Why failure doesn’t mean the end of your startup story, says a first-time founder

When dawn broke on the first day of 2020, Joice Gumala found herself dreading the prospect of resuming work on her startup Menduca, an on-demand mentorship platform. It had been three years since she launched the business, but she couldn’t garner enough traction to convince investors despite all her efforts.

Gumala felt lost. She’d put so much into this venture, but it was starting to look like it would all amount to nothing. Where did it all go wrong?

On this episode of Startup Snapshot, Gumala shares how she came to the realization that she had to close her company, what went through her mind in the aftermath, and how she got out of a rut and bounced back.

Timecodes:

00:00 – Coming to terms with her startup’s failure
02:45 – Recap of the previous episode
04:31 – Crafting MVP after MVP, to no avail
05:32 – Gumala’s crucial mistake: Not finding the right product-market fit
07:19 – Creating a solution nobody – or not enough people – were willing to pay for
08:03 – Making the decision to shut down Menduca
09:06 – The final straw: An employee’s resignation
10:50 – Taking a break to clear her head
12:44 – Just a bump in the road
15:08 – Writing a postmortem of her entrepreneurial experience
17:41 – The importance of a support system
20:00 – The end of a chapter, but not the story
21:15 – The bright side
22:10 – Getting hired because of her failure
23:49 – Not the end of her startup dream
24:36 – This is where we end the story: The middle, not the end

Download the full transcript here.

Featured people:

• Joice Gumala, founder of on-demand mentorship platform Menduca
• Kevin Darmawan, managing partner of venture capital firm Coffee Ventures

Background reading:

• Why I stopped my startup during Covid-19 by Joice Gumala
• What to do when life doesn’t go according to plan by Joice Gumala