1784
6 min 15 sec

Failure Friday: “Weeks after launch, the website was totally dead…”

In this week’s Failure Friday segment, we hear from Rupert Hunt, the founder of Spare Room. It’s now the world’s largest roommate finder service—but in the early days, the team struggled to commit to it.
Failure Fridays FF

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What It's About

Spare a minute to hear about the rough start for SpareRoom.

Notes from Chris

Episode 1784
I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, if not more. It’s with this principle in mind that I offer you a weekly segment called Failure Friday: a collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure.

Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you’ll hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They’ll tell you a short story of something that went very wrong.

The stories will vary, but often it starts with an idea, what they thought would happen and what really happened—and of course, what they learned.

Today’s short story features Rupert Hunt from the UK. We told the successful story of his roommate finder business on Episode #836: Music Graduate Makes Spare Change Filling Spare Rooms.

Every 3 minutes someone finds a roommate on SpareRoom—so obviously it’s really taken off. But in the beginning, there was no guarantee of success, and Rupert had to make a big decision both for himself and in consideration with two close friends. He’ll tell us how that unfolded, as well as another lesson he learned along the way.

Listen to today's episode to learn more...

 
  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

  • Thanks to Rupert for sharing this transparent and truthful story. Check out their website at spareroom.co.uk or spareroom.com in the U.S. or follow them @spareroom on most social networks.
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Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work!

Yours in the revolution,

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To infinity and beyond,

Chris Guillebeau