>>24250379People's thresholds for failure are different. I personally don't think she "failed" but if I'm being brutally honest she's a lot more adept at being an entertainer now than she was back then. She had the tech and 3 digit viewers, but in today's world that's pretty low, sure.
Also, at the very beginning she didn't have any clear affiliation with a company of some sort, like upd8. In other words, she wasn't associated with Hololive at the beginning, and her relationship with Cover wasn't very obvious. I guess things started picking up steam when she started operating under Hololive? That is, after Hololive themselves were gaining better traction.
