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Your worst entrepreneurial failure... details please!

ZeroTo100

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Love hearing these stories...it’s enlightening to know that we are all grinders in the same battle. What separates us in the beginning from someone who has already experienced an exit or a successful business...is traction. It’s important to maintain a continuous hustle.

I had a quite a few failures....But I have always knew my limit in how much time and money I wanted to spend...except this one time!

In 2009 I launched a site called TeePaign that tried to capitalize on social movements (even though most of them I did not agree with lol). I hired a designer to create a few tee-shirt designs and built a few sample pages with e-commerce functionality for specific social issues and tried to sell them.

The idea was to try to get these leaders on board to use the site as a platform to push their issue. The selling point was they could sell their own design and raise money along with keeping the group unified with the same official shirt. Plus, people could comment on the page and the page was easily shareable. Easy peasy, I got this!

No, not really...

Who were these organizers and how the heck could I find them? They sort of emerge and you just can’t pick them out. I was a 20 something kid from Queens and had zero care or impact on social change. Frankly, I was most likely the cause of this failure lol!

The problem with the entire model was finding these people which was not easy. When I did find them, convincing them to come on board even though I cared less on what they were about. They could read right through my BS. They knew I was piggy backing on their community.

It was a bridge type business model which I absolutely learned to hate. I learned that it’s externally difficult to find people to use your site along with finding people to buy from your site.

It was tech heavy and I wasn’t very tech savvy either at the time and spent a lot of money building out a half a$$ site that didn’t function the way I wanted it.

My biggest lessons learned...

Websites (I learned enough code to get started), even with Wordpress.

I learned that building websites were a process, not an event. The site is never finished. Build the most important feature and launch with that.

I learned that I prefer to have just customers and not build something that focuses too broadly on separate parties. Some people want to build that marketplace style business but I’m not the brightest guy and it’s easier for me to focus on just customers.

This business scared the crap out of me, honestly. It was chaos every single day, every email, the site; it was just an utter disaster. I shut it down, it wasn’t for me.

Know when to quit and move on.
 
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Ecom man

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I stumbled into an ebay business. Realised that I could make +300% markup buying used clothes from charity stores and selling on ebay. Then started ebuying and selling on ebay to build up more stock. Income was pretty good for a part time second job and I enjoyed the "treasure hunting".
Then about 2 years ago ebay started changing fees and selling expectations and sales completely slowed down. The final nail was when looking at the profits and assessing the hours put in - not good.
My method was to add lots of high quality photos and details to help drive sales - which was good, but when I realised that each item took 30 mins to fully list, plus sorting postage, drop offs, returns and items that did not sell - the hourly rate was so poor.
Im now stuck with about £4000 worth of stock but have not desire or motivation to list it all.
Maybe I will gift it back to the charities...

I used to call this business "bottom feeding", I now call it sidewalk!
Take your knowledge of clothing, styles, etc. and turn it into a real business. You can still sell on eBay but if you have 300 of one item then you don’t have to keep creating new listings. You can also set up a website and start a clothing brand... I did this exact thing with eBay a few years ago (except in a different niche). Sales went from 100% eBay to below 1% last year and my margins increased a good amount as well.
 

Ecom man

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Ok so there have been many small failures along the way but this would be one of the earlier ones that really hurt at the time.

I was browsing Craigslist business and came across what seemed like an amazing deal. Someone was selling their inventory from the business they were closing. I had only been selling online for a year or two and thought this was a great opportunity... it was not lol. I drove an hour and spent a few hours looking over the inventory. My wife and I talked about it and decided to go for it. If I remember correctly the inventory was $3500 which was a huge amount of money to us at the time.

Of the $3,500 worth of items we ended up selling 1 item on eBay... the rest day in our garage for 3 years until we finally donated it all.

Act
We continued selling online.

Assess:
Buying a bunch of one off items that needed listed individually was a huge waste of time.

Adjust:
Don’t buy items that you can’t list in bulk!!!
 

John F.

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Anyone out there remember "The Internet Treasure Chest"? One of those late night infomercials that promises the world for a small fee. It was back in the early 2000s when I was just getting out of high school and I already hated working for someone else.

You can read about some of their legal issues here...

ACT
So I pay the initial fee. Then get suckered into the add ons and pretty soon I have way more money in this scam than I should have.

