HACKER Q&A
📣 ahmedaly

Should I shut down my startup?


here is the story: I started working on my startup last january. it's an ecommerce chatbot for selling on facebook, backed by crm/platform for managing orders and customers.

we are targeting the middle east.

As a single founder, launched in a private beta last march, and in 9 months I got 300+ sellers signed up with over 35000+ orders/mo.

I did all of this progress alone, with barely $600 all I put for my startup. And I am running out of cash. I am working full time on this.

I can't find any investor to fund me. I got rejected at every program I tried. I got rejected for this startup at ycombinator twice.

I am running out of cash, and can't go on with the harsh and aggressive competition, as I have no money to spend on marketing!

I wonder if you suggest to just shutdown and get back to a regular job? With numbers mentioned, is it considered a bad progress?

I am really tired and lost hope in getting funded.

  👤 yellow_lead Accepted Answer ✓
Since you said you aren't currently charging anything for it, I would say you should wait to see if the market will validate it before shutting down. I.e, see if you can raise the price to something > $0 before calling it quits.
👤 rajacombinator
35k orders per month .. charge $1 per order and you have a nice business. If you couldn’t figure this out on your own, then yes just shut down.
👤 nwrk
Focus on positive things.

Whats the current income ?

Why do you think you need to be funded ?

300+ active sellers sounds like great achievement!

Kudos

👤 jacquesm
Where are you incorporated? How much cash are you looking for? How long a runway would that give you?

Are you charging for the product yet? If not, why not? Free is easy! But if people are using it they may well be willing to pay for it.

Would it work to continue to work on it while having a normal job?

Sounds like it may be too early to give up by you have to figure out what level you need to reach to be profitable and how much $ you need to get there.

👤 abhishek99
Hey, I can help you. Please contact me via the email in my bio. Thanks.