Heard a CEO say his startup scrapped 18 months of code in a weekend

I was at a fintech meetup in Toronto last Thursday and this guy from a small payments startup just dropped that bombshell. He said they built this whole compliance module over 18 months, then realized the OSFI sandbox rules changed and it was all useless. So they literally deleted everything and rebuilt from scratch using some open source framework in 48 hours. It made me wonder how many Canadian startups are burning cash on stuff that gets thrown out. Has anyone else seen a project get totally scrapped like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

price.gavin3d ago

Buddy's startup trashed 9 months of payment code after Visa changed API specs. Brutal.

miles_roberts3d ago

My buddy owns a small accounting firm and had something sort of similar happen. They spent like a year building a custom system to track client tax stuff, then the CRA changed their digital filing rules out of nowhere. Whole thing was toast. He ended up just buying some off the shelf software and it did the job in like a weekend. Makes you wonder if all that planning is even worth it when the rules keep shifting like sand.

lunaf673d ago

Kinda feels like the universe is saying "quit trying to outsmart me" every time you build something custom (not that I'd know from my own failed coding projects). My own grand plan to automate my freelance invoicing went down in flames when PayPal changed their fee structure mid-build, so now I just use a spreadsheet and a prayer. Sometimes the simplest hack is the one that actually survives the sandstorm, you know?