I finally get my store up. I'm all excited I'm selling jewelry online and I get to set my prices. Yes jewelry. Markup on that is ridiculous and I was young and greedy. Money is gonna start rolling in any minute...

It doesn't. Shocker...

Assess
Why am I not making money? This is supposed to be turn-key and the easy way out!

At the time, my assessment was that I got ripped off and these business making things are a scam.

It had nothing to do with the fact I had no clue what I was doing, or why. I didn't even know what the work marketing meant at that time.

Adjust
This is where things went downhill... This failure was the beginning of my scripted adulthood. I gave up business adventures completely and decided to into 6 figure debt and put myself through college with loans. Zero assistance from the outside. I was going to get a good education and a great paying job and live the good life. Or so I thought.

I got a good education and I got a very high paying career that I thought I always wanted. This went on for over a decade.. I was a M.O.D.E.L citizen and my creditors loved me for it.

This is my biggest failure not because I failed at making a late night infomercial business work, but it caused me to give up on my entrepreneurial dreams.

Fast forward to today and I am back on the entrepreneurial path and taking the right actions to make the dreams work. I got my mind right, built sustainable health and financial habits, and I'm following the guidance of people that are way smarter and more experienced than I am. It's working and will continue to work. Because I am going to continue to work at it until it does.
 
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StrikingViper69

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Try this:

Make as many videos as possible of "how to play ___ by ____" and make as many as you can. Use blackhat SEO tricks from blackhatworld about how to get videos ranking quickly on youtube.

Raise your prices and become an expert offering $300 lessons.

If you need some attention just go run the field at a pro baseball game with a big sign that says "guitar lessons $300 call 555-5555", go viral and then sign up some people. You'll pay $1,000 and a night in jail. Get a friend to film it, watermark it heavily and give it to big instagram accounts and as a condition they have to post your phone number to call for lessons. I bet it would work.

Anything is better than quitting and being a loser forever until you die.

Thanks man, I needed that, I was feeling pretty down when I made that post.

Yeah that's this weekend sorted - "How to" videos.

I'm hitting my mailing list, and social media with free 15 minute guitar consultations.

To clarify, if I do have to move with my parents, or go bankrupt, I'm not quitting music. I'll just have a bit of a shit time with life for a little while.
 

Zcott

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My guitar teaching business is slowly failing over the last two years after I let it die.

I launched an online teaching membership website over the last two weeks. I had a high quality list of 2000 guitar players that liked my online articles and a free eBook they got. They liked the course outlines... but $29/mo was too expensive. One person signed up, and I refunded him and cancelled the launch today.

You sound very talented. Don't give up!

Why not adjust your prices? Maybe a lower monthly fee, or as suggested above, a single expensive fee.
Courses on Udemy are popular, you could also look into putting a course or two on there.
YouTube videos are a good idea too.

2000 people liking your content is a big number. Maybe you just need help with marketing your next steps. Start a progress thread and undoubtedly you'll receive sound advice.
 
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Zcott

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Im now stuck with about £4000 worth of stock but have not desire or motivation to list it all.

Why don't you pick up where you left off and maybe move into selling it on other channels as well?
 

EPerceptions

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I have more stories than I care to admit, but ~15 years ago I tried to start a book review business.

The idea was to provide book reviews for free, and charge a fee for an expedited review and distribution. The fee was something like $100 or $200, can't remember exactly, but it filled a need in the market at the time. Instead of waiting 6 weeks (sometimes months) for exposure, authors could speed up the process.

I had no clue how many bad books were desperately seeking attention :D I was inundated with some of the worst stuff I'd never even thought could exist. There were a few gems hidden here and there, but I was so overwhelmed with the junk that I couldn't keep up.

If I'd had a clue, I could have sent these books out to "wannabe" writers/reviewers as a free gift in exchange for them writing the reviews, but I didn't know any better back then.

I think I ended up selling the site. I still got random free books in the mail a good 5 years later.
 

Johnny boy

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I have more stories than I care to admit, but ~15 years ago I tried to start a book review business.

The idea was to provide book reviews for free, and charge a fee for an expedited review and distribution. The fee was something like $100 or $200, can't remember exactly, but it filled a need in the market at the time. Instead of waiting 6 weeks (sometimes months) for exposure, authors could speed up the process.

I had no clue how many bad books were desperately seeking attention :D I was inundated with some of the worst stuff I'd never even thought could exist. There were a few gems hidden here and there, but I was so overwhelmed with the junk that I couldn't keep up.

