My history of (mostly failed) side projects and startups

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/10/a-history-of-failed-projects.html

by taylorwc • 16 years ago

316 81 16 years ago

botolo86• 16 years ago

This is very interesting. I think that the more failure you had in the past, the more likely you will have success in the future. I also had some previous side-projects experiences which did not work but I learnt so many things from these projects!

petervandijck• 16 years ago

Yep, pretty interesting. And although at first I didn't, I have to agree that a list of failed projects is not a bad indicator for success. At least it shows that you keep trying.

As for mine:

1. Mefeedia.com Built it out for 2 years, then sold it because it wasn't going where I wanted it to go.

2. Poorbuthappy.com Lots of traffic for travel forums, but the community got out of hand so I had to close it.

Those where the 2 main projects where there was an expectation of it possibly becoming something big-ish.

keeptrying2• 16 years ago

I wonder how many were done while holding down a regular job? From his linked in profile, it looks like he's being doing startups for a while.

Pretty cool.

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Been doing startups right out of college. Only had a "regular job" for one year, Aug 2001-Aug 2002. From 2001-2005 I also did consulting to pay the bills, but would try hard to keep it to 4hr a day max. From 2005-2006 I was also in a graduate program, which I treated as secondary to my startup (but still did it)--sort of equivalent to the consulting.

keeptrying2• 16 years ago

Awesome. I've been trying to figure out exactly how I'm going to feel when trying to work on startup. Your post seems more realistic and kind of shows me exactly what I should be expecting.

Thanks for this.

One quick question: I'm not a uber geek. Ie I like the business side of the equation too. Is this a good thing or a bad thing ?

thetrumanshow• 16 years ago

It would be very interesting to add information about when you were working with advisors/mentors and when you were purely working on your own.

I haven't had nearly as many at-bats as you have, but enough to know that I personally can't get very far on my own without an experienced voice guiding me past a lot of dumb ideas.

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

At learnection I had a board of my uncle and another VC guy, who were helpful but I didn't use them at all to the degree I should have. Other than that, no real advisors/mentors.

For Zoofoo, Email client, Yahoo store thing, Namesdatabase & Kangadoo I worked with the same partner. The "Wall" (never launched) was with a different partner. And nth Club was with another partner. The rest is/was solo.

duck• 16 years ago

Are there links for the two episodes of "Twenty Questions"?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Nope--not online any more.

edw519• 16 years ago

As a builder of digital things, the 3 things I have the most trouble communicating to non-builders are:

- how hard it is

- how much time it takes

- how long it takes to become successful

So instead of trying to explain it, I may just send them to this blog post, which shows all 3. Thank you, Gabriel!

(Now if only you would remove that Mojo Badge business from blocking your great content.)

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Thx--I may do that (remove it). I was alpha testing it for a friend.

Update: removed.

bobf• 16 years ago

While those three things are certainly true and Gabriel's post does a great job of showing them, don't forget: anyone can do it.

klous• 16 years ago

"Ship often. Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly." - Godin from http://the99percent.com/tips/6249/seth-godin-the-truth-about...

notahacker• 16 years ago

Would be even more interesting to know the details of why Gabriel failed to stick with some of the ideas. A Posterous-type service in 2001 sounds like it could have been a bigger success than the Names Database.

Nth clubs sounds like it could work with a bit of incentive for club pros to recommend it...

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

I wish I had a good reason for ditching the public inbox. I don't. The proximate cause IIRC was I moved my server and had a disk failure. But that really isn't an excuse because I'm sure I had backups.

It actually got traffic too. I don't know what to say other than that it didn't feel like a startup at the time.

nth Club isn't a bad idea -- it just requires sales work that I don't want to do. I thought my partner (who is into golf) would be doing it, but that just has turned out not to be the case.

subbu2• 16 years ago

Looks like you were startupping since 2000. Except NamesDatabase there haven't been any other exits. So how did you feed yourself until then? I am guessing your later projects were taken care by that exit.

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Real job for one year. Then consulting. Then exit. Also, my wife has a job.

subbu2• 16 years ago

Thanks

megamark16• 16 years ago

Wow, great list! My biggest take away was all of the times he says "perhaps I should have stuck with it". You never know where a project can go unless you stick with it.

Back to hacking at my project...

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Absolutely. That is one of my biggest lessons learned.

netaddict• 16 years ago

Why did Google blacklist all of your Tldscan sites? Was it just because your sites' content was updated automatically? Or was it because you did something wrong for SEO?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Here's my (completely unsubstantiated) theory. It happend literally the day after crossing $500 & 50K views in adsense. I'm guessing one of those was a trigger for manual review by some contractor, perhaps overseas. They looked at my sites for 3 sec, found them to be cookie-cutter and decided to blacklist the account. I get the impression they shoot first, ask questions later. I didn't feel like dealing with it all or starting over so I just moved on to other things.

jacquesm• 16 years ago

I wonder how many otherwise viable little businesses fall victim to this heavy handed approach.

Is this one of the reasons DDG got started?

stakent• 16 years ago

In my case some clicks worth over $2 (if I remember correctly) triggered manual review. They sent me canned email about tos etc.

