A Startup Guy

One of the concerns that stops many people from starting up their own company is this very thought. What happens if I start my business and no one buys? The truth is, that’s a risk for all of us. And most entrepreneurs will experience it at some time or another. However, if you let that stop you from achieving your goals, that’s the biggest shame of all.

Ouch
It’s a big ol’ wedgie to the ego if you put your heart & soul into a product and no one seems to want it. I know. I’ve been there… recently. For years I dreamed of having a service that would allow people to find historic sites that interested them and pull down data that helped them understand and appreciate the place more. Originally, I couldn’t act on it because I “knew” the costs would be too high and the technology just wasn’t quite there. A few years later, I realized no one was going to do this for me. I set out to build what I could. I designed a system that would allow people to collect their favorite sites online into customized travel guides. They could add site listings as wellas rate and review existing listings. Travelers could start their own blog through the site to talk about the sites they wanted to see and what they’d already seen.

Sounds great doesn’t it? About halfway through building it, I found out that Yahoo Travel had a general travel site that did just this. Then I discovered other sites I hadn’t found before doing similar stuff. (I still had a niche product – history, theirs were general travel sites.) To make matters worse, I had to scale back some of the features due to my limited coding skills and funds. (This project is where I learned to build PHP sites and work with mySQL.) Now, I had a non-unique, scaled back site. But I launched. And I was proud. And no one came. I invited everyone I knew: family, friends, friends of friends, friends of family. People came once and didn’t come back. I was crushed. I tried for a year and half to get regular users. But it didn’t happen. I took it personally.

Finally, I stepped back and looked closely at what I had built. It was fun to use (for me), but it wasn’t remarkable. It was a niche version of what others were doing. Why use my niche site when you can use Yahoo’s ultra-integrated, hooked-into-Flickr-and-Yahoo-Travel site? Why go to my site with no users when you could go through TripAdvisor with millions of active users? Finally, I quit feeling sorry for myself and realized that this wasn’t a referendum on me. The site wasn’t remarkable, but it didn’t mean people didn’t like me. In fact, many actually like the site. I get more than 1,000 unique visitors every month. People looking for information on historic sites. They just aren’t regular users.

Lessons Learned
The lesson is that if you throw your own party and no one comes, don’t take it personally. It hurts your feelings, but feel bad for a few days and then move on. You’ve got lots of potential. This isn’t your only idea. If you move on and work at your next project with the same gusto you gave this one, and apply the new lessons you’ve learned, you will eventually succeed.