How my startup failed (1999)
In this postmortem from 2016, @vivekd candidly breaks down the dissolution of their startup, examining the fatal assumptions, misallocated resources, and market dynamics that led to its shutdown.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Early signals were often rationalized away instead of prompting an immediate pivot in distribution or pricing.
The psychological toll of running out of capital compounds operational friction in a solo or small team setup.
Key Antidote: Validate paying willingness before committing months to building sophisticated product features.
Community Debate Themes:
Community discussions on HN centered on identifying product-market fit early, avoiding vanity metrics, and the emotional recovery process after shutting down.
CATEGORY Postmortems & Failures →
HISTORICAL ERA Cloud & Mobile Era (2014–2019)
COMMUNITY SCORE 141 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 21 comments
I'm pretty surprised he had trouble getting 10,000 condoms.
I once helped organize a student conference and asked a manufacturer to donate 5,000 condoms, about one per day per participant. Yes, we were aiming high.
I noticed something was wrong when the truck driver started unloaded three pallets worth of condoms. They had sent us 5,000 boxes with 25 condoms each = 125,000.
During the next two years, we did manage to find a few events that gratefully took most of the load of our hands. But a few thousand remained in my basement and I learnt: there's nothing sadder than a thousand expired condoms.
Surely today you would get them made in China at the same kind of total cost. No more lacerated fingers putting them together yourself. There are fulfillment companies that take your stock and then send them out to customers as orders come in. Setup a website that hooks into the fulfillment company process and you have a virtually no touch process.
The article was written in 1999, before the advent of internet-based commerce. Maybe that could have made things turn out differently for him? Interesting post!
It is actually pretty refreshing to read a "startup failure" story for a change. IMO, HN should have these more often!
Funniest piece I've read in a long time. And there are many lessons in there, too.