The funny part is that the domain in question was already expired when email arrived because I've decided to stop this venture.

asmithmd1• 16 years ago

I talked to someone from Google at I/O who should know and he claimed they don't play "Whack a mole" with websites. They will tweak their ranking algorithm to punish the behavior they see in a web site they don't want to be ranked.

Matt_Cutts8• 16 years ago

I don't think that was the issue. The fact is that if you've got dozens of websites, each of which has lists of domains/IPs like http://www.mattcutts.com/images/verypopularwebsites-com.png , that is the sort of thing that users complain about and don't want showing up when they do a search. Especially if sites have autogenerated boilerplate content for each one of those links.

I mean, if you're auto-generating a page that has this text: "Elcorillord.com

Common misspellings and typos: Elcroillord.com, Elcorilolrd.com, Elcori.lord.com, Elcofillord.com, www.elcorillord.com, lEcorillord.com, Elcotillord.com, Elcorillor.com, Elcoeillord.com, Elcori,lord.com, Wlcorillord.com, Elcorjllord.com, Elcorillord.coom, Elocrillord.com, Elcor8llord.com, Elvorillord.com, Elcorillprd.com, Elcorillord.cim, Elcorillorf.com, Elcorilloed.com, Elorillord.com, Elckrillord.com, Elcoriplord.com, Elcorillord.ckm, Elcorillord.cm, Elcorillord.ccom, Epcorillord.com, Elcoril;ord.com, Elcoirllord.com, Elcoriillord.com, Elforillord.com, 3lcorillord.com, Elcorollord.com, Elcorillordd.com, Elcorill0rd.com, Elcorillord/com, Elcoriolord.com, Ekcorillord.com, Elcorillord.xom, Elcorillord.co, Elcorilord.com, Elcoillord.com, 4lcorillord.com, Elcoriloord.com, Elcorillorr.com, Eldorillord.com, Elcorillord..com, Elcorrillord.com, http://www.elcorillord.com, El orillord.com, E.corillord.com, Elcorillord. om, Elcorilllrd.com, Elcorillrod.com, Elcoriklord.com, Elcorillorrd.com, Elcorillordcom, Elcorillkrd.com, Elcorillord.om, Elcorlilord.com, Elco4illord.com, Elcorillrd.com, Elcprillord.com, Elcodillord.com, Elcorillordc.om, Ecorillord.com, Elcoorillord.com, Slcorillord.com, Elcorillorx.com, Elcorill9rd.com, Elcorilpord.com, Elcorillord.cpm, Elcorillord.fom, Elco5illord.com, Elc9rillord.com, Elcorillird.com, Elcirillord.com, Elcorillord.clm, Elcorillors.com, Elcorillord.vom, Elcorullord.com, Elcorillord.comm, Elcorillord.c9m, Eocorillord.com, Elcorilloord.com, Elcourillourd.com, E,corillord.com, Elcorkllord.com, Elcorillodr.com, Elcorillodd.com, Elcorillord,com, Elcorillotd.com, Elcorillod.com, Elcorillor.dcom, Elcor9llord.com, Elc0rillord.com, Elcoril,ord.com, Elcorilllord.com, Elcorillo5d.com, EElcorillord.com, Elxorillord.com, E;corillord.com, Elcori;lord.com, Elcorllord.com, Elccorillord.com, Elcrillord.com, Elcoril.ord.com, Elcorilkord.com, Elcorillord.cmo, Ellcorillord.com, Eclorillord.com, Elcorillo4d.com, Rlcorillord.com, wwwelcorillord.com, Elclrillord.com, ElcorillordLcom, Dlcorillord.com, Elcorillofd.com, Elcorillore.com, Elcorillord;com, lcorillord.com, Elcorillorc.com, Elcorillord.c0m, Elcorillord.dom, Elcorillord.ocm."

Surely you have to see where many people would consider that either keyword stuffing, gibberish or typo spam.

xpose20002• 16 years ago

Maybe this can help . . .

I have a few websites that automatically make new posts. As of 10/14, they all show 0 pages indexed in Google. Previously they would get a few thousand visitors per day.

I guess Google feels as though they violate their terms and removed them. It seems to me it was a manual removal.

I received no emails in webmaster tools about the removal.

Matt_Cutts8• 16 years ago

"I have a few websites that automatically make new posts."

Making a bunch of autogenerated sites has its risks. For example, if you were just taking a bunch of MP3 names or Hot Trends queries and then scraping twitter for mentions of those phrases and slapping that all up on a website with scripts, that tends to cruft up our index with autogenerated content that users complain about and that violates our quality guidelines. Likewise, if all you were doing was scraping Twitter for phrases like sad or heartbroken or heartless and throwing that scraped Twitter content up on a webpage with a script, users would also complain about that autogenerated content and it would violate our guidelines. Would that be helpful insight?

vaksel• 16 years ago

would be interesting to see what sort of traction you got with each service. i.e. did you quit when they only had 100 users, or was it more like 100,000

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Really varied across the board, but nothing with anything close to 100K users. For the ones that didn't launch, obviously none :). I can't remember exact numbers for the old stuff, but pretty much everything got a decent amount of SEO traffic that I could play with (run tests on). Decent amount is several hundred to a few thousand uniques a day. More recent stuff more on the order of 100s of users.

run4yourlives• 16 years ago

Kangadoo:

Why did this fail, really? This should be a runaway success. There are millions of people out there that can barely figure out their cameras, let alone understand the concept behind facebook or picasa or flickr or whatever could be considered "competition".

