I wasted $40k on a fantastic startup idea

The current ideology of needing to go big fast kills a lot of decent ideas.

Everyone thinks there are two modes for a service: dead or worth $1B+.

Not to like bash you while you are down but you may have been able to do this while working and not spending $40k on contractors.

Not everyone needs to raise $10M, get a flashy office, employ 200 people and have all of the trappings of a "successful" startup founder; if anything, that's antithetical to what you should be doing.

No MVP, no testing their model, just straight to "Next Best Thing". It definitely hurts, I've been there too for my first "next big thing" and I doubt you'll be the last to get burnt by the image VC firms sell.

$40K is not much to put into a business. You'd likely be putting down more than that just to open a convenience store.

Sure you need to spend a lot of money to grow a $1B+ business, but the same is true for a $100M business or a $10M business and even most $1M businesses.

$40k is a lot to put in a business you have no idea if it can make money or whether it is needed.

It's a definite that people have to eat. I would assume most failures in restaurants and convenience stores are operations, not a critically flawed business model.

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But yes, I guess $40k is less than $2M, but it also takes $40k away from another venture and possibly having to go back to a day job to take another run at something.

All because you didn't validate the problem before cutting off your income source.

You would not need to put up a lot of money if you just came to a market to sell some vegetables. For less central areas you could potentially sell stuff for free. Convenience store is a bad example as these are heavily standardised by now: we all expect a high diversity of products and thus the equipment needed to store it

$40K is not much to put into a business but it's a lot to spend before you validate your idea.

40K is a lot to spend on an idea you didn't even try to sell or check how to make money on it.