Starting a company is incredibly exciting. There’s an amazing sensation the comes along with creating something and sharing it with the world. It’s even better when lots of people are using your product and gaining value from it. What’s not great is when all those feelings and happy product users don’t turn into a viable business. That’s exactly what happened to us.

In 2012, my business partner, Keith, and I started a company called Applits.com. We were best friends from high school and both studying mechanical engineering as sophomores in college. We really didn’t want to do the whole internship thing or work in a big company. That’s also the summer Instagram sold to Facebook for a $1 billion. We kind of looked at each other and sai...