It was 2008, I was a junior in college, I had been coding on-and-off for a few years (for hire) but was anxious to do my own thing.
I decided my "killer idea" was to sell safe-sex supplies online (condoms, lube, toys, etc). I built a site called "OrgasmSafely.com" and then opened 5 credit cards and bought about $15,000 worth of inventory.
I was renting a tiny room near campus, and my inventory filled it up. Boxes and boxes of condoms, gallons and gallons of lube. I had to put my bed against the wall. I slept in a ball in the corner.
I ordered dozens of T-shirts that said "OrgasmSafely" and handed them out on campus. I printed up thousands of flyers and handed them out at nightclubs. I setup an affiliate program. I ran google adwords campaigns. I setup an ebay store. I wrote to the school newspaper for feature stories, etc etc etc.
Nobody came.
Within a few weeks the minimum payments of the credit cards overwhelmed me. They were all maxed out. I was toast. I couldn't even afford to pay for hosting. I shut it down and walked away, with destroyed credit.
Sigh...
Post-mortem lessons: Don't buy inventory up front. And don't start a business you can't afford to keep running for awhile.
I posted this on my site a few weeks ago, detailing my most recent failed project. "Failure" might be a harsh description in my case, but "success" hardly seems appropriate either.
If we define a "failed project" as one that someone has worked on and then shelved when it didn't gain traction, then I think that perhaps a more common scenario is that of the Zombie Project; after spending so much work on something you can't bear to shut it down, so you leave it ticking over, not updating anything and not attracting any new users. Until you pronounce the project officially "dead" it's not a failure...until then it'll just keep limping along. I think recognising when a project has gone "zombie" and having the balls to kill it off is massively important, both for time, sanity and closure's sake.
It was 2008, I was a junior in college, I had been coding on-and-off for a few years (for hire) but was anxious to do my own thing.
I decided my "killer idea" was to sell safe-sex supplies online (condoms, lube, toys, etc). I built a site called "OrgasmSafely.com" and then opened 5 credit cards and bought about $15,000 worth of inventory.
I was renting a tiny room near campus, and my inventory filled it up. Boxes and boxes of condoms, gallons and gallons of lube. I had to put my bed against the wall. I slept in a ball in the corner.
I ordered dozens of T-shirts that said "OrgasmSafely" and handed them out on campus. I printed up thousands of flyers and handed them out at nightclubs. I setup an affiliate program. I ran google adwords campaigns. I setup an ebay store. I wrote to the school newspaper for feature stories, etc etc etc.
Nobody came.
Within a few weeks the minimum payments of the credit cards overwhelmed me. They were all maxed out. I was toast. I couldn't even afford to pay for hosting. I shut it down and walked away, with destroyed credit.
Sigh...
Post-mortem lessons: Don't buy inventory up front. And don't start a business you can't afford to keep running for awhile.
...Also don't sell condoms on the internet...