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Ask HN: What was the longest you stuck with a project that failed?

2 points by l2silver ↗ HN
Everything comes to him who waits... or does it?

A lot of people on this forum start startups (or something less than a startup) only to give up after a few months (guilty here, so guilty).

What about the others - those patient founders. What was the longest project you stuck with, pivoted, and still ultimately gave up on, and what was the final dagger?

5 comments

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activiation
My life is a big failure, lol
l2silver
Oh god that's a depressing statement and implication.
quantified
Not yet, nothing's a failure until it's done.

Please don't understand that as any call to action. It's an accounting standard. Keep going.

__d
I was one of four founders. Moved country, worked at it for 10 years, and finally quit a few months before bankruptcy and asset sale.

The final dagger was a meeting with the executive team where my suggestion that we cut expenses to somewhere less-than-or-equal-to revenue before the last drip of VC largesse was gone was met with horror and denial. Started my exit that day.

I still have a half-written open source rewrite of the project that I tinker with when I have a spare hour or two, so ... maybe I haven't given up yet? Project started in 1994, seed money in 2003, A round end of 2005, quit in early 2013, bankrupt late 2013, still playing with it 2023.

So ... coming up on 30 years, I guess ...