191–200 of 380 posts
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They should have said $178,000,000 in transactions.
"Enabled customers to achieve 178,000,000 in revenue they may not otherwise have," maybe?
Perhaps a traditional business loan from a bank and a smaller team from the start? Would it be possible to aquire new users at a similar rate without the VC headlines?
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> at the end of that time there are two metrics, the number of people you helped and the amount of wealth you amassed and held on to, which number is a better representative of 'success'? Let's not forget personal satisfaction. I'm a little leery of putting the entire assessment of my life onto other people (even though if I was going to, I could do a lot worse than number of people helped). Hopefully helping other p…
Personal satisfaction doesn't matter once you're dead. Those other things do. And your entire assessment of your life at that point will be put onto other people. With that said, optimizing for after you're dead might be selfish and reasonably desirable, but there's a lot to be said for optimizing for tomorrow instead. Life would be pretty pointless if none of us were supposed to optimize for some enjoyment while we'…
Hey, #1 on Hacker News! I don't think that's happened since...I launched Gumroad back in 2011: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2406614 Thanks HN for being a part of my journey!
There's that term again, "lifestyle business." Uttered like a dirty word, when in fact Sahil has an actual product that many thousands of people use and pay for. I'm one of them.
Meanwhile, many startups aren’t true businesses – they book no revenue, and they may not even have a sellable product. That’s fine, because almost all businesses start with an idea or a dream or a need or pure desperation, and it’s up to the founders to make it work. They may even need investment, too – sometimes a lot of it. And that’s fine, too.
But when people from the startup world use the term “lifestyle business” to describe real businesses that aren’t pure tech, have solo founders, don’t take VC money, don’t intend to scale to a billion users, or whatever other qualities are not worthy of investor consideration, I find it condescending and misguided. Some startups could actually learn a thing or two from the vendor who sells hot dogs in the park, the person who starts up a specialist marketing agency, the partnership that builds a ceramics factory, or the solo founder running a media distribution and sales platform. They have products or services to sell. They have customers. They book revenue, pay their employees and suppliers, and if they do things right, may even become really successful.
In short, people who run small businesses are not hobbyists or dilettantes. They’re entrepreneurs doing real business selling something, often with limited capital and without the glamor or hype.
Kudos to Sahil for what he's accomplished. But for the love of Pete, please stop using the term "lifestyle business."
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Personal satisfaction doesn't matter once you're dead. Those other things do. And your entire assessment of your life at that point will be put onto other people. With that said, optimizing for after you're dead might be selfish and reasonably desirable, but there's a lot to be said for optimizing for tomorrow instead. Life would be pretty pointless if none of us were supposed to optimize for some enjoyment while we'…
Intentionally being provocative here, but by that logic, why does your effect on other people matter? You are unlikely to leave a lasting legacy, and the generation you do affect, will die as well.
But to address your question: people 'take the limit' and argue that life is just meaningless in every way all the time. If it were true, you shouldn't be bothered to make that effort in the first place. Obviously your actions matter to other people by the sheer virtue of the fact that you're optimizing for it. if you weren't, you wouldn't have bothered to ask the question.
Sometimes life is what you actually do, not merely what you think.
Jesus this part sucks: "In those nine months, when the whole team knew that we were fighting for our company’s life, not a single person left Gumroad. From “this is gonna be hard,” to “yep, turns out it was,” every single person worked harder than ever." Did everyone one of these people have significant equity in the company? I'd expect people who love their jobs and who work on something crucial, such as researching…
It's frustrating that I cannot get money for my ideas, which I believe are more impactful.
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So he'll be worth $50M in a few years with Gumroad. Meanwhile his original investors lost all the millions they invested. His employees lost all the time and vesting. Ouch. That's why it's way to dangerous to just follow any guy and do a startup and waste a few years of your life.
> So he'll be worth $50M in a few years with Gumroad. That's my best guess, yes. > Meanwhile his investors lost all the millions they invested. Well, some sold his equity back to him for $1, so yes. > His employees lost all the time and vesting. Well the employees could have exercised their grants when they were laid off, but I doubt they were inclined to double down on what was then a failing company. > That's why i…
In both cases the founder made between 20-50 million.