Even with a founder departure, this is a valid idea... why didn't you continue to peruse it?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Yeah, I do think the idea is good, but I didn't want to do the sales work my parter was doing and I'm not nearly as passionate about it as DDG.

SwellJoe• 16 years ago

This is another important lesson for entrepreneurs and hackers to learn. Sometimes, you have to cut loose even good ideas, in the service of the best of your ideas or the one you feel most passionately about.

You'll have dozens, or hundreds, of ideas during your entrepreneurial development...but, any one of them will probably require absolute focus and dedication to make it really work.

djb_hackernews• 16 years ago

This makes me feel better. I've built and released 4 webapps with another in dev and they all seem to be perfect failures, which I've been thinking is perhaps a sign...

acangiano• 16 years ago

An overnight success, 15 years in the making. The lesson here is that you only really need to be successful once, so keep trying.

jonpaul• 16 years ago

Yup. One of Mark Cuban's finest lessons: http://blogmaverick.com/2005/05/30/success-and-motivation-yo...

sdizdar• 16 years ago

Very very inspiring post. I've built and released only two web sites and just a couple of C++/C projects in storage area (of course nothing successful), so I have way to go...

It be would interesting to know what did you learn of each these projects? Which project do you consider the most important from learning perspective?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

It's all very incremental. I certainly learned a bit from each, but probably learned the most from my first "real" startup, learnection. It was first major failure (really ever) and I took it pretty hard at the time.

devmonk• 16 years ago

I'd like to see how much was made or lost on each of these, enough to do angel investing after all of that. I know the $500/day was mentioned, but just curious. Was the bulk of the money made that is now invested from these startups, or some other income?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Not counting my time here, I lost about 30K on learnection, 5-10K (not sure) on Twenty Questions, 10K on Kangadoo. Other than that, it didn't cost me anything to start the others. As for upside, made a few thousand on the ebook, 5-10K on nth Club, and not sure the total on Tldscan (the $500/day max) one. Nothing else made much besides selling NDB.

mthoms2• 16 years ago

Gabriel,

In Googling "namesdatabase" I've come across some old claims of allegedly dubious practices of the site that occurred while you were running it. I know your reputation is stellar here and that you contribute much to the community so I was more than a bit surprised.

May I ask, have you addressed these allegations somewhere? I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt, so I'm wondering where I can read your side of the story. Is there an HN thread or blog post you can point me towards? Many thanks.

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

Happy to answer questions. I think these address most things:

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/bdlri/dont_want_...

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/cnce8/duckduckgo...

http://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/cncn2/a_search_engin...

http://ye.gg/mixergy

I think a lot of it stems from either misunderstanding, edge cases (http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/02/one-in-a-million...), or just a fundamental problem with the idea of referring friends.

mthoms2• 16 years ago

Thanks for the links and your transparency. I will read up. Just to clarify - the reason I see this as relevant is because I'm a regular DDG user and put a lot of trust in your privacy claims (no logging of queries, etc).

asb• 16 years ago

How did you decide when it was time to stop and try something else?

epi0Bauqu25• 16 years ago

In the past, no particular process, which was part of the problem. Now, I'd do this: http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2010/05/to-pivot-or-not-...

myth_drannon• 16 years ago

For those who missed , Andy Brice interviewed some startup/projects founders who failed :

http://successfulsoftware.net/2010/05/27/learning-lessons-fr...

frederickcook• 16 years ago

Among my non-startup friends, there seems to be this pre-conception that people are working in some day-job and one day, have some crazy idea that nobody else has thought of and go and start a company and become successful.

Good to see several people writing recently (from experience) about how this couldn't be farther from the truth. While it may happen from time to time, it's clear that most founders of successful (technology) startups have built a long-term lifestyle around working really hard, for a really long time, on a bunch of their own ideas and projects. Especially true given what we know about how much of a role luck and timing plays in the success of startups.

Thanks for the post, Gabriel.

Andrew_Quentin• 16 years ago

I wonder if the lesson from this is perhaps narrow but deep rather than wide but shallow?

erikstarck• 16 years ago

And just imagine there are people, most people actually, that think they have This Great Idea and don't want to tell anyone about it without an NDA because they think you will steal it.

prawn• 16 years ago

I like hearing about these and would be interested in hearing more, but can't imagine everyone would want HN flooded with personal failure histories. Is it worth cataloguing them somewhere, with potential for HNers to comment on or takeover or try again?

Call it something like 'Start Up Down'?

What do people think? Obviously not really something that's going to become a lucrative venture but it wouldn't be tough to create either.

My history of (mostly failed) side projects and startups

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