Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–59 of 59 posts

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#51

Post by nbashaw »

Semiapies wrote: post #47
nbashaw wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here. I'm curious, what makes you think that you know anything about what our plans were? You're absolutely right that we weren't profitable at our current scale, and that our goal was to raise funding from VCs, and since we couldn't do it we had to make really tough changes. But this was a risk that we all accepted! Would I do it exactly the same way again next time? No, of course not. I learned a lot from this e…

I think many, many more people make fun of the startup mentality. Which is harsh, but justified. It's nice that you chased your dreams. The problem is, this is how almost all startups end up, with the last guy wondering what to do next. If you get struck by lightning, you get acquired. If you get struck twice , you get VC money. That you "accepted" the risk just means you took a very bad bet. If you learned from that…

You're right that the probability of any individual "unicorn" type idea succeeding is ridiculously slim. But I think you're not appreciating the larger context. Consider this:

1) I have never had more job offers in my life than the past 24 hours. Like, really good jobs. Obviously that wasn't the goal, but it's not like I'm out on the street or really in any way worse off than I was before.

2) I learned more in the past two years than I have any other time in my working life. So again, I'm not in that bad of a spot. It wasn't a waste of time at all.

3) Even though there are very few massive hit VC successes, they do happen dozens of times a year. Just because something is low-probability doesn't make it stupid. Do you think people are dumb who write novels? Or become actors? Or open food trucks? Nobody should try anything that probably won't work?

That's a really sad life outlook.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#52

Post by nbashaw »

comstock wrote: post #50

Ok, here's some advice from an Internet random person. 1. Yes, if you can take some time. 2. Do some crying. You probably feel depressed, burnt out, stressed out. Crying is a great release. 3. You don't need to do anything right now it's ok not to do anything right now. 4. If you're under personal financial stress try and resolve that. Perhaps move somewhere cheaper. 5. You probably don't need to think too much about…

Thank you! This is very thoughtful. I'm definitely taking some time and thankfully not under too much financial stress. But honestly I actually feel really fine. This happened a couple weeks ago and I have had some time to process it. Writing the post was super cathartic.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#53

Post by Semiapies »

nbashaw wrote: post #37
Semiapies wrote: post #32

I'm really wondering how VC money was supposed to make this business profitable. Sure, the idea is let them last long enough to grow their customer base, but with "millions" of pages read, they were making ramen-profitable-for-one-guy money from something that required a team of people. I imagine it didn't seem clear to investors that there was a big potential for growth, and they'd need big growth just to survive ,…

Actually we had a pretty detailed financial model for how we expected to get to profitability! We currently have ~1,200 subscribers, and about half are paying us $1.99/mo (our old price point) and the other half is paying $3.99/mo. Our growth model is based on people sharing our content, and so we can predict pretty well how many new customers we'll get every time we post something new. With a $15k monthly content bu…

"But I challenge your assertion that we'd need 'big growth just to survive'"

You say this while literally telling me that your big hope was to get a pile of money so that you could "bend" your growth curve towards reaching bare profitability after about another year. When would a realistic assessment of your actual growth curve say you'd reach that point? Was there enough customer base that you could actually reach to get to that point, much less beyond?

I won't call your plans "dumb", but the whole startup approach is one that almost always fails, even compared to starting other businesses. It's really hard to call it "smart".

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#54

Post by yawz »

comstock wrote: post #50

Ok, here's some advice from an Internet random person. 1. Yes, if you can take some time. 2. Do some crying. You probably feel depressed, burnt out, stressed out. Crying is a great release. 3. You don't need to do anything right now it's ok not to do anything right now. 4. If you're under personal financial stress try and resolve that. Perhaps move somewhere cheaper. 5. You probably don't need to think too much about…

Regarding #5, I humbly agree that taking some time might be beneficial. We all suffer from "Focusing Illusion": Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#55

Post by Semiapies »

nbashaw wrote: post #51
Semiapies wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many, many more people make fun of the startup mentality. Which is harsh, but justified. It's nice that you chased your dreams. The problem is, this is how almost all startups end up, with the last guy wondering what to do next. If you get struck by lightning, you get acquired. If you get struck twice , you get VC money. That you "accepted" the risk just means you took a very bad bet. If you learned from that…

