I'm quitting 6 months into building my startup, and why quitting doesn't mean I've failed

Hi, I'm the founder of LevelText and the author of this post, happy to answer any questions!

"YCombinator urged us to consider solving a must-have rather than a nice-to-have problem."

This really hit hard. My book subscription startup fell into this category too of 'nice to have' rather than 'must-have'. It's so hard to walk away from your passion because there is no real urgency for the product. I learned that lesson hard.

Brilliant article, and so sorry to hear it didn't work out. Looks like you put a lot of effort into it and sounds like you solved many problems other apps didn't.

Thanks for sharing your story! This was a really good post, and the kind I wish we saw more of on Indie Hackers.

I think you're absolutely right that the language learning space is difficult to make money from. The comments you shared from YCombinator that the space is mostly a hobby one and not a must-have resonates with my understanding of the space.

In my opinion, the education space in general is a tough nut to crack. People who are in the space don't have money, or if they do have money, they'd likely prefer to put that money towards traditional forms of education (classes). It feels like the people who are seeking out apps are doing so because they want a free way to learn and not because they want a better way to learn.

On the whole, it sounds like it was a productive six months and the fact that you had a fixed cut-off point for yourself was smart. I do agree that there's a general sense in this community that giving up is "bad" and that yes, that's mostly because we do only see the survivors who didn't give up. We don't read about everybody else who failed to achieve great success, except in cases like yours where you wanted to share your story. (Think about how many people experienced what you experienced and then thought, "Nah, I'm not gonna write about how I failed to achieve my dreams.")

I'm interested in this space myself because I wrote a flashcard app, Fresh Cards, and have also noticed that it's hard to get people excited about it. There's obviously free solutions already, like Anki, or more full-fledged solutions for general language learning, so a better flashcard app is of marginal interest to people in this space.

In my case, though, I had experience already writing apps, and when I wrote the app, I wasn't thinking of necessarily turning it into a business. I did charge from the start, but didn't push myself to make a decent MRR. It was only until 6 months ago for me that I decided to quit my job and try making apps on the side that I started turning up the heat a bit on the project, hoping to get more interest in sales. It makes about $100-150/month right now, so at least it's making some money, but clearly not something that could sustain me. I'm planning on trying a few other ideas and have given myself 12 months in total to try to figure it out.

Best of luck to you on whatever you do next!

...Great articulation of the whole problem. I'm currently trying to build an app with 2 friends and will share this article for us to deconstruct the true USP and value we offer to customers!

The biggest hurdle we're finding to date is actually pushing people to adopt and abandon some existing processes even if they're inferior. Behaviour change is so hard!

This was super helpful. So many important lessons here that get glossed over by others like defining how long you are willing to work on a startup with no revenue, for example.

One thing I'd say is that you don't need to wear multiple hats to succeed - you point out that you think you need to know marketing, sales, web dev, product management etc. and other founders will know these things and will, therefore, have a competitive advantage. I'd disagree, my experience is that most founders don't know all of these things, and will either learn as they go or hire someone to fill in the gaps. Yes, many will fail, but it's wrong to assume that those who succeed knew these things. I used to think the same and wasted a lot of time learning things that in reality it was just easy to hire someone who actually had the skills.

Wow you brought up a really interesting viewpoint and I completely agree with you. As Thomas Edison said, he didn't fail, but he found 10000 ways that won't work. Treat every obstacle as a learning experience and I have no doubt's that you'll eventually reach your goal :)

Because at least you gained huge experience.
In the life, there is no meaning of failure if you try many ways. Don't give up.

I skimmed your article, but what I want to say is that 6 months are not enough to decide if a startup will be successful or not.

Nice write-up, you'll hit the mark eventually. I lost count of the number of companies I started (all with marginal success) until I got it right. That company has since been sold, but all the lessons learned along the way helped for sure.

Keep going!

"Why language learning is a poor business"
It's not a poor business, you just didn't crack it.

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