I've personally launched and tanked two projects so far. In both occassions it was a matter of my competitor having more money, meaning more dedicated programmers putting in dedicated time.<p>I have a full time day-job and a family, so I could scrunch in some time whenever I could and successfully launched:<p>Oracle of Legends<p>Dotademy<p>Both were database websites for League of Legends and Dota 2 respectively, it was met with lots of love and kind words and usage. At it's peak I was looking at 25,000 daily users, with thousands voting on couterpicks for the champions/heroes. It was a "success" in my book.<p>Unfortunately around that time a website called Lolking was picked up by the Zam Gaming network (they own Wowhead, etc) and obviously that now had a team working on it as their job.<p>A team of devs working full time > a single dev working a couple of hours a week.<p>I learned a lot, had fun making it, but was sad when I ultimately pulled the plug. Who knows, I may revisit the websites and launch them for an international market. So far none of the big websites has localization and I know the latinamerican crowd is huge, so there's that. :)<p>All in all I spend 60$ for 4 months of hosting, nothing more.
It depends. If you have enough savings, you can take the much needed time-off and clear your mind and then work on another problem to solve. If money is the issue then get a consulting or freelancing gig (plenty of info on HN how to get 1). Write a guest blog post on why your Startup failed. Also there are plenty of people looking for Co-founders. The worst mistake is to not start something new because you think you may fail again.
The first thing I did was "Sit Shiva", which is an adaptation of a jewish mourning ritual to startup life.<p>I think that a failed startups feels quite similar to losing someone.<p>I still tear up when I talk about my previous company, but sitting it out enabled me to better handle it and now I'm very pumped up and working on my 3rd company.<p>Btw, I've blogged about it:
<a href="http://www.eytanlevit.com/post/32192713706/sitting-shiva-on-my-startup" rel="nofollow">http://www.eytanlevit.com/post/32192713706/sitting-shiva-on-...</a>
I created a social network called Unadu. It gave the users a voice, along with every other current aspect of online networking. It gained a little traction in my area with only a few hundred users over a 4 month span. Over the last 3 weeks there was virtually no activity. When you fail, fail fast right? So I retired the network and immediately went on to working on the next project. I learned a lot; mostly where my strengths and weaknesses area.
I applied for a job back in my old industry and now working there. I have a wife and 2.5 year old daughter so in the grand scheme of things it was the only real thing I could do. I will save a bit and learn a bit more and do it smarter next time.
I think you need to define "failed".<p>I've been working on my startup for some time. I haven't been profitable (or funded) yet, but it's far from being a "failed" venture.