[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?

[jmaskell]

It didn't make enough to support the team. There was an argument for running it as a side project / one man business, but that wasn't something that I wanted to do (and investors supported/advised when making that decision).