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Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
41–47 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#42Imo to really succeed as a founder you need either 1. 99.9th percentile technical brilliance 2. 99.9th percentile mixture of relentlessness and charm/natural likability due to charisma, attractiveness, etc 3. 99.9th percentile luck and alignment of the stars of marker forces and technological progress in your favor Imo if you know you're not a special, magical person by the first two metrics, watching how things chan…
I’ll add on to this - I’ve worked closely with a few folks I consider to be in that brilliant mix of charisma, business sense, and technical competency. I’ve watched them found rock-solid companies and build great teams (I’ve worked on them)… and then for some reason several times in a VC-backed Boards like to bring in their own guys and push out the actual founders. In short, I’ve watched VC rob my friends of their…
There's a solution to that: don't take venture capital. Start a micro-SaaS that'll cashflow 10k a month consistently, then you can quit your job and grow that. Grow it to maybe a million a year, sell for a 3 to 5x multiple, then retire (or start something new).
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#43I've had an idea bouncing around in my head for the best part of 15 years which I wanted to turn into a business. Like many people in this thread: I had a comfortable full-time gig, a young family, bills to pay and a healthy fear of the unknown.
About 3 years ago (entering my 40s), I had a moment of introspection/clarity where it occurred to me that looking back in 20 years time and not having tried would upset me a lot more than any potential failure would have.
So I left my comfortable job and became a solo freelancer/contractor, gave myself a direct pay-cut with a view to building up a couple of years of savings/buffer to subsequently fund myself while building out the idea and the business around it.
What has instead happened is that the freelance/contractor business has become very successful - I get to choose the hours I work, pick and choose projects, I have roughly 12-18 months of pipeline at any point in time, and due to the very niche field I'm currently working in don't have any trouble setting an appropriate rate to the point where I've managed to save about 3 years of buffer in 3 years of operation.
The original idea still bounces around in my head and I've had validation from several of my clients that they would love just such a tool, but: I've already got a comfortable full-time gig, a (slightly less) young family, bills to pay and a healthy fear of the unknown...
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#44Ideas are worthless, everyone has them, most suck.
What matters is execution, and I have neither the expertise nor the money for a good execution. And with execution I mean mainly Marketing and Business, not just the manifestation of the idea. But of course, manifesting the idea in a good product is also a crucial part. Because Ideas are simple, straight forward, but they leave out the boring nasty parts which make the product hard to build and even harder to sell.
Which is why ideas are worthless. Get a good product or service, get some even better response from other people and find your customers; then can you start building a company which has a chance to not end as the same disaster as the majority of startups.
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#45My idea isn't profitable and I haven't made time to make it(even though it would be useful to me)
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#46After reading "The Mom Test" I took a step back and tried to first figure out if the thing I was building was really needed. Now I don't start off immediately writing code for an idea (which I have a bunch) and instead try to focus more on researching if the problem is a real one in the first place. Turns out some of mine are not.
Another reason is my next solo adventure would be bootstrapped. So some types of SaaS are out of the picture.
Re: Ask HN: Why haven't you started your startup?
#47Any 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 su…
Throwing up your hands in the air and giving up is easy. I’m not going to say there aren’t any crooks out there, but generally speaking The System is in favor of justice. Most people aren’t crooks. When going about your life you can’t expect things to be fair and rely solely on your moral high ground or goodwill when things aren’t fair, you need to fight back. Game The System as hard as you can and be prepared when t…
There are penalties in the afterlife for this course of action, so I avoid it.