If I'd had a clue, I could have sent these books out to "wannabe" writers/reviewers as a free gift in exchange for them writing the reviews, but I didn't know any better back then.

I think I ended up selling the site. I still got random free books in the mail a good 5 years later.

Why didn't you just charge more? It doesn't matter if it's junk. You still get paid. Make it efficient and outsource it to indian assistants for $4/hr and scale it with ads to people with writing as an interest on facebook and instagram. You could make a ton of money without doing a single review yourself.
 
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A way of life

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ACT: I tried to build a leadership training app on WordPress... LOL. I spent weeks writing the content, drafting sequences for modules, and writing questions. That was all good fun, until I realized I'd have to pay for an expensive WP plugin that couldn't do half of the features I wanted to implement. Once I got passed that hurdle, I found out most leaders want classroom-based leadership training.

ASSESS: Well, it was evident that I went for a walk down dumbass lane. I didn't do any initial market research, nor did I select suitable technologies for what I assumed would be a profitable opportunity. So two lessons; validate your idea before committing to development & learn the correct tools for the job.

ADJUST: Since late October I have taught myself javascript on a painfully deep level and am about 60% done with an app that has market validation. I am excited to get the first round of user tests in later next month.

- Cheers
What is the best plan to validate your ide before executing
 
D

Deleted50669

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What is the best plan to validate your ide before executing

There's many approaches to this, and the best plan is one that results in a verbal sale (someone explicitly states "I will buy this product or service." or confirms intent to purchase), or even better, an actual sale (someone purchased this product or service from you). Getting multiple verbal or actual sales allows the identification of customer similarities; demographics like age, gender, location, occupation, motivation, etc etc. This is called customer segmentation.

Now, the process of getting to a point where you can get this soft or hard proof of demand is often difficult. Whether you do a survey campaign, present a group of people with a working prototype, conduct focus groups, or some other method, getting that authentic feedback takes effort. Simply going out and asking "Hey, would you buy this product or service?" is insufficient. Even if someone says "yes", it is not a "yes" that came from a realistic scenario where the individual is exposed to the purchase opportunity or is experiencing the product / service. This is essentially what a survey does, though it usually allows for more targeted questions like "Do you experience this problem?" "How often do you experience this problem?" "How do you usually solve this problem?" "What do you pay to have this problem solved?" etc. etc.

This scratches the surface, and for in-depth insight on this topic I recommend MJ's book "Unscripted " and "Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank.
 

Gepi

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The irony is I hadn't had any real big major business failures, except for the occasional month w/out income as a contractor, but I always made up for it one way or the other, because I pushed, coldcalled, sold until it worked again.
My biggest failure is not investing 100% all the time because I fail to set up plans and fail to believe in myself. I am a natural short term thinker (or maybe I should say I was, because I now have realized that I always need a plan to be good, I have learned that I am INTJ, and we always need a plan)
Yes, I would say, for me, not the biggest business failure but the biggest root from which they stem, is my own laziness and low self esteem, limiting my ability. I know I could be a lot better, if I was following through always. The other thing is, that I have often kept myself from advancing because I was not careful enough, and didn't consider the realistic options. So it is more inside, than outside (sorry for the philosophy :) )
If I'd always make solid plans, broken down into manageable pieces, and sticking to them, I know I could have much bigger potential. But I am happy, because I have understood it more and more, and I work towards overcoming all of those flaws day after day. And what gets measured gets managed, or so they say.
I also recently had a very strong spiritual experience (without any strange substance involved), which has shown me deep inside that I can achieve anything, if I step outside my comfort zone and sail to new shores. Sorry for not having any interesting real failures to share, but I think the inner mindset can be a big challenge as well, and plays a big role in one's ability to cast aside limiting believes or being open to change.
For example, I didn't learn maths since 9th grade (I hated it, because I was too lazy to really care) and now I have to relearn everything, because I enrolled in remote business college (tax funded in Ger, so no big debts coming up). Earlier in life I would think I could not learn. But not now.
Maybe this, at the core, was my biggest failure of all: limiting myself for far too long, letting myself being pushed around by the waves, without goals, without ambition. And the second one was trying weed much too early in life. I have given it up completely now, because it negates my energy and focus. So, yeah. Being not the best possible friend in this world was the reason of many of my biggest failures in the most important business I have: my life :)
 
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EPerceptions

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Why didn't you just charge more? It doesn't matter if it's junk. You still get paid. Make it efficient and outsource it to indian assistants for $4/hr and scale it with ads to people with writing as an interest on facebook and instagram. You could make a ton of money without doing a single review yourself.

