🚀 FailoryGPT

Share your startup idea and FailoryGPT will tell you why it'll fail.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 November 30, 2023 | [Read Online]( [fb]( [tw]( [in]( [email](mailto:?subject=Post%20from%20Failory&body=%F0%9F%9A%80%20FailoryGPT%3A%20Share%20your%20startup%20idea%20and%20FailoryGPT%20will%20tell%20you%20why%20it%27ll%20fail.%0A%0Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter.failory.com%2Fp%2Ffailorygpt) Together With Hey — It's Nico. 90% of startups fail. FailoryGPT will tell you why yours will. Here's what I’ve got today: - 🔗 Weekly Picks - 🚀 Launch: FailoryGPT - 💀 Failed Startup Story: Anar - ✍️ Strategy: Five Questions for Capturing Markets - 📈 Trend: The Developer Revolution - 🧠Framework: The I.D.E.A. Framework This issue is brought to you by [Auth0](, Okta’s identity platform. 🔗 Weekly Picks Founder shares lessons growing from $0 to $150k and then pivoting ([Link](). Examining acquisition loops used by top startups ([Link](). What seed investor looks for in markets, products, and founders ([Link](). Why courage beats knowledge in tough startup decisions ([Link](). Packy McCormick shares his thoughts on what happened at OpenAI ([Link](). A thread on how to build a founder-led company ([Link](). Hilo Labs helps founders validate their ideas and build and scale digital products. Claim a no-cost consultation - limited to 25 founders ([Link](*). AI Startups, leave authentication (and much more) to us Eligible AI startups can use Auth0 by Okta’s Identity platform free for one year. By joining Auth0 for Startups, you’ll get access to the full, rich feature set of Auth0, including SSO, MFA, and Universal Login. Read about why Browse AI chose Auth0 to save valuable engineering time. [Check it out]( [→]( 🚀 Launch: FailoryGPT I’ve trained ChatGPT with +250 failed startup stories and interviews from Failory to build [FailoryGPT](. How it works? Share your startup idea, and FailoryGPT will tell you why it’ll fail, along with examples from similar shutdown startups. Prepare to be roasted ;) Due to ChatGPT limitations, FailoryGPT only works if you have ChatGPT Plus. If there’s enough interest, I’ll work to make it available to everyone. [Check FailoryGPT →](​​​ 💀 Failed Startup Story: Anar Refer Failory to one friend to unlock the weekly failed startup story. Here’s your referral link: 💀 Failed Startup Story: Anar You’re viewing this story because you’ve referred one friend to Failory. Thanks! Anar, “India’s largest B2B wholesale bazaar ”, [announced]( it would cease operations last Friday and return capital to its investors. The startup was founded in 2020 by Nishank Jain and Sanjay Bhat, and it quickly became a hub for small and medium businesses to build their network and market presence. Despite the initial success and ability to secure funding of $6.2M led by Elevation Capital and Accel India, the company struggled to find a path forward. According to a [blog post]( by founder and CEO Nishank, the company’s closure comes as a result of its inability to “create equivalent value for buyers, leaving a crucial part of our mission unfulfilled.” Anar had an impressive early growth, particularly during the pandemic. Following the pandemic, user growth continued, and companies would even thank them for creating a product just for them. However, things started to change in 2022, when the team noticed the platform wasn’t being used for networking purposes but to conduct business transactions. In 2023, the startup underwent several pivots and even tried deviating from its initial focus on networking to explore other avenues. It was able to keep onboarding users (in total, 450k sellers and 1.1M buyers), but the company still couldn’t find product-market fit. The team soon noticed retention was slow and users weren't getting enough value from the platform. Reflecting on the journey, Nishank shared five main lessons: - Be true to yourself: Acknowledge when things aren't working. It's crucial to confront reality early and take action as soon as possible. - Don’t overhire pre-PMF: While having a talented team is great, too many people before reaching PMF can hinder the ability to pivot and decision-making speed. - Giving up is confusing: It can be challenging to know whether struggles are due to incorrect strategies or if the business concept itself is unviable. - Make money early: While pursuing growth and mission is essential, the focus should also be acquiring paying customers and generating revenue early on. - There is nothing like a crazy mission: A strong, shared mission can be a great way to motivate and unite a team. ✍️ Strategy: Five Questions for Capturing Markets The most influential companies today (Amazon, Apple, etc.) started by targeting a specific niche before going into bigger markets. [As Dhruv Saxena explains](, they began with a "Beachhead." “If you want to capture a territory where an incumbent already exists, put your full force behind capturing a Beachhead where the incumbent is vulnerable and expand into larger territories from there.” If your startup is looking to capture a “Beachhead,” you should ask yourself the following five questions: - Does your product meet a strong customer need 10x better than existing