Stupid things I've done as a tech co-founder wannabe

Chris Chen — Thu, 17 Oct 2019 12:51:56 +0000

case study 1 - clickstyle.com.au (just another two-sided marketplace)

jumped at the opportunity too quick because I was too scared to work on my own ideas.
tried to solve the problem I wasn't excited about.
tried to get a .com domain so we could go global one day. ended up with a .com.au domain, and we still failed, in merely one country.
had an "equity vs contribution" doubt since day 1, but didn't speak up, letting the resentment build up inside.
rolled my own admin portal while being oblivious to things like retool.com and react-admin.
spent time to learn yet another framework meteor.js though I would be totally fine with the good old express.js (nothing wrong with meteor.js, nothing wrong with express.js either).

case study 2 - fuutr.co (just another e-scooter app)

jumped at the opportunity too quick (again) because the co-founder said a VC promised a 10m round as long as we got the MVP built, and I would be a CTO leading an army of engineers.
tried to solve the problem I wasn't excited about.
worked on the project fulltime, unpaid, meanwhile providing a family of 4 plus mortgage. thought I would be mentally tough enough, but got stressed out 4 months in.
found out my co-founder was a natural hustler, thought it was indispensable to a successful startup, without realising I got hustled too.
thought we could win city council trial over Lime with a pixel-perfect app and more feature set.
rolled my own admin portal (again) while being oblivious to things like retool.com and react-admin.

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