Failure to launch after going full-time on a project — learnings from Craig Campbell of Eurotripr

Reading success stories is great, but sometimes it's helpful to learn from someone else's failure.

"Failure" might be too strong of a word, considering everything Craig Campbell (@scotalia) of Eurotripr took away from his experience. He tried to go full-time on his trip-planning product, added feature after feature instead of launching, reluctantly admitted defeat, and eventually went back to full-time employment… for now.

I'll share more about what happened, but here are takeaways for

1. Take your time.
2. Build smaller projects.
3. Keep an eye on your mental health.

Slow down

We often hear that first-mover advantage is the end-all-be-all of entrepreneurship. If you don't launch now, someone else will launch first and take home all the spoils, right? But that's a self-sabotaging lie — at least according to Craig. And it’s the reason he may have quit his job a little prematurely.

Craig: I kept thinking that with the COVID lockdowns coming to an end and the 2022 summer travel season coming up, March 2022 was the optimal time to launch Eurotripr. Everything hinged on that. I got more and more anxious. And when March came and went I felt I missed the boat and was really disappointed in myself.

But people travel to Europe every year and will probably continue to do so. So I didn't miss anything.

The point is, we all get the idea that "If I don't launch NOW, I've missed my opportunity." While this could be true for some very specific niche things, for most projects, it is just another lie we tell ourselves. Whether it is to give ourselves extra motivation to launch or an out in the event we fail… either way it is not true.

Launch whenever you are ready, the market will still be there.

Depending on where your product is right now, that might mean hanging onto your dayjob just a little longer.

Craig: Your project is going to take you X number of hours to complete. What the number is doesn't matter - it's going to take you a specific amount of time to complete. You don't have to quit your job to rush through those hours to get it done 'immediately'. It is much less stressful and just as possible to work on your projects with a full-time job.

The key is you have to be disciplined with your time so you can carve out a few hours per day or week to work on your project. If you can do this, you will cross the finish line.

I knew this, but I completely ignored it. In doing so, I took on completely unnecessary stress for myself, my wife, and my family.

Get validated

But of course, it's a balance. And validation is the most important thing in the equation of when to take the leap… that and runway.

Craig: That being said, I think we can all agree that MVPs are the way to go. You don't need to stress yourself to launch, but you don't want to build a bloated, over-engineered product either. That's a waste of time, and can detract from the product.

Looking back, I bit off way more than I could do by myself in such a small period of time. I kept adding more and more features because I thought visitors wouldn't stay if I didn't have user accounts. I thought travelers would like to meet others on the road and would want to create meetups. And on and on…

All these features sounded great as I was building, but not one of them was asked for by a single user because I didn't yet have any users. I spent all my time building for 'what-if' and ignored the advice I had personally given to so many people.

He had some runway, but he was missing validation. And feedback from real users. Here's the piece of advice that stuck out to me:

Craig: Help one person with one feature, then build from there. In other words, start with the tiniest MVP and see if anyone even cares. If they do, ask them what to build next and so on. Anything else — and specifically what I did — is procrastination or fear.

Don't fail due to fear of failure

Sometimes, you've just gotta put something out. Anything.

Craig: In retrospect, I can definitely say I was afraid of putting something out there in case it bombed. But in the end, by NOT putting something out there I simply failed quietly. I can 100% say I'd rather have failed by putting something out that no one wanted than never finishing and never actually knowing if someone would have wanted Eurotripr.

Take care of your mental health

So going full-time didn't work out for Craig this time around, and it took a toll. It started early…

Craig: After a couple of months of coding, reality set in and doubts started to creep into my head. Lots of negative self-talk, and no one really supporting me through it. No one wants to hear the guy that just left a good job talk about his doubts.

It felt really lonely. I shared some moments on Indie Hackers, which was helpful. I also tried building in public and that was exciting at first, but it soon felt like adding more stress and work to an already difficult project.

The worst part was the stress of watching my savings being depleted and not knowing when or if I was going to launch and earn money from it. And then there was the fear that I would look like and feel like a complete failure.

Eventually, he threw in the towel, and that was even harder.

Craig: Admitting to myself that I was not good enough to create the thing I'd been dreaming about for years, yet watching so many other people do it every day was soul-crushing. But I'm responsible to people other than just myself, and that means I have to make hard decisions. Going back to work was a hard decision.

I'm not sure I've even recovered from this feeling, even six months after going back to work. I felt, and still feel, very low due to my failure to finish. And for a time, it did defeat me. As a man, husband, and father I had this image of what I should be and what I should be able to do.

But now, I see it as just a low POINT in the journey. It wasn't meant to be at that time. But I still firmly believe Eurotripr can be a useful product.

Try to create a support structure of loved ones, friends, other indie hackers, you name it. And share the "why" of your journey with them so they can get on board.

Craig: In the end, if you don't have a support group that understands why you are doing this and what the ups and downs are going to be, it can be very difficult to see it through to the other side.

Here's an article on the topic of mental health in indie hackers, in case it's helpful.

Get back up

So he went back to work, and I think maybe that's the biggest lesson Craig shared. You've got to be humble enough to admit when you've failed. And then, you've gotta get back on the horse.

Craig: My full-time job and freelance gigs are very quickly replacing the money I burned through while I was working on Eurotripr. My goal is to add a bit more to my savings than where I was before, and then slow down or eliminate my freelance gig and replace the time I spend on that now with working on Eurotripr. I should be able to do that by November.