Today, absolutely. Back then there weren't all of the outsourced resources. And 99.9% of the junk was from people looking for the free service. Not paid. Still doable, but I didn't know better at the time.
 

handog

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Oh I've got a good one.

About 10 years ago I was huge lurker on the warrior forum (had I known about TMF !). I bought all kinds of ebooks and was learning SEO from Alex Becker's Sourcewave. I was learning about Clickbank and affiliate marketing too. I was enrolled with Niche Profit Classroom and was learning about email marketing. I tried to combine the concept of a niche site blog (I picked golden retrievers) with an online directory. I thought that I could get relevant businesses listed in the directory and as a double whammy I could get visitors to sign up for the email autoresponse series, and sell all kinds of affiliate products. I remember thinking that once I had all these visitors I would incorporate adsense and make money from people clicking ads. With all these angles - what's to lose, right?!

Action

I spent a ton of time and money learning and building a site that was functional (I used phpmydirectory) for a while but never had a chance for any kind of market feedback because I didn't get the ball rolling with SEO or paid traffic, and didn't take any action to cold call on anyone for a directory listing.

I bought and edited all kinds of images from istock. I bought copies of adobe and went down the graphic design rabbit hole. Unfortunately I got burned out looking at the computer screen all day and night and over the weekends. I found out later that my energy levels were down because I wasn't sleeping right.

So I didn't even get to the Assessment and Adjustment steps, because I flat out dropped the whole thing.

Today, it's as if I did a complete turnaround with my energy. I pretty much eat unprocessed foods and workout 4x a week and sleep very well with a CPAP machine in place.

I laughed when I just looked up my old site and thought how my approach would be so different now.

Golden Retriever Puppies Information, And More... - Golden Retriever Puppies Classifieds
 
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BlokeInProgress

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I laughed when I just looked up my old site and thought how my approach would be so different now.

Thanks for sharing that story. Mind if I ask what is your approach now?
 

handog

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Yes, if I were to start an online directory now I would definitely find some businesses that wanted to get listed before even building the website. If I could pre-sell the listings that would be great, if not for an initial free trial. Conversations would happen first. I would want to prove that I could help businesses and find the market before burning all that time and money.

I've read the affiliate marketing threads here and would not attempt the email sales letter series until after I've accumulated hundreds, if not thousands of emails. I'm not even sure I would try affiliate marketing at all, but maybe once I had an audience I would look for synergies between other website owners. I would definitely try to increase traffic before thinking about selling space on the site or putting in adsense to generate any revenue.

I spent alot on getting articles written for good content initially, but I should have become an expert in the niche first instead of just diving in, and focus on delivering unbelievable value to the niche.
 

WealthyMarketer

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I spent $7,000 on a “Turn-Key Business”. The vendor was selling pre-built cash-flowing affiliate sites, and I bought 6 of them for a little more than $1,000 each. These 6 sites were pulling in $500-$1,000 a month each in gross revenue. The sites contained GoDaddy banner ads keyed to my affiliate link, and every time someone signed up for hosting through GoDaddy after clicking the banner, I was paid $100. The catch was I had to buy ‘marketing’ and ‘site maintenance’ from the vendor, and the vendor charged $250 a month in marketing per site. But, they were so good at ‘marketing’ that they could guarantee me at least 5 sales per site. Pretty good deal though, right? I mean, $7,000 for a golden goose that lays $1,500 a month with no effort on my part is pretty rad. A few more of these geese, and I won’t have to worry about money, well, ever.


Things were going great for about three months. Then, one lovely afternoon, I received a black slip from the affiliate network the vendor was using. They terminated my account because I was violating their terms of service. Not only that, they also withheld two months’ worth of payments.


Whoops.


It turns out that the vendor wasn’t doing any marketing for me at all. Instead, they used my affiliate link to build sites for their other customers, a clear violation of the affiliate network’s terms of service.


So, I’m out:


$7,000 for the six sites; and

$6,000 for four months of their “marketing”

But I did pull in $3,000 in the first month, so I only lost $10,000 on this particular ‘venture’.


