10 Lessons Learned from Closing Our Startup After 5 Years

Hi everyone, my name is Pedro, and I was the CTO and co-founder of Decipad.

For the last five years, our team poured everything we had into building a new kind of tool—a notebook that blended the analytical power of a spreadsheet with the simplicity and beauty of a document. We dreamed of a product that anyone could use.

Recently, we made the difficult decision to close the Decipad product. While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, the journey was invaluable. I believe that looking back is only useful if it helps us move forward. In that spirit, I want to share some of the most important lessons I learned along the way, both on a technical and an operational level.

Before I get into the specifics, I need to say something about the team. Working with them was the honor of a lifetime. From the leadership to every new hire, I was surrounded by brilliant, passionate people who believed in our vision and dedicated their hearts and minds to it. I learned more from them than I can ever put into words, and I would do it all again just for the chance to build with them.

Here are some of the key lessons from my time building Decipad.

1. Hire People Who Do the Work

When you’re a small team trying to build something new, you need people who want to get their hands dirty, not just manage from a distance. Be cautious of hiring individuals who are primarily focused on control and delegation. In an early-stage company, this can lead to inefficiency, as they may hire others to do the work they should be doing themselves. Instead, build your team with hands-on individuals who are eager to learn, contribute directly, and grow with the company.

2. A Singular Vision is Key

In an early-stage company, designing a product by committee is a path to a watered-down, unfocused result. A new product needs a single, clear-sighted leader who holds an uncompromising vision. This person’s role is to be the true north, ensuring the product remains coherent and true to its core purpose, especially when a thousand different voices are pulling it in different directions.

3. Forget the MVP. You Need a Functionally Viable Product (FVP).

The concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) doesn’t always apply, especially when you’re creating a new product category. When users don’t have a frame of reference for your tool, a “minimum” product can feel incomplete or confusing. They need to understand not only what your product is but how it can be indispensable to them, all without a guide. This requires a Functionally Viable Product (FVP)—a more fleshed-out, polished experience with thoughtful onboarding that allows the value to shine through on its own.

4. The Last 20% of Polish Takes 80% of the Time. Wait.

Don’t get bogged down in achieving pixel-perfect design in the early stages. Those final, finishing touches are tempting, but they consume a disproportionate amount of time and energy. Your efforts are far better spent building out the core functionality that makes your product viable. Ship the function first; perfect the form later.

5. Avoid Distracting Side-Quests

When building a complex product like Decipad, the path is filled with tempting rabbit holes—features or technical explorations that seem valuable but distract from the main goal. These “side-quests” steal focus and time from building the FVP. A strong leader with a clear vision is essential to differentiate between the product’s core and these distractions, keeping the team on track until the FVP is in users’ hands.

6. If You’re Creating a New Category, Pack for a Long Journey

Charting new territory is, by definition, a long and arduous expedition. If you are creating a product that doesn’t fit into an existing category, you won’t find product-market fit overnight. It will take years of effort and iteration. Before you start, be brutally honest about whether you have the time, resources, and unwavering commitment to support yourself and your team for the long haul.

7. Make the Pain of Switching Worth It

You aren’t just building a product; you’re asking users to change their behavior. For us, this meant convincing people to move away from trusted tools like Excel. A new product in a new category is judged on a simple equation: is the benefit of switching massively greater than the effort required? Your job is to minimize that migration effort (without compromising your vision) and maximize the upside. If the value isn’t 10x better, users will stick with what they know.

8. A Pivot Isn’t Just a New Feature. Sometimes, It’s a New Product.

So, your FVP is out, but users are struggling. It’s time to pivot. But as you change direction, ask yourself if the foundation you’ve built still supports the new vision. At one point, we tried turning Decipad into a SQL-based BI tool. We quickly realized we were forcing a square peg into a round hole, and the product became inconsistent. If a pivot requires you to fight against your existing product and technical baggage, you might be better off starting over from scratch.

9. AI Can’t Fix a Confusing Product

It’s tempting to think that “slapping AI on it” can solve fundamental usability problems. If a product is hard to use, adding an AI layer on top is often a bandage, not a cure. Remember, your competitors can add that same AI layer to the tools your users already know how to use. A familiar user experience combined with AI will almost always beat a confusing user experience combined with AI.

10. Your Team Is Your Greatest Asset. Treat Them That Way.

This is the most critical lesson of all. Hire slowly and deliberately. Find people who don’t just want a job, but who believe deeply in the mission and have the resilience required for a long journey. Once you find them, hold on to them. Treat them with respect, trust, and empower them with ownership. This means giving up a significant portion of equity to ensure they have real skin in the game. A great team is the only thing that gives a vision a chance to become reality.

I hope sharing this gives some valuable perspective to other founders, builders, and dreamers.

For those interested in exploring the technical side of what we built, Decipad’s code is now open source and available for anyone to learn from or build upon.

If you’d like to dive deeper into the technical evolution and architectural decisions that shaped Decipad over our five-year journey, I’ve written a detailed technical retrospective that covers the product phases, key innovations, and the challenges we faced along the way.

Thank you for reading.