Why not founding it again?
A crutial point of a startup success is timing. Maybe this is a case of founder's timing. Founders all the time decide to pivot or persevere. And sometimes, to quit. Why it has to be a permanent quit?
Three years and a good amount of experience laters, the founder can make it happen!
I think we may face a failed startup as something you shut down, that is not demanding any more of your time and money. But not something you must never again touch. Not dead, but hibernating.
Soneca, you are absolutely right. In this case, we shut it down, and my co-founder decided to move on. This just wasn't meant to be. After that, I decided to team up with a different friend of mine, and we are working on LaunchBit. So, while that was the end for Parrotview, it's not the end of my startup journey. :)
I don't know if there was much you could do with a product like that. I don't know who that would appeal to. Was it basically Google Hangouts for shopping?
Walk around a mall. Watch the number of people using their phones to take photos, talk to their friends about options, phoning home to check they're getting the right thing, etc.
If I were to do that all over again, I would've focused on building an audience around a pinterest-like blog or FB page with cool retail items so that we would've had people to launch to.
Great advice. Thanks for sharing. I'm working on my own project and know that the failures you note are universal. It's helpful to hear them again and use it to channel my efforts on building an audience especially when development is slow.
It seems to me the main reason for this failed startup is lack of marketing. I am in the middle of building/promoting a startup company and the first batch of customer seems very quite difficult to attract.
