Fail Fast

Around the time of my wedding I spent a lot of time thinking about scotchel.com. While I had made progress on it, I wasn’t moving nearly as quickly as I wanted. I’d moved the release date a few times, swapped technologies partway through, and incorporated new technology that I hadn’t originally thought about adding to the site. None of these events were bad in and of themselves. There are good reasons to move dates, swap technologies, and change your plans as you go. But when you start seeing a repeating pattern of delaying launch it’s a good indication that you’ve got some problems. Your number one goal in any startup should be to launch something quickly and build from there. If you don’t launch the application your chances of failure are 100%.

So with these red flags in the back of my mind I thought about what the larger problem was. The first issue is that I wasn’t passionate about the idea. There are some major problems with current dating sites and lots of room for improvement. But at the end of the day working to improve dating wasn’t something that excited me. At least not to to the point that I wanted to work on it day after day for months on end. Strike one.

The second issue was that I would never be one of the end-users of my application (note the “my wedding” part above). Again, not necessarily an issue if you have a good grasp of the problem and you’re in touch with lots of would-be users of your application. However, I wasn’t in touch with lots of would-be users, and I wasn’t particularly motivated to go out and meet a bunch more. Strike two.

The third issue is that I hadn’t done my due diligence in solidifying a solid revenue stream other than advertising. There’s nothing wrong with having advertising as your main source of income, but advertising is generally a lot more effective when you already have a decent membership base using your website. I was starting with zero users. Meaning the only way to monetize the site would be to rapidly build a user base. Strike three.

With all of that in mind I decided that it was no longer a good idea to pursue scotchel.com. It was a hard decision but it ultimately feels right. It is a lot better to fail now than to invest increasingly larger amounts of time on the project and fail later. It is always better to fail fast.

Next time: Evaluating Business Ideas