Admitting to failure is one of the suckiest experiences in a human life. You never know whether you’re a lousy quitter or the only one going against a herd of idiots. This psychological discomfort makes people cling to worthless stock, reject modern technology and work at dead-end jobs – The latter being my hypothesized case.
The past 6 months have been spent working on three separate web projects. All three exciting, all three could not lift up. The first lacked an able CEO (and perhaps much more) whereas the latter two lacked a vision and had an unbalanced team.
The single most important takeaway for me is that building a consumer-facing business is not a flat world as I first imagined. If you build it, you have to make them come.
There is a crucial role for marketers to carefully select the distribution channels; The process of identifying a product and knowing that it is “right” when you have only a handful of users is very elusive; and working as a team (as opposed to a committee) requires a special type of people with some relevant experience or unique abilities.
Most importantly, consumer-facing businesses are rarely built for a flat audience. Facebook, for example, started in the cozy college niche. You have to find a smaller community to grow in (and I tumbled about this a while ago).
Wrapping up this bag, and needing some money, it seems like I’m back to day-jobbing. Round #2 in my startup life might be over, but there will be a round #3.
