8 years later, i have successfully failed my first company. Good experience but for now burnt out.
To fellow devs who are considering entrepreneurship , don't be afraid, try it until you are young. This month I will lay off my last employees, luckily with bonus and 3 months worth of salary, i wish them best of luck. Difficult to explain but I am as happy in the end as i was in the start, just older.

What caused it to fail? Any chance of revival?

I applaud anyone brave enough to try.

Having said that, I run into a lot of folks who seemingly just by the nature of thinking they know how to build a product ... means they should become an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneur is an entirely different job than developer. They can overlap, but they require vastly different skills to do each well.

@asgs maybe, mostly just personal burnout and exhaustion. Probably will take some time off and then try again

Congrats, I'm sure you've also learned a lot, not just got older. Maybe the next one succeeds based on your learnings.
Also, I'm sure your former employees appreciate the 3 months, that's a great thing to do. A lot of people would wait till there was nothing left.

Curious, did you try to sell it

Tried it once. It's an absolute pain in the ass.

Did it had a competitor?

So what was your ratio of years spent to years lost?
We all get older and if we can delay that by going through all the hassle involved in running a company with employees, it might actually be worth it...

@shoogknight No. Its mine and captain goes with the ship. I will keep the company as legal body, like to sell consulting etc, just closing active operations.

@jassole Yeps, they do fine, so noone to blame than myself.

@Oktokolo I'd say none of the years was lost. Only 2019 ended with minor financial loss. But I saw the dark side of our business, how most of our creation is used to serve not so noble deeds and sold as innovation just to serve corporate greed. How my solution working, intended to automate and give people more time to improve, was used to just cut more profits via losing jobs. I support progress but not like that, im extremely competitive but i saw a former colleague struggling to keep his house and marriage together after losing its job, to some degree i was responsible for this chain of events happening. So years lost for me - I would say none.

@Avimelekh
So no actual age reduction happened?