I was in 1st year of college and was thinking of starting something, but was not sure what. I had already joined a startup with one of my classmates but I was not much interested in it.
I wanted to do something on my own or at-least work on something which I feel is a good idea. One of my friends (John) suggested we can make a website with content of computer science engineering on it. Now there may be a lot of content available related to engineering on the web but it was not the case 7 years ago, it was all very scattered. I liked this idea and we discussed with all of the other people in our group. Everyone was pretty excited about it.
So we started working on this project of our’s. It would be better to say I was the only one working and the others were mostly busy in day dreaming. We had come up with a deadline, and I was literally working day and night to finish it on time as I was the only one working. Others were kind of still wasting time and trying to learn web development. I was skipping classes, waking up 3 am in the morning and continue working on the website to meet the deadline.
There was a lot of arguments between John and me, over the approach we wanted to take to build the website. I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel and wanted to use libraries to build the website quickly. He wanted to make everything from scratch because he read something about website performance which affects google page rankings and wanted to keep the website as light as possible. But the libraries were not going to make any huge difference, he was quite stubborn on his stand and I gave in. I thought, “What the hell, let’s build from scratch, at-least will learn everything”. Never should have done that.
Anyway, so time passed by, it was just a day before the launch and I quit. Few reasons for me to do so, the most important one being it was not at all a group effort, no one even tried to help. Everyone was just day-dreaming and only thinking about how much we will be earning when actually 1 guy was doing all the work instead of 7 people. To be honest, it kind of felt they were just using me while I was working my ass off.
And so this first venture to create a company was an utter failure but learned a lot of things on “how not to make a company” and with “whom to start a company with”.
P.S – My circle ditched me after that and I was out of the group. Most of them think I cheated them and I was the bad guy.
I agree with some of the points you’ve raised, but I think it’s important to understand that everyone had their own challenges during that time.
“I was the only one working, others were wasting time and learning web development”: Before we joined college, many of us had barely used computers. You were ahead of us in terms of programming knowledge, and it’s understandable that you expected us to catch up quickly. But the reality is that it’s not easy to learn web development—libraries, frameworks, and all—within a short span. Someone from the group even suggested using platforms like Blogspot or WordPress to make things easier, but we all agreed to build from scratch to learn the skills. In hindsight, that might not have been the best approach, but we were inexperienced and trying to figure things out.
“Others were daydreaming”: Dreaming is part of being human, and honestly, You inspired those dreams! We were motivated by your talks of success, big roles, and making it big. We got caught up in that vision, which in hindsight may have distracted us.
“One guy was doing all the work instead of seven people”: You had more experience than the rest of us, so naturally, you carried a heavier load. But we were all in a learning phase.
“They were just using me”: I’d ask you to reconsider that statement. We were friends, not just people using each other. Yes, you worked extremely hard, and we appreciate that. But it wasn’t fair to expect everyone to contribute equally when we were at different stages of learning. We were motivated and eager because of you—your knowledge and passion helped us believe we could do something big. We Could have contributed in our own ways, whether by writing articles, updating features, or handling SEO after you built website alone.
“My circle ditched me, and I was out of the group”: I know some of us felt hurt by what happened, and that’s why communication broke down. But it’s not true that everyone thought you were the bad guy. What I personally felt was that you started distancing yourself from us because we weren’t as academically strong or able to think as big as you. Maybe you felt that staying in the group would hold you back.
At last I would say, If you really wanted to open the website, you could have done that with others, If the idea and the project were really important to you, you had the capability to execute it with another group or even solo. Instead, it seems like the blame game became more prominent. If that’s how you feel, then that’s your perspective.