You're right that the probability of any individual "unicorn" type idea succeeding is ridiculously slim. But I think you're not appreciating the larger context. Consider this: 1) I have never had more job offers in my life than the past 24 hours. Like, really good jobs. Obviously that wasn't the goal, but it's not like I'm out on the street or really in any way worse off than I was before. 2) I learned more in the pa…

To be blunt, you're the one who complained about the outcome in your blog post and the one who is angrily seeking validation in Hacker News comments by personally attacking critics and saying nobody understands your unicorn or your boldness in rolling the dice.

If your goal was to get some job offers, great. I got the impression that wasn't your goal, though. That you're fine, personally...well, I assumed that, given you bothered to blog about it. But yes, that's good. I hope that's true of everyone else involved.

But to answer your last question...it's the wrong question. The real question is whether it's smart to pin all your hopes on a really unlikely way to succeed when other approaches exist. Most people who write novels, become actors, etc. don't quit their day jobs until they actually start to make it. Food trucks that don't turn a profit don't tend to get investors to save them. Most new businesses aren't wannabe unicorns.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#56

Post by [deleted] »

nbashaw wrote: post #51
Semiapies wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think many, many more people make fun of the startup mentality. Which is harsh, but justified. It's nice that you chased your dreams. The problem is, this is how almost all startups end up, with the last guy wondering what to do next. If you get struck by lightning, you get acquired. If you get struck twice , you get VC money. That you "accepted" the risk just means you took a very bad bet. If you learned from that…

You're right that the probability of any individual "unicorn" type idea succeeding is ridiculously slim. But I think you're not appreciating the larger context. Consider this: 1) I have never had more job offers in my life than the past 24 hours. Like, really good jobs. Obviously that wasn't the goal, but it's not like I'm out on the street or really in any way worse off than I was before. 2) I learned more in the pa…

[deleted]

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#58

Post by capsule_toy »

nbashaw wrote: post #37
Semiapies wrote: post #32

I'm really wondering how VC money was supposed to make this business profitable. Sure, the idea is let them last long enough to grow their customer base, but with "millions" of pages read, they were making ramen-profitable-for-one-guy money from something that required a team of people. I imagine it didn't seem clear to investors that there was a big potential for growth, and they'd need big growth just to survive ,…

Actually we had a pretty detailed financial model for how we expected to get to profitability! We currently have ~1,200 subscribers, and about half are paying us $1.99/mo (our old price point) and the other half is paying $3.99/mo. Our growth model is based on people sharing our content, and so we can predict pretty well how many new customers we'll get every time we post something new. With a $15k monthly content bu…

I feel like your pricing is too low, and you needed to be closer to Audible prices.

I feel like your marketing plan relied on too many perfect things to happen. You should also consider that the more you exploit a specific marketing channel, the less it tends to work. I think it's a tough sell to convince investors to put money into something that will only get you to your targets if your conversion and share rates improve.

Re: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Hardbound Update

#59

Post by capsule_toy »

nbashaw wrote: post #37
Semiapies wrote: post #32

I'm really wondering how VC money was supposed to make this business profitable. Sure, the idea is let them last long enough to grow their customer base, but with "millions" of pages read, they were making ramen-profitable-for-one-guy money from something that required a team of people. I imagine it didn't seem clear to investors that there was a big potential for growth, and they'd need big growth just to survive ,…

Actually we had a pretty detailed financial model for how we expected to get to profitability! We currently have ~1,200 subscribers, and about half are paying us $1.99/mo (our old price point) and the other half is paying $3.99/mo. Our growth model is based on people sharing our content, and so we can predict pretty well how many new customers we'll get every time we post something new. With a $15k monthly content bu…

I feel like your pricing is too low, and you needed to be closer to Audible prices.

I feel like your marketing plan relied on too many perfect things to happen. You should also consider that the more you exploit a specific marketing channel, the less it tends to work. I think it's a tough sell to convince investors to put money into something that will only get you to your targets if your conversion and share rates improve.

Post reply on HN