Where are my mistakes?

TIto Morais

Hello,

I am a software developer myself and I started developing an idea about 2 years ago.

Some mistakes I am already aware of, others not yet. For that reason I decided to write a little bit of my story in here.

As I said I am a software developer that have not much experience on the management field also on the startup on. The only guideline I tried to follow was the "Lean startup", but there are some details and specific situations that I believe are not covered by books, but by others experience.

The main error, I have spent more than an year building an MVP. This I know is something wrong, I started an application with many features and I was cutting off to make it as thin as

possible, but even like the simplest page took a long time.

 

1st Mistake (didn't check developers work closely): I hired a full stack developer to make the service from Upwork and I didn't check the code. The problem is that this person apparently was intelligent and good, but he really

like to over complicated the code in a way that the other developers after him couldn't understand the code. He made about 80% of the website and I didn't know if I throw his work away or start from zero. Was not an easy decision, we had meetings almost everyday after my work and there was a lot of code. After hiring different developers I noticed some of them were bullshitting and didn't want to work and I realize that doesn't matter how the person is good, he can be also a motherfucker and don't care about your project or you. And even the

good ones you need to be checking all the time.

 

2nd Mistake (The design is awful): I had the documentation and I hired a web designer to make the website, after the developer would add the functionalities. Looks like a perfect plan, huh? If I could come back on time I would hire an UX/Ui and after the designer. I didn't know about the UI/UX design thing before, the company where I work the designs were always made by the full stack developers - and it wasn't for public like mine, but for private, so the design wasn't a big issue.

3rd Mistake (I believe it should be monetized since the beginning): This is a mistake I am still trying to solve, my first version of my project I won't get any money yet, but the second version will have the possibility for people to add paid

courses (it's an e-learning project). That is the thing, to make the MVP most simple as possible I needed to remove the profitable part (I don't know if its a big mistake).

 

The website that is still on development is called Emaua (I can't post the link in here yet, the forum didn't allow me yet) - the Home and About will be changed to be presentable for end-users and some functionalities are still buggy or missing, but the overall idea is to map Universities with YouTube videos using a University like structure: Courses, Subjects, Syllabus and Lessons with Videos from YouTube. This is almost finishing, hopefully in few months it will be available for public.

I posted here because I didn't know where else I could get those advises, I have never been in a startup event before and in my city it doesn't happen very often. Hope in here I would get

some advise.  

Thanks

JohnnyCowboy

Hello,

Thanks for sharing your story.

My name is John but most people call me Johnny Cowboy.

I can relate to your story.

I started my very first business 7 years ago in the software space while homeless living out of my car.

Since then, I've started somewhere around 30 businesses and most of them being a failure....it was hell on earth.

After all of those failures I've decided to create a Free PDF for aspiring entrepreneurs to help them avoid the hell that I've had to experience.

You can access my free PDF at www dot brokestrapped dot com/fo

I didn't want to post a link due to spamming purposes.

Cheers and I hope this PDF adds value to your future venture.

RichardParker

Thank you for sharing this story.