Those who've abandoned a project/startup? What made you do that?

Raymond Yeh
2 replies
I'll go first: I co-founded a startup in the crypto/fintech space where we were initially tackling the high remittance cost around Southeast Asia and raised some funds. We were struggling with GTM and regulations and were forced to pivot into another idea. The 2nd idea was in the space of democratising access to fixed income financial products and we were faced with similar headwind. We realised that we weren't focusing on the customer or audience. That's the point where I've different opinion with my co-founder. To be honest there were also changing life circumstances - I also just had my first child and needed to figure how the new life looks like. We decided it's best I leave. Since then the originals startup has went on to their 3rd pivot and is making great progress in acquiring customers in the personal asset tracking space and I've started a new startup myself in the headless CMS space and got my first customers. It's been a year since we've "broken up" and decided to revisit the topic again and made a podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtP5zs1MM1Q Interested to hear about the rest of you who've abandoned a project/startup, what was that like and what was the reasons behind?

Replies

Jasper Miles Hawkins
I also abandoned a project because of product-market fit issues. Had an AI-powered app idea but realized the market was already saturated with similar tools and we didn't have a strong enough differentiator or value prop that resonated with users. Sucks but sometimes you gotta know when to pivot or pull the plug rather than sinking more time and money into something that's not getting traction. Curious to hear others' experiences too.
Julia Watson
I abandoned a project because of market fit issues. We had a great product but it didn’t resonate with our target audience.
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