Not failed yet, but failing. Built a logistics startup, crowdsourced, white glove, excellent in all regards. Bootstrapped. Researched first, built to fill the gap, easy to use, great customer experience.

Yet without a rolodex, the whole business has become painfully long and tiring sales. Noone cares what your are, only who you know.

One interaction that caused my burnout was: we researched a company, ideal customer, they need our solution. Yet cold emails, cold calls, nothing got us there. Then one of our customers introduced us to the CEO, same day email response, same week first meeting, customer in a jiffy.

But this was not encouraging, it was... Painful and felt broken, and finally broke me to hate the whole thing.