) is much the same as going back permanent after a spell contracting: "We think you'll get bored" and a dozen variations on this theme.
Essentially even if you wow them with your suitability for the role a concern will be that you'll be off at the first sniff of the next opportunity first chance you get! ...
4
You have a pretty certificate that shows the number of shares you have that you can show your friends :-).
In other words, you lost your investment in the startup whether it was money or work. Game over, time to find something else.
In more details though, it's like any bankruptcy. The debtors of the corporations get to divide amongst them any assets the ...
4
First of all don't worry Albert, you didn't loose one year, the experience you got is valuable as Christian pointed.
Anyway if you are worry about the job interviews, apply for jobs offers you don't like just to practice interviews. After several interviews you will know how to answer the difficult questions for a job you actually want.
You could consider ...
4
Firstly you need to make sure you operate a business with integrity or you will have real trouble getting a growing list of customers. It sounds concerning that you have been accepting projects for work that you cannot do. If you only know ASP, don't take on JSP projects, I assume your clients didn't know that you weren't experienced in JSP.
As for getting ...
4
Remember from school: Creator, Innovator, Implementer, Maintainer
Sounds like you are Creator, Innovator, and get into Implementer when you're losing steam. We all have areas we prefer. Do you know someone who is strong on Implement and Maintain, who would like to partner with you on this one product? It might be that your strength is to create and then line ...
3
This is not legal advice and I am not a legal professional. The answer would also vary depending on where the business is located.
It sounds like you are in a company structure since you have shares. My understanding is that directors and shareholders in a company only lose the startup/investment capital you have put in. Generally shareholders are paid any ...
3
I believe the 'official' 37signals story is that when they were just a web design company they started building basecamp in their spare time, which wasn't very much and forced an efficient development process. However I believe they already had a popular blog which wouldn't hurt the process.
As a quick guess they may have done it with 20-40h of total ...
3
By and large, employers just want to know you can do the job they need done. If you're not applying to run their company, they probably won't care why your company closed.
My wife and I closed our software consultancy in late 2001, and I just list it as a job on my resume, with title "President/CTO". Since then, potential employers have mostly concentrated ...
3
Throughout my career, I have failed as much as I have succeeded. And each failure actually taught me much more about myself and business.
At one time things went wrong because I took out earnings from one business and invested it in other things, only to find out that everything suffered as result. Wasted crucial 1 year in the process.
3
Sorry, don't have any specific examples to point to, but certain ideas come before their time. It may be hard to gauge whether it's time for your idea, but you can try to get a sense by looking at the cost of some fundamental materials you need to build.
Some examples - Apple Newton was a great device that just was ahead of its time - its price point / ...
3
Winding down a company is one of the most unpleasant things one can do. It almost rivals laying people off as the single worst job ever. Being around for a wind down feels awful. With that said, here are the answers to your questions:
The assets are the property of the creditors and shareholders or whomever has a lien on the company. These assets, if any ...
3
I've been involved in two startups where we ran out of fundings before we could fully bring the product to market. The key learning for me was one of focus. We weren't focused on what our key value was and what was driving the product. We were thrashing.
This was an issue in the leadership team in defining the product offering and in the engineering ...
3
I could give you advise on how to pimp your CV to make it look good but doubt that it would really help at this stage.
I sincerely believe that there is nothing wrong with you or your experiences. In interviews people just want to hear the truth. Along with this, all employers want employees who will be passionate about the work that they are doing while ...
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