Began a startup senior year of college (Thryv). Managed to build a team, get sales, generate revenue and score a large partnership. Long story short, I was a customer of my own product and assumed I knew what other customers wanted. I spent the next 6 months having a product built without validating my initial assumptions before launching. The product was too niche only fitting customers who had my specific workflow and I ultimately found this out too late when we ran out of steam/resources. Total timeline (including fuckups) was 3 years.
I was non-technical at my first startup (domain expert & business/marketing/sales) and after I shut it down, I spent the next 8 months teaching myself how to build software programs, becoming a now tech co-founder.
I then started my second startup (http://notiontheory.com/) by getting $20k pre-sales in 2 weeks to validate my idea before committing to it.
Attempt 2 has been far more successful and we're already beginning hiring in month 5 bootstrapped.
I was non-technical at my first startup (domain expert & business/marketing/sales) and after I shut it down, I spent the next 8 months teaching myself how to build software programs, becoming a now tech co-founder.
I then started my second startup (http://notiontheory.com/) by getting $20k pre-sales in 2 weeks to validate my idea before committing to it.
Attempt 2 has been far more successful and we're already beginning hiring in month 5 bootstrapped.