[mfieldhouse]

Just for fun and to hopefully one day avoid failing in a startup, I like to do post mortems. What I understood of Vinetrade is it struggled to make any income in a market which isn't comfortable right now trading online.

1. 2/12 Launches vinetrade

2. It manages wine portfolios

3. Raises funding

Getting funding so early is an indication that early profitability was probably not the main focus. Can give a false sense of success and idea validation.

4. People already trade wine but are not using an online service to do it yet

If this is your first startup, don't try and revolutionise an industry. Let someone else blow the money and make the mistakes first. Be a fast follower instead.

5. JM talks about building an MVP

Vinetrade should be your product? Another indication of not focusing on achieving profitability and a good revenue model and pricing structure early on.

6. 3/13 Closes vinetrade. Mentions it would have needed more funding.

Funding focus again an indication of lack of focus on early idea validation through profitability.

[jmaskell]

The struggle was more around scaling the business. We had income, and raised some seed funding on the back of it (in order to go full time on the project). We didn't take further investment because we knew we couldn't scale and provide the return that investors would have wanted.

While running Vinetrade, I learnt a lot about testing ideas and getting validation with minimal effort. The MVP post was about some of these lessons. If I was starting again, I'd get that validation much more quickly (but it would likely be the same early validation again).

[mfieldhouse]

But if it made enough money to keep yourself and the others in a job then why ever declare it as a failure? Unless it didn't make enough money?