solutions? Your product has to significantly outperform existing solutions in solving a specific problem to make it attractive enough for early adopters. - Can a tightly scoped product be built around this unmet need? You have to have a clear and narrow focus initially. Go small and establish a dedicated user base before expanding. - Will customers adopt the product despite the lack of feature parity with existing solutions? Focus on crucial features that meet specific customer needs - think of a particular feature that your customers will not be able to live without. - Does the Beachhead have a network effect that will help your product gain organic traction? Think of ways in which your product can leverage network effects. Dropbox, for example, used a referral program to boost early user growth. - Is the Beachhead a way to enter an existing market or is it a way to create a new market? Two approaches: 1) Leverage the beachhead to compete in an existing, growing market and eventually pivot to meet broader markets; 2) Create a new market around the original product vision and convince customers of the value. [Read the article →]( 📈 Trend: The Developer Revolution Artificial general intelligence is Silicon Valley’s obsession. If achieved, there’s no doubt AGI will transform the world. But what if AGI is a distraction? [Sequoia Capital believes]( that bringing 1B developers into the software economy would generate a higher economic impact than AGI. Over the past years, there’s been a huge growth in the developer population. There are reasons to believe this trend will continue: - It’s gotten much easier to become a developer. Tools like MongoDB and Postgres have streamlined back-end development, while front-end apps like Vercel and React have changed the front-end landscape, making software development more accessible. - Young, talented individuals are increasingly drawn to coding, enticed by monetary incentives (market demand for programming skills exceeds the supply of engineers) and the possibility of creating cool things. - AI has become a catalyst for growth, as it has emerged as a massive accelerator in software development. GitHub’s CEO [believes]( that “sooner than later, 80% of the code is going to be written by Copilot. And that doesn’t mean the developer is going to be replaced.” There is an opportunity to help lower barriers to building software. User-friendly tools and AI coding assistants are speeding up development schedules and making complex coding available to more people. [Read the article →](​ 🧠Framework: The I.D.E.A. Framework As the Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto stated, "An idea is nothing more or less than a new combination of old elements." [Elena draws from this concept in her article](, in which she shares her approach to finding new marketing campaign ideas using the I.D.E.A. framework. Identify other marketing activities: - Google Alerts: Set up weekly alerts with keywords like "go viral" and "viral campaign" to spot successful marketing activities. - Check Product Hunt daily: Beyond new products, there are viral marketing projects. Monitor upvotes and awards for indicators of success. - Monitor hyper-growth companies: Follow their LinkedIn (B2B) and Instagram (B2C) accounts. Hyper-growth startups include Gong, Databricks, and Duolingo. Decode their success factors: - Recreate the activity: The best way to understand a marketing strategy is to replicate it. This approach helps uncover the underlying decisions and strategies used. - Deep dive into content: Examine all published elements (social media, blogs, PR) for a detailed insight into the marketing strategy. - Historical analysis: Use [Wayback Machine]( to track old marketing activity. - Metric analysis: Break down each marketing activity into measurable metrics. For social media, look at engagement rates; for websites, analyze traffic; for videos, check impressions. Extract the main components: Elena’s process here is to organize these components by goals, evaluate each using a ranking system called ICE (Impact, Confidence, and Ease), and prioritize according to these metrics. These components work as building blocks that can eventually turn into marketing ideas. Apply everything you’ve learned: Take the elements identified and fuse them with what makes your company unique to generate marketing activities. The flexibility of this framework is that the components can potentially be directed towards various marketing goals. You simply need to blend them appropriately to align with desired outcomes. [Read the article]([→](​ 📰 Classifieds 💡 Struggling to validate your startup idea? [I've created a course]( on how to use pre-sales to validate it. 📈 Struggling to achieve PMF? I've [written an eBook]( about the exact strategies used by Slack, Intercom, and Airbnb to achieve it. 💰 Struggling to raise funding? I've curated lists of [2,100 accelerators and incubators]( and [1,000 VC firms](. 👂 How Was Today's Newsletter? - [🔥 Great]( - [😒 Meh]( - [👎 Not Interesting]( 📊 Looking to get in front of +40k startup founders? [Sponsor this newsletter](.​ That's all of this week. Cheers, Nico “*” is a sponsored link. 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