Has “This time it’s different” ever cost you more than you expected?

I’m also a victim of that classic “this time it’s different” trap.

It’s cost me more time, money, and energy than anything else in my life.

But here’s the strange part: if I don’t think “this time it’s different,” I’ll never try again. And even if I do everything right — validation, conviction, signals, protections — the probability of failure is still high.

So it feels like the only two choices are: Never try again… or keep trying and keep failing.

I think that’s why most founders quietly quit entrepreneurship after their first big failure.

I did exactly that.

Twelve years ago my first startup crashed. I hated myself. People laughed behind my back. I became overcautious and ran back to a safe 9-5 job.

But I couldn’t stay away completely. On the side I’ve run a cloud kitchen, print-on-demand, YouTube channels, consulting for other startups, even stock trading.

Honestly, every time I thought it was different this time.

Some made revenue. Some are on pause. Others I had to shut down.

This time I learned the hard lessons in a less hard way… but I still burned out again. That’s when I started asking myself: Why do 99% of startups fail? Can something actually be done about it? Can I do something about it?

On January 26 I bought the domain startupmaya.com

Startup Maya is the tool I wish I had 12 years ago — a calm, problem-first workspace that forces you to start with a real-world problem worth solving (for your founder profile) and keeps every project ridiculously low-investment in time, money, and energy.

So failures don’t wreck you. You recover faster, learn deliberately, and keep trying without getting destroyed.

Love to hear your own “this time it’s different” horror story...