A founder bought an e-commerce company right as iOS privacy changes killed Facebook ads and the market collapsed. He argues the failure came from macro forces, not mistakes, and warns against ignoring your gut feeling that something won't work just to avoid admitting you were wrong.
Right now, e-commerce is a tough place to be. A bunch of people made a whole bunch of money in e-commerce in the 2010s, and you could put money into Facebook advertising and make it into $5, you know, no problem. And then iOS made things change. Like, e-commerce is a really tough place to be. I bought an e-commerce company going into the hardest time that e-commerce has ever experienced. That's not my fault. That's a broad market condition that set me up for failure. So how do I separate myself from the fact that that happened and go, yeah, I can acknowledge that this happens? And then the last piece of that is when you stop believing in your own gut. That was what I talked about with my e-commerce company is I knew in my heart that it wasn't working, but I kept plodding ahead anyway because I wanted to save face, right? And so trust yourself, trust your own gut. When you don't think it's actually gonna work, believe yourself.
