Ask HN: My startup has basically failed. What now?
I have about 10 years working in the tech side of large B2B events, so comments are based on that.<p>It’s fine to start a business in an industry you’re not crazy about but most people who make a success this way know there’s a ready and waiting market to earn money in with an existing product.  People need plumbers and roofs need tiling.<p>Most “start-ups” should be founded on the principle of “We’ve identified a problem and we’re the best people to provide the solution” and even then most of them fail. Even pivots are based on that principle (“what we built didn’t solve a problem but we identified another problem we can solve”).<p>It sounds like you’re gone the route of “I’ve identified a market that I want to provide a solution for.” The events industry is big, which means there are a lot of people thinking the same. During my time I integrated our system with several companies that no longer exist. Many of these products didn’t solve actual attendee or organiser problems or desires and so uptake or return was very low.<p>Attendee needs are fairly simple and limited (easy to buy tickets, get information about what’s on, and easy conference experience) and they rarely want anything more (e.g. only a tiny fraction or marketing types actually want networking apps).<p>Conference organiser needs are many and they want to use as few suppliers as possible as each additional supplier means extra work on integration. So most of the businesses doing well in the event space are companies that can provide a large, near holistic product for them which covers a lot of needs. So to complete against them you’ll need a lot more resources than it sounds like you do.<p>Reading between the lines it sounds like you already know what you need to do. If you’ve lost the drive and conviction that this will be a success then and unless you can find a real problem you can build and sell a solution for quickly and easily, then it’s probably time to call it a day. Try again in a bit and if possible without the pressure of money from family and friends.