After the Startup Setback: Lessons learned and the road ahead

What follows is a collection of raw experiences of trying to build a startup, facing setbacks, and the road ahead!

History

Almost 2 years ago, I embarked on the startup journey full-time by resigning from my job. I had been doing startups before that as a side project, and I used to think that not going full-time was the reason my projects hadn't taken off. So after feeling that time was ticking, I decided to just resign and start a startup. I was 23 at that time, and was very hopeful I would make it work within the next 3 months itself.

The Initial Phase

The first months were quite amazing. I was relaxed and just focusing on building the product. I started attending startup events and met some amazing people. I thought I was building something truly revolutionary and it would just change everything. Little did I know that I was trying to do everything at once and was not focusing on getting started. Eventually, after 6 months of building, I saw a bigger gap and thought of pivoting into the B2B segment after watching some YC podcasts.

The Middle Phase

Once I thought of pivoting, I shifted to Bangalore. This phase was the most amazing of all. Once again, I thought that I was building something really extraordinary. People were quite amazed listening to my idea, and I felt like we would scale it to millions in the upcoming year.

The Setback

When we embarked on the new idea, the thing that eventually stopped us was the lack of contact with the customers — we just focused on investors and the product. Later, I decided to just focus on the product. I burned 6 months into it, and this was the biggest setback. This phase completely took all my happiness away.

One thing I realized was that I still believed in the idea and wanted to pursue it. While building in this phase, I started to feel my ego shedding — I was beginning to understand how the world and the environment actually work. I got into reading more and more books, felt a sense of spirituality within me, and felt like I was getting to know myself more deeply.

Things changed, the market changed, and almost all of my friends who were doing startups quit and went back to their jobs. I'm in a similar situation, but I have decided to keep optimizing and truly learn from my mistakes. My top mistakes are:

1. Falling in love with the idea: When you fall in love with your idea, you just want to build it, you just want to see it live. You care too much about the UX, about how users would feel and think about you. You keep adding features and trying to make it perfect. That, my friend, is the biggest trap. Believe me — I had been doing startup courses and reading books for almost 5 years, and I knew all the concepts: launch your MVP, validate, etc. But this mistake of falling in love with the idea overshadows everything else, and you just want to build the perfect product. Identify this trap as soon as possible and just focus on launching and getting traction.

2. Not having clear sprint goals: When you're building a startup, especially solo or with a lean team, you don't follow sprints, you don't track your progress, and it often happens that you lose sight of the bigger picture and keep working on just the small things. When you follow sprints and retrospect on your progress, you get a sense of how much more time it will take and can plan accordingly. For me, I had tried building up sprints, but I wasn't consistent and eventually followed my gut feelings, which led me to pivot every time!

3. The courage to say No: When you're building a startup, you need to pick one market, one problem, and just focus on it. You'll get a thousand ideas, but your goal at this stage is to recognize that adding those ideas would hamper your current progress. Better to note them down and keep some as future releases that you can integrate once you have enough resources.

4. Not launching early: Whatever you decide to make, just estimate how much time it would take to build what you're thinking. Then put yourself in the customer's shoes — see what needs to be done from their point of view and why they would pay you for it, what value you're providing. And just try to solve and build that — the leanest version of it — that you can launch at the earliest. Startups die because of slow momentum, lack of feedback, and not learning from the market. Overcome your fears. Fail as fast as you can by shipping rather than trying to build the perfect product without taking these factors into account.

Current Time

As of now, I have a pretty good sense of things from talking to some customers — the challenge being where to get started. I'm still calculating the time, cost, and resources it would need to take off.

Learning from these mistakes, I hope I won't repeat them and will just start getting traction. I'm about to pick one direction, launch it, and then keep iterating based on market feedback. I'll write about it and share on this blog — how we plan the next phase and our progress in overcoming past mistakes and learning from them.

Thank you for reading this. I hope you got some value from it. If you're trying to build a startup — question your way of building it so you don't fall into the founder's trap. Keep learning from everything; it's all part of the process. Best wishes!