I just shut down my first startup. Here’s my retro

This is extremely well written and super impressive. I think that as someone with a similar professional / educational background to you, the biggest thing is the Vitamin vs Painkiller. And as you correctly pointed out, the only way to know is to ask the customer to open their wallet from day 1.

Overall, really well written, thoughtful piece that gives a great insight into what it's like being a zero to one founder.

Just from reading this, I have no doubt you're going to be crazy successful. Most startups fail, but most entrepreneurs succeed. You got your first fail out of the way, now go crush it with your next one!

This was a great read and you’re right the there’s not enough written about “knowing when to fold”.

One note is on the “not needing a tech cofounder” section. I was expecting to read about how no/low-code tools are widely available and bootstrapping the MVP or early versions of the product can be done without deep technical vision/technical partner, or that not all projects require a technical cofounder. The content was great and illuminating, but didn’t seem on-topic for “you don’t need a tech cofounder”

Disclaimer: I just posted this. This is not may story or blog post :)