Ask HN: How do you know that it's time to shutdown your startup?

4 points by switchstance 3 years ago | 10 comments

I started Bestlist.com around two years ago. It is a search and discovery app that allows users to find the best of anything. The idea came about after I had grown tired of the current state of search, where a query often resulted in SEO-optimized blog posts instead of the desired information. In a nutshell, Bestlist works by taking the user’s query, scraping the internet for reputable articles and social media posts relating to the query and extracting the mentioned “listings.” To form our ranking, we take many factors into account. We look at occurrences, the listing’s ratings on various sites, sentiment regarding the listing, and a few other things. Our results are not perfect, but we’re improving them on a daily basis.

We launched on Producthunt with lackluster results. After talking with users and getting feedback, the main issue I see is that people all have their own ways of searching and finding what they’re looking for, and Bestlist doesn’t provide enough of an “Aha” moment to stay at the top of mind to form new habits.

I’ve been funding the five person company with revenue from the sell of my first company, but I’m having a hard time stomaching spending more money each month, when we seem to be make little to no progress in winning users over. Add to that, the seemingly overnight onslaught in AI capabilities and the fear that what we’re creating is heading towards obsolescence, and I feel absolutely defeated.

A competitor of our’s raised a $10 million series A recently, so there are clearly some believers in the problem we’re trying to solve.

I'm at a loss. When do you know it’s time to shut your startup down? Any feedback is welcomed.

Thank you, Tyler

logicalmonster 3 years ago |

Hi Tyler. Not trying to discourage you because I find these kinds of sites fascinating, just wanting to give some constructive feedback.

1) The card-like layout of your site might not be the best one for a ranking service. Cards are good for physically taking up the least screen real-estate when you have different size text and images, but sort of feel visually off and jumbled for strictly ordering stuff.

2) The main thing about your site that bothers me is the same thing that bothers me about Google: the opaqueness of the algorithm. Say that I search for a specific genre of movies and find the "best" ones. Best according to who or what? Maybe you have the greatest and most sophisticated system that the world has, but not knowing anything about the reason for sorting leaves me rather uncomfortable.

3) I wonder how much consistency and caching might be possible for a site like this. I searched for Presidents and US Presidents, and got slow and wildly different search results both times.

switchstance 3 years ago | |

Thank you for checking it out, and for your feedback. You can't really discourage me anymore than I already am. XD 1. I see your point, and will think on it. 2. This is a tough one. On one hand we want people to trust us, but on the other, we don't want people easily gaming the site. 3. I agree. Consistency is lacking and this is on our todo list. (How the hell did Trump make it on both lists!? Clearly lots of work to do)

logicalmonster 3 years ago | | |

> How the hell did Trump make it on both lists!? Clearly lots of work to do

1) For what it's worth, I'm not personally offended by this kind of mild joke. But making this kind of joke is probably not the way to become seen as the most trusted and impartial platform. You're not doing anything to set my mind at ease that you'd never put your thumb on whatever algorithm you have.

2) As for why somebody might like Trump? We recently had an era of relative peace and prosperity. Kind of hard to be up in arms about a few mean tweets when the world is heading closer to a new Cold (or even Hot) War and the wheels are falling off the economy. You of course don't have to agree with me about that, but as somebody with a ranking site, you ought to recognize that there are perspectives which can make you have radically different opinions with others.

muzani 3 years ago |

Many startups also pivot over to something else entirely (e.g. Slack) because they have a great team with good chemistry. You could just tell everyone, "We have 3 months. Let's stop working on this because it's clearly not working. What do you guys want to do?"

On the bright side, you have an organization with nothing to lose, on the dawn of AI spring. Most other capable organizations are still working on whatever it is they're working on, only playing with AI on weekends. You should be able to grasp some low hanging fruit out there.

It might not even directly be related to AI - things like hardware, infra, fact checkers, nickel mining, all these things will boom together with increased AI investment.

ezedv 3 years ago |

I found this article very interesting that talks about what you're asking: https://www.ratherlabs.com/post/biggest-mistakes-first-time-...

v1l 3 years ago |

What are your competitors doing differently? (it's not the funding) Do they have traction?

Do you have any hail mary cards left up your sleeve? If not, or if you've run out of steam, or don't believe in this anymore (blind faith not allowed), then shut it down and cut your losses asap.

mattewong 3 years ago |

Do you have revenue? If not, how close to revenue are you?

switchstance 3 years ago | |

We don't have any revenue, but it's not something we're currently focused on.

gravitate 3 years ago | | |

Business logic should take precedent over the actual code-base. Build in business logic into everything you do, and also have marketing second and be ready to launch on social media (Have a Facebook page/group etc).