So, using MJ’s template:


ACT

I knew that I can’t just rely on my 9-5 for income for the rest of my life. I finished FLM back in November, and I’m still working through UNSCRIPTED . So, my business forays are all pre-MJ. But, I knew I had to do something. So, I googled “how to make additional money”, stumbled upon Warrior, and “took action”. I knew I didn’t have a lot of extra time (being married and a dad and all), so I “knew” that paying someone to build a business and make money for me would be the best way for me to go. So I blew my wad on WSOs that had “good reviews”.


ASSESS

I’ve blown $40,000 on “Turnkey Businesses” and most of them were complete flops. I’ve bought into Forex and Crypto trading bots and systems, eBay-Amazon arbitraging bots, Amazon Affiliate sites, you name it. Only one system is making money for me right now. It barely makes me enough money to pay for a cup of coffee, and the sites are not even in compliance with the affiliate network’s TOS, so I’m just waiting for the day I get black carded right now.


Verdict: Buying a Turnkey Business does not work. They (most of them) do not attract value vouchers for me, but they do attract value vouchers for the vendors. If I want to attract value vouchers, I need to create or produce and sell the Turnkey Businesses, not buy them from others.


ADJUST


I’m reading, re-reading, and re-reading UNSCIRPTED. I’ve turned UNSCRIPTED into a $20,000 coaching program for myself by:


1 – Buying the physical, pdf, Kobo, and audio book version; and

2 – Spending 1-2 days for the shorter chapters and 1 week for the longer chapters just reading and listening to each chapter over and over again


Once I’m finally done the book, I’ve committed to taking action and starting businesses correctly. I have already and will continue to “do what I hate but what must be done”. I will focus on producing actual value rather than just chasing money. And then, I'll have a better answer for this question because I'll have dialed a ton of white and orange gumballs by that time.


I’ve also done some of the homework in UNSCRIPTED . I’ve done the smile challenge (which was hard for me because I had to use the process and Kaizen principle just to push myself to make eye contact with strangers in the first place), and I’m currently in the process of fixing a broken iPhone I bought off of Kijiji (a skill that I’m in the middle of acquiring that I never had before).


BTW – I don’t know how much of the book I’m allowed to reveal here, but it’s a painful read for me. I violated almost every rule and crashed into every warning signpost MJ discusses. I wish I read it before blowing that much money on “Turnkey Businesses”. But, at the same time, I now know why they didn’t work out, I now understand why the vendors are doing well and making bank but the broke people such as myself are not, and I’m glad I lost that much money and failed that hard.
 
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Gepi

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@WealthyMarketer what an interesting read! Thanks for sharing. When you are still in the middle of (mostly) selling time for money, to even make this much without big effort certainly seems like a dream. People will always fall into traps, good to know one more of them!
 

ShamanKing

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I stumbled into an ebay business. Realised that I could make +300% markup buying used clothes from charity stores and selling on ebay. Then started ebuying and selling on ebay to build up more stock. Income was pretty good for a part time second job and I enjoyed the "treasure hunting".
Then about 2 years ago ebay started changing fees and selling expectations and sales completely slowed down. The final nail was when looking at the profits and assessing the hours put in - not good.
My method was to add lots of high quality photos and details to help drive sales - which was good, but when I realised that each item took 30 mins to fully list, plus sorting postage, drop offs, returns and items that did not sell - the hourly rate was so poor.
Im now stuck with about £4000 worth of stock but have not desire or motivation to list it all.
Maybe I will gift it back to the charities...

I used to call this business "bottom feeding", I now call it sidewalk!



Congrats. EBay changed their selling and listing fees again ;)
 

BaraQueenbee

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HELL YESSS. Good topic:

Biggest failure
Trying to get an app in the air without any experience in app-building industry nor having the right people on my side to inform me (due to me not asking or looking for those).
My app was a female-safety app with 3 modes.

ACT
Wow, women under the target demographic need more safety and others wont hand it to them so we need to "help" our/themselves

Access
Why is the development costing more and more money, leaving me with no usable product all the time?
For example: I kept paying more and more for the GPS-function.
"Yeah, we found trouble with coding, we need more time, and therefor more money"

Adjust
Hire a mediator who understands the programming process and has a clear view of how long things can take realistically.
Therefor can overview the back-end of the process and "manage" it's developing, while I can focus on the other aspects of the company.
 
