Ask HN: Struggling founders, pls share your startup struggle

> I guess I have had "burnout" so long, that I cannot anymore feel it.

I've had every possible type of rejection: from banks, financiers, partners, accelerators and developers, over three years of 'booting up startup'. I joke that if I ever have an office one day, I'll print them all out and use them as wallpaper.

And after all I'm still at the very beginning.

I can give only one piece of advice: cold water. 7-10 minutes in the winter sea (<10°C) makes me feel normal. In Finland, probably 3 minutes will be fine. It may sound too obvious for being in survival mode, but any regular physical exercise somehow helps to works under startup pressure.

There’s a lot to unpack. I belong to a mastermind with multiple seven and eight figures founders. If you want to talk about some of this things, send me an email (my username @ gmail)

Man I really feel you, being a solo founder is tough. If it's possible for you to relocate temporarily Antler has a accelerator-esque program. They'll pay you a tiny stipend to move to Austin or NYC depending on which location you get into, for the duration of the program (5-6 weeks). You'll have like minded people around you giving you an opportunity to maybe find a co founder and get some motivation.

At the end you'll get a chance to pitch and get 100+k(varies by location) in seed and then another shot at getting funding.

Tbh their deal is doodoo compared to YC but it's a lot less competitive and you'll be out of the rut you're in right now.

As for the MVP taking time... I think it's perfectly fine, probably better even. The bar to impress it's very high now, specially since llms have made it pretty easy to add polish. I completely understand that feeling where you've already whittled your idea down to it's bone but you still can't get it done. That happens, I've faced that same problem numerous times. Whenever we thought we'd done enough we'd go out to testers and they'd point out the exact rough edges we'd intentionally tried to ignore to ship it out faster. Most of the time those edges put off people completely.

All you need to know is your target audience. If it's enterprise, having that added polish will make or break your deal if they're larger companies, specifically when they're customer 1-2. What won't matter is having 1-2 more metrics in a dashboard or maybe a customizable layout. But let's say you're report generation is a csv file that's generated client side with nothing asynchronous or email based, that would raise some eyebrows about the expected quality of service. This isn't to say you won't have understanding and patient customers, however you'll always have to earn it first.

Get the basics right, make sure it's all functioning together well and hopefully it'll all go well. The hardest part is always bd, that's where you'll truly start to feel like Will Smith walking around with your bone density scanner.

What is pmf

I currently run gethly.com - paywalled hosting platform for digital content creators. I spent 2.5 years coding it, 3 years in total, over 10k€ in expenses(mostly administrative stuff like lawyers, accountants, contractors, VAT, EU compliance and other stuff - servers cost me the least). No employees, just contractors as needed, as I can handle most of things due to my, by now, multi-decade experience. This is not my first project but it might be my last.

I have been online since very late 90s and I saw the internet transform through the years. 2000s and 2010s were the best. For users and for businesses. Then big tech came up and it slowly killed everything. Mostly monopolisation, buyouts and exits, userbase saturation, extreme commercialisation of everything, tracking, privacy etc...

Today, as I am looking at the internet as a business owner from the European Union, trying to run an online service business is a DOA idea. Europe lacks everything and USA runs and owns everything. I cannot speak from outside point of view but by sheer luck I just wrote a post on linkedin exactly on this topic so I will merely summarise what I said there - problem in EU are languages, anglification and westward-looking user base. Customers in Europe see everything made at home or not in the western bloc(actually more likely just UK and USA) as not good enough, untrustworthy, unimportant, small and insignificant. If you try to compete digitally in English, you are competing with the whole world that is owned by USA and its endless flow of cheap capital. If you try to compete domestically in non-english language, your users won't take you seriously because you're nobody, you lack international users and recognition and capital backing you up and they do not care about you.

Europe has no infrastructure of its own for online businesses, startups, whatever. There are no or very limited supportive services(cloud, payment processing, cdn, accounting,..) and financing options(venture capital, incubators...). This is why USA is eating Europe's launch.

So the main struggle is not the business itself, it is getting customers. If you have money, you can waste it on advertising but it will be just that - a waste. And you will fill pockets of yet another USA company.

I might sound sour, but this is not just me. I see it everywhere. I am merely summarising the real world experiences here.

I have an idea, that many will find unpleasant, that could make EU competitive and am forming a plan on how to word it properly and get in touch with my EP representative to maybe get some things done in this regard. But I have little faith in the EU being able to turn this around. Especially as Ukraine is still an ongoing issue and the focus is mostly there instead of on domestic issues, like economy, energy and whatnot.