share your most valuable lessons with younger generation
how did failing thought you the most valuable lesson(s)?
what's your biggest business failure and what did you learn from it?
byu/Odd_Awareness_6935 inEntrepreneur
Posted by Odd_Awareness_6935
5 Comments
Not listening to myself and trying to do business for years with basically no result, because I was trying to fit in normal structure while being neurodivergent.
Do I treat it as a business failure? Yes, because if I would look closer first at myself, and then I would build business around my skills and abilities instead of trying to follow whatever people and internet is saying, then I wouldn’t spin around like shit in an ice hole…
I think my biggest failure was trying to build overcomplicated businesses without a simple/clear revenue model (Whisk.com as a B2C business).
We build a recipe app (relatively niche) + tried to build a bespoke ad platform on top of it. We didn’t get enough scale to make any ad model really work – then diluted our focus by spending 50% of the time building a new type of ad model. The result was failure.
After 3 years of trying we ran out of money. We then switched to a B2B model where we only offered a paid for API. Within 2 years we were profitable, had scaled from 2 to 30 people, and a year later we had 3 acquisition offers (accepted Samsung’s).
Simpler / clean business models work better.
Not validating my idea/ market for my idea before I started building.
Or worse yet, validating wrong but think I was doing it right.
Gained early traction because the idea was the first of the market, focused too much on marketing it and too little on improving it / listening to feedback.
I prioritized thinking instead of action. Now I take more actions like 70% and 30% thinking