Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?

If your definition of success is founding the next OpenAi and making a trillion dollars overnight then sure. If youre just looking to start a modest company that supports you and a few others reasonably comfortably then you definitely dont need any of that.

You forgot money to start your business.

There is so much going on in the world. In almost every idea, I find that someone else is doing something very similar, but with (so-far) limited success. It’s usually hard to tell why the aren’t having more success. So I never come up with confidence that a concept will work better for me than it did for these other people.

Any successfully business will be sued in frivolous lawsuits, which have a finite chance of winning.

First example: a friend of mine ran restaurants for many years. A black woman claimed she drove past his restaurant and that a man standing across the street from the restaurant gave her a dirty look. She knew that was the restaurant owner, not based on any facts or logic, but based on the Black Way of Knowing. She sued for civil rights violations. He description of the man was nothing like my friend, other than them both being male humans. She misidentified 2 other men in the courthouse as the man who gave her a dirty look and concretely ruled out my friend before the bailiff explained who was who to her. Then she changed her story. She won and took my friend's family business, leaving his family with nothing.

Second example: There is a mexican cafe in my area that we always ate at after church on Sundays. They invented the corn chip that they sold to a chip company that became a well known corn chip today. The chip company did not remember this because corporations change personnel. The chip company sued the family-business that was the mexican cafe. The family running the mexican cafe produced the original contract that said if the chip company ever sued them over something frivolous, they would own the chip company. This document was examined by experts and found to be authentic. Even several Ivy League schools found it to be authentic. The corrupt 5th Circuit Court (5th Circus Cult?) refused to look at the evidence, took bribes from the chip company, destroyed the contract, and somehow many members of the family that owned the mexican cafe died mysteriously.

Third example: I loved my auto mechanic. Cody ran a place called All Pro Transmissions, and was an honest mechanic who never charged more than his estimate and always fixed something extra just to be nice. Then the crooks from another mechanics shop (who charged me for an engine they did not replace) sued him, claiming he was cheating his customers. They won and split the proceeds with the crooked JP (place 1.) Cody has to work for them (court ordered) as their face man. When anyone takes their car there, they get ripped off and as they pick it up the techs brag about how much they got screwed.

I tried to file a patent when I was in college. The patent examiner asked an expert from a major tech company to help him examine the patent. The major tech company stole my patent and sold it to another company.

There is much more. I give up. Screw The System.

This. So much this. I lost my entire life savings due to lies told in court. I never got the chance to defend myself against a mountain of fabricated “evidence” and testimony. The legal system is worthless beyond words.

If you are an honest and hardworking person, the system is screwed beyond repair. Liars and crooks are the only ones that can succeed, and the system can easily be abused to actively help them commit their crimes.