All startup and entrepreneurial spirits have them, the so called 'pet project'. That idea that struck you at friday afternoon after some beers. You immediatly started coding, wrote some blogposts and a bunch of users are now using it. A year later, usage declined to zero.
There is tons of other stuff that needed to be done on other projects. So it happened you didn't released something new. People didn't complain, because they actually didn't care. And now they found another startup that solves they're problem better.
That sounds and feels like failure. But is it?
I think there is another take on this. All those tiny little products that one day die are the 'small badges' for you as a person. In the world of innovation and product development you and your team are the 'production line' (sound awful if you put it like this). The only actual road to progress.
Every time you run a quick pet project you will learn. At every step you take you could uncover a broken part of your 'production line'. The improvements in your marketing, interviewing, support and coding skills will help you to build that massively awesome and successful startup one day.
It doesn't matter that it takes time or that you only reached 25 users. What matters is that you actually ran a test with yourself and your team to build and launch something.
Should you never care to be successful? Of course not. Improvement is something you can measure and act on. But in order to start improving, start producing. It provides so much inside that it might even be stupid, as a startup or tech company, not to have pet projects.
It's the by-product of learning in the world of startups.