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rpeck90

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I tried starting a natural cosmetics store (Gilt Groupe for daily/weekly sales of natural beauty products).

The idea was great -- collate rare natural cosmetics into bundles you could buy at discount prices. The bundles would cycle either daily or weekly, allowing for a constant flow of offers for people to look at.

Act
Knew nothing, and didn't care for, cosmetics. Had an event in a local beauty spa/hotel where no one turned up, the staff ended up coming around and trying out the products we bought.

Assess
The products were good - Suki, Lily Lolo, Dr Bragi and Lavera, Zoya, Fushi oils. The natural angle would have been great (TONS of middle class women will spend more on natural cosmetic products -- it's the same vein as the recent vegan trend), but I wasn't the right person to do it. I felt out of place and was too young to bring in someone else. Made a few sales but nothing serious.

Adjust
After the event, I immediately put all the products on eBay and focused on learning about web software (something I'd been involved with since I was 13). I needed something that I could use to pay the bills; I wasn't a beautician and would need something more substantive before trying that again.
 

astr0

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Why is the development costing more and more money, leaving me with no usable product all the time?
For example: I kept paying more and more for the GPS-function.
"Yeah, we found trouble with coding, we need more time, and therefor more money"
If you have a rather small project (up to ~600 hours of development) it may be beneficial to negotiate a fixed price for the whole project with the developers.
Pros: you know how much you would pay and what you would get for the money, no surprises.
Cons: specifications should be pretty clear at the beginning and it requires extra estimation step from the developers which you would also pay for (either directly invoiced or hidden somewhere in other tasks).

That way, if they're good, they should not ask for extra money even if they f*cked up the estimate or had some unseen issues along the way. Of course, if you want some significant amount of extra functionality, that is paid extra and negotiated separately (for example not only showing user GPS locations on the map as was discussed during the estimate but also some alerts if users leave an area quicker or stay for too long). Sure, you still have to give them feedback and control the progress. Dedicated developers (paid per time) are great for big projects and support, usually with some tech-savvy people on the client side.

Those estimates are pretty fine for both sides, but surprises do happen. Remembering once we charged for 200+ hours but actually done it in like 60 (realized that we could build a small framework since a lot of stuff on that project was pretty repetitive), another time charged for ~120, but put like 180 (underestimated the complexity of client's legacy system), still delivered on time. Both clients were happy and returned with more work.
 
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astr0

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How I erased a year of my life? Ok, here it goes.
Act
I and my friend who owned a 3d art company wanted to do some mobile game startup in 2012. I quit my 9-5, done a lot of fast prototyping and we settled on a game. Build it in less than 2 months, only some polishing left. But then we decided that it was too simple and went back to prototyping for a few more weeks. Finally, an MMO idea was born. I was coding it for more than 9 months, almost done, but there was no art except for some sketches and UI layouts.
Access
My friend was busy selling his company, and (probably?) didn't have enough money to pay for the art. I've estimated that it would take ~120k for the art and another ~250k+ for the ads to have a smooth start which is critical for the MMO. It was more than a lot of money for me back then. We knew some people from the industry that "promised" some future support when we had nothing but the idea, but they wanted at least some part of the game completed (full 20% playable, not 80% coding, 1% art).
Adjust
The project just died. I was left with few megabytes of useless code and a bunch of epic battle-cats sketches.

Lessons learned:
  • Don't try to jump too high over your head. Now, I would start a similar project only if I had $2m+ in a bank account and a least $300k FU money pot.
  • Don't rely too much on your partner(s), always have a backup plan.
  • Getting fast feedback is crucial.
  • Fast time to market is always preferable.
  • Follow your passion, right? NO!
 
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BaraQueenbee

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This is the real value of learning coding; not having to rely on third-party libraries and having no price control.

If you have a rather small project (up to ~600 hours of development) it may be beneficial to negotiate a fixed price for the whole project with the developers.
Pros: you know how much you would pay and what you would get for the money, no surprises.
Cons: specifications should be pretty clear at the beginning and it requires extra estimation step from the developers which you would also pay for (either directly invoiced or hidden somewhere in other tasks).

