In the world of startups and digital creation, we love to celebrate the wins. We post about the successful launches, the glowing testimonials, and the hockey-stick growth charts. But today, I want to talk about the opposite. I want to tell you the story of “catódicos,” my million-dollar idea that went spectacularly wrong, and the crucial lessons I learned from its failure.
1. The Promising Brief
On paper, catódicos.com was a brilliant idea, years ahead of its time. It was a social network for television fans, designed to recommend series based on user tastes—essentially, the Netflix algorithm before the Netflix algorithm was a household concept. The potential was enormous, and I was convinced I was sitting on a winning ticket.
2. The First Signs of Alarm
The first cracks appeared early, born from my own inexperience. I needed funding, or so I thought. Like a true rookie, I gave away half of the company to an incubator in exchange for “expertise” and “contacts,” while I personally bankrolled the entire operation. It was my first lesson in valuing my own contribution.
Then came the tech stack. I started building the platform in .NET, only to have to pivot to PHP midway through at my partners’ request. They were right, and it was a change we should have made from the start, but the switch cost us invaluable time and resources.
3. The Point of No Return
Our biggest strategic flaw was the lack of a clear monetization plan. We didn’t know how we were going to make money. The “plan” was a hope: that a larger company would see our potential and acquire us. Hope, as I learned the hard way, is not a business strategy.
This became painfully clear during a trip to Buenos Aires. I gave a talk alongside the CEO of FOX Latam, right at the moment they were exploring a project that would eventually become Hulu. A seasoned entrepreneur would have seen the opportunity and pounced. They were looking for a foundation, and we could have been it. But I didn’t know how to sell it because we hadn’t built a business, just a product. The opportunity vanished. All of this, while I was trying to juggle the project with a 10-hour-a-day “real world” job, was completely unsustainable.
4. The Final, Self-Inflicted Wound
If I had to pinpoint the single biggest mistake, the one that was 100% on me, it was the decision to launch the project in English. My partners gave me the freedom to make the call, and I made the wrong one. With a name as distinctly Spanish as “catódicos,” I chose to be the tail of a lion in the crowded global market rather than the head of a mouse in the Spanish-speaking world where we could have dominated.
5. The 3 Crucial Lessons Learned
Failure is a brutal but effective teacher. The ghost of “catódicos” has shaped every project I’ve taken on since. Here’s what it taught me:
- Monetization Isn’t an Afterthought; It’s the Foundation. You must know how your project will sustain itself from day one. A great idea without a business model is just a hobby.
- Know Your Market and Win It. Don’t chase global domination from the start. Find your niche, serve them better than anyone else, and build from that strength. Be the head of the mouse first.
- Balance Is Non-Negotiable. You cannot build something meaningful on the fumes of exhaustion. Burning the candle at both ends doesn’t lead to success; it leads to burnout and bad decisions.
Sometimes I wonder if it was all just a matter of timing. A similar, community-focused project called espóiler.tv also launched and failed around the same time. Maybe the world just wasn’t ready. But blaming timing is easy. Acknowledging my mistakes is where the real growth happens.
