But maybe he can compress someone else's terrible experience down to 6 or 3 months, or stop them from sinking their own money (or that of family/friends) into an obvious faliure. There's another failures to go around; we don't all need to life every one of them.
It would be nice if it did, but that's not how experience works.
Which is to say that yes, we can learn from the mistakes of powers, and the story is worth telling.
For 99% of people, who want safety and security, they'll just ho get a job anyway. For the 1% who want to start something new, well 4 in 5 will fail either 5 years. Those failures are the experience needed to find success. Some get there quicker, some abandon good ideas too quickly or bad ideas too slowly.
That's how we learn along the way, and yes, absorb the lessons of others.
Yeah honestly I’m not sure what someone is meant to take out of this. The experience is really useful. But if me and Gus worked this out after 3 months, we could have cofounded our own thing!
Yes, and no. Sure you might have figured it out sooner. But there's a lot you learned in the other 8 months which you shouldn't negate.
You could have taken Gus' dad's advice - and you'd have saved some lot of time, but equally missed out on so much learning.
Look, most opportunities are bad, or at the very least risky. But if you wanted safe and secure you can just go get a job. Some risks are worth taking on, even if they look risky, and even if they fail.
Experience helps you at least identify the risk. Both in product and in people. Some products will just never work (), some people aren't worth working with.
() your mechanic program was likely doomed because "that's not how cars work". I was never going to be a customer because I have a mechanic who's been looking after my cars for 30 years. He always seems to have cars to work on, do I guess he's not a customer either. If I buy a car new it comes with a service plan, so I'm out that loop.
In other words I suspect your app solved a problem that's only a problem to fresh grads with their first car. And they just ask their mates, or their dad.
As you discovered you can't feature your way out of the "no market" problem. You discovered that finding a market is more important than building a product. All excellent lessons.