That way, if they're good, they should not ask for extra money even if they f*cked up the estimate or had some unseen issues along the way. Of course, if you want some significant amount of extra functionality, that is paid extra and negotiated separately (for example not only showing user GPS locations on the map as was discussed during the estimate but also some alerts if users leave an area quicker or stay for too long). Sure, you still have to give them feedback and control the progress. Dedicated developers (paid per time) are great for big projects and support, usually with some tech-savvy people on the client side.

Those estimates are pretty fine for both sides, but surprises do happen. Remembering once we charged for 200+ hours but actually done it in like 60 (realized that we could build a small framework since a lot of stuff on that project was pretty repetitive), another time charged for ~120, but put like 180 (underestimated the complexity of client's legacy system), still delivered on time. Both clients were happy and returned with more work.

You both are VERY right.
And that is what I had in mind of doing with the changed plans.
Set price, and having a third party who understands coding, review the proposal and estimate.
 

MJ DeMarco

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InfinityStones

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As a lawyer by trade, I started a consulting business where sold mediation sessions to businesses to ease their employee disputes.

I closed the business last week because its not scalable. I was the only cog in the wheel. I learnt that from MJ's book.

do own and control 3 toy stores though - which run independently from me and are based in 3 different cities. So I am focusing on CENTS now.
 

redshift

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Loads of "failures" - all which stemmed from giving up because of a lack of confidence and not having clear goals or direction.

Went to college to study computer science, specialized in video games, built loads of game prototypes in the 3 years, some good, some not so good, but in the end, never shipped or finished a single one. Lacked the courage to go at it myself and got seduced by a shiny slowlane job despite knowing in my heart I wanted to continue working on my own projects.

After getting a few paychecks, got super interested in the stock market, started trading stocks in my free time, made a few thousand in a couple of months, then lost everything I had made within a short time. Freaked out, read a load of books on the topic. Decided to build an algorithmic trading system to make better decisions, spent almost a year on it and enjoyed it so much I wanted to go full time trading stocks. It worked *great* in backtesting, but then tried it with live data and it would always lose money. Got discouraged, figured I had no business trading stocks and should stick to what I studied in college! decided to get realistic, started buying stocks for the long run instead, and eventually read some b.s personal finance books and switched to index funds (LOL). Meanwhile got a promotion at work, felt I needed to step up my game, focused all my time and energy on the job and improving my intrinsic value through self study instead. Never touched the trading system again (though I did plan to return to it *someday*). On the bright side, some tech stocks I had bought back then are now at a 15-20x multiple, if I only I had put some semi-decent money in back then, sigh :)

Then few years later, had a FTE event at work caused by too much overtime, a lack of promotions and some health issues. Left my job, spent over a year working on a 3d game engine, never really had a clear goal in mind and didn't know what I was planning to do with it, just didn't want to work a job anymore and enjoyed doing this. Only focused on the development aspect, built some nice demos and a lot of cool tech, most of which served no real purpose at the time. I didn't have a clue about the business side at the time. Plan was to eventually make a game with the engine and ship that, but execution was lukewarm and I still lacked the confidence to go through with it. Meanwhile, started running low on funds (was careless with money), moved back with the parents, got depressed, wen't out and found another job again, albeit this time at a much more prestigious company with nearly double my previous salary. Decided to put my project on hold and just "enjoy" life for a bit.

One year in I lost enthusiasm for the job again and got frustrated with work and life and not having the freedom to do what I want. Also found out I was making less than my peers (some less experienced than me). Felt like I was wasting my life. Thought about going back into trading stocks since I was making more money now, stumbled across TMF while browsing through my kindle (think I had bought it a few months back as a daily deal on amazon, best dollar I ever spent haha).

Finished the book. Everything became clear then! It was like neo in the "I know kung fu" scene.

Since then, brainstormed a few ideas and finally created a vision for a mobile app I have long had an idea for and meets the CENTS framework. Re-purposed a lot of the code I had written for the game engine into building this app. Have a focused business strategy now on how to monetize it from day 1 when I launch it. Only focusing on developing the features and backend which will directly have an impact on the user experience, not wasting any time on fluff. Planning to finish most of the development while I'm still working a job (and saving most of my paycheck) then go full time sometime next year on the execution while working on the tech aspects as necessary on the side.

I have full confidence now that I will be able to turn this into a success! If it does turn out to be a failure, I know I will learn a lot in the process (I already am) and at least I would have put something out there and will have all the tools and resources needed to be able to bounce back and act,assess,adjust as needed :)
 
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