20 Months in, 2K Hours Spent and 200K € Lost. A Story About Resilience and the Sunk Cost Fallacy

TL;DR: It can be really hard to know if we’re just resilient or falling for the sunk cost fallacy.
I’ve been working for ~20 months on my current project, spend 2K hours on it, and “lost” 200K € by not doing something else. That project is not ready yet. Here’s the story behind it.
Image for post
Picture courtesy of Natalie Rhea
Before it all
Early in 2018, after having worked for 10+ years as an employee, office politics got to me and I was tired of wasting time in meetings. I really wanted to quit, be my own boss, and have more impact on the world around me.
I was a tech lead/team manager/project manager, had a really good salary, lots of freedom, a cool team working together with me, and not that much to complain about, really. I could organize my days/weeks however I wanted, worked on interesting/challenging projects, and my team was really cool (alright, I already said that :p).
Still, I was willing to throw it all away to go and try something else, on my own terms.
First attempts

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I had a colleague/friend who was also willing to create products; so we started brainstorming together. For a while, we were just trying to find the idea (well-known anti-pattern, right?). We did eventually find two ideas that we thought were worth pursuing.
One was about creating digital solutions for schools, to help them handle meal orders, payments, presences, etc. What we observed with our own children convinced us that there were very real problems to solve. There were a few competitors in Belgium, but not that many, and not present yet in our part of the country. We also had a very different angle.
The second idea was to create a digital platform for restaurants, where they could publish/customize their menus, have a back-channel towards their clients (e.g., to send them promotions), to increase fidelity, etc.
We started developing the product aimed at schools. Being two full-stack software developers, we didn’t have much trouble on that front. We went and discussed with a few schools. The people that we met were really enthusiastic but feared that they wouldn’t be able to get the funds to pay for it. Also, given that schools are part of the public sector, it meant that we’d have to go through tenders. I wasn’t too scared, as I had spent quite some time on the other side of the fence; initiating public tenders. We were convinced that it was worth trying. After a while though, my friend started doubting and eventually abandoned the project without telling me. I kept on working but realized that I was alone on that ship. Bummer. I was pretty disappointed.
After that, we discussed with another colleague, which was also interested in joining us; that created a new momentum; I thought that a trio would’ve more chance to succeed. We decided to abandon the first idea and went with the second one. We went further this time and got accepted into a startup incubator, which helped us go further, prepare a business plan, etc. The idea morphed a few times, but we did start the development. Then, unfortunately, the story repeated itself; development took longer than my partners thought, potential clients were not immediately convinced. My partners quickly started doubting the fact that we’d be able to actually sell the product. Knowingly or unknowingly, their motivation and involvement really dropped close to zero, while I was still trying to move forward. Eventually, I realized that they were not onboard anymore, and abandoned those ideas too. My own motivation went down; it was hard to swallow; I felt let down. Again. I guess that the second product would’ve been a hit once Covid hit, but the people we discussed with weren’t interested at the time; they were scared of traceability and preferred to be able to avoid taxes (no kidding :p). We’ll never know!
A detour in freelancing
Anyway, I decided to give another idea of mine a try: switching to freelancing. My goal was to free up some time while keeping more or less the same income level. Also, I thought that consulting would help me expand my horizons. So, in January 2019, after having worked for 10+ years as an employee, I took a year off and launched my freelance business (https://developassion.be). It wasn’t too risky; at worst, it would fail miserably, and I’d go back to my employer. I did have a contract secured with my first client (a small FoodTech startup based in Belgium), and I was super motivated. After a few weeks though, the dream transformed into a nightmare of sorts. I was doing my best, but something didn’t click. I didn’t like the ambiance, and my client wasn’t happy about me. It was tense. They let me go after 3 months, which was really frustrating, and a bit scary because I didn’t have a backup at that point. They still have to pay my last invoice too; I guess I’ll never see that money ^_^.
What happened is that they wanted a leader that shouted louder, made announcements and whatnot, but I’ve always been the quieter type; more focused on creating a shared vision and working as a team, without necessarily trying to be the louder voice in the room. Anyway; I suppose that my style wasn’t a good match for their company culture…
It wasn’t hard to find another client; I started working for the second one at the end of April and stayed there for a few months (long story short, it went a lot better over there).
I kept on thinking about creating my own products; It seemed like the only path that really made sense to me. And I’m still convinced of that today. Being an employee or freelance, I can only contribute to the dreams of others; of course, the paycheck is nice, but it doesn’t scale and it means that I’m still at “the mercy” of others. I’m not interested in that anymore.
In 2019, I was also working on my book (https://www.amazon.com/Learn-TypeScript-Building-Applications-understanding-ebook/dp/B081FB89BL?tag=developassion-20), which took me a lot of time and energy (about a year).
The beginning of the SaaS project
In May 2019, I met with someone through an ex-colleague of mine. Her husband was a businessman which was looking for a partner to start a new business venture. Of course, I was interested. Long story short, he told me about the project and introduced me to the 3rd future co-founder. They had already been working on the project for about a year and needed a CTO. Their previous partner had left.
The goal was to create a SaaS product (B2B) to help companies improve their meetings. It didn’t sound too sexy, but I knew from experience how meetings can be a waste of time for everyone involved, if not handled correctly. So, it made a lot of sense to me to try and challenge the status quo.