Lack of leadership, we had a general idea of what we wanted but it was never defined. We wanted Shopify, years before they came along, 2001. But we never defined the product because no one took leadership of the product and business.
Bad programming, (me) had just finished college and thought I could lead a team of programmers because I had done an ok prototype that was actually working at a small scale. Given that specs were being defined on the fly then the programming was a mess. To scale it, we brought in programmers hoping it would help but they mostly sat around because we didn't know what we were building. Also, we got subpar programmers because they were cheap. One guy managed to BS his way into a paycheck for 5 months without ever programming a line of code. After he was fired, I found out that that was his specialty, getting hired and getting fired a few months later.
We could not meet deadlines, we could not meet self-defined deadlines so the investor's money stopped.
A lot of useless infighting due to egos, we could not figure out the business but we sure found ways to fight and argue.
I wish we would have been more willing to learn as opposed to being so arrogant by thinking we knew everything. I use it as a warning every time I think I know everything and it brings me back to reality. We lasted 2.5 years. We should have closed shop at 3 months.
Bad programming, (me) had just finished college and thought I could lead a team of programmers because I had done an ok prototype that was actually working at a small scale. Given that specs were being defined on the fly then the programming was a mess. To scale it, we brought in programmers hoping it would help but they mostly sat around because we didn't know what we were building. Also, we got subpar programmers because they were cheap. One guy managed to BS his way into a paycheck for 5 months without ever programming a line of code. After he was fired, I found out that that was his specialty, getting hired and getting fired a few months later.
We could not meet deadlines, we could not meet self-defined deadlines so the investor's money stopped.
A lot of useless infighting due to egos, we could not figure out the business but we sure found ways to fight and argue.
I wish we would have been more willing to learn as opposed to being so arrogant by thinking we knew everything. I use it as a warning every time I think I know everything and it brings me back to reality. We lasted 2.5 years. We should have closed shop at 3 months.