Adelina Peltea, the co-founder of Splinter.me, tells us the story of her startup, the reasons she quited and the lessons learned from this adventure.

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“Startups don’t die. They commit suicide.” – used to be my saying for quite a while. After one year of working full time on splinter.me, a few days ago I found myself resigning and believing it is better for me to pursue other dreams and challenges.

More than 90% of startups fail. In silence. In the media you will mostly hear about the success stories, making new comers naive. So here is one of the untold stories, which I hope will bring some light to the reality of the entrepreneurship world. Also, I owe breaking the news about what happened in splinterville to all my friends who followed me along the journey and sometimes even supported me.

The reasons

Let’s start with the final drop. Last week I wrote an article on the business blog that attracted 45.000 visitors on the blog, and managed to bring 12.000 of them on the business website. Out of that, we got less than 50 new users. And when you know it is not a glitch with the sign up process, you start to wonder.

………….   more on her blog   ………….

Lesson learned

1) Have a job aside.
2) Have a “prenup” with your co-founder.
3) Don’t confuse business investment with personal investment.
4) Draw a very strict timeline and stick to it.
5) If possible, get 3 co-founders.
6) Get leaders and doers. Separately.
7) Remote does work.
8) An accelerator can actually slow you down.
9) Don’t waste time and energy with contests, unless you are made for them.
10) Stop when you need to stop.

I learned lots of things that will prove useful later on. I learned how to be data-driven and use Analytics to the max. I learned how to create content that goes viral. I learned about different markets. I learned how not to work with technical people. I learned a lot about the recruitment industry, about social media and about tech startups. I learned what is hype and what is not in the startup world.

I have become stronger and more experienced. In the end, we are ourselves startups. Startups that we can never leave.

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You can read the whole article on Adelina’s blog.