12 years of learning. Not of failing!
Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
91–100 of 167 posts
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#92I’m sincerely not trying to be mean, but it’s possible you were previously simply bad at entrepreneurship. There is this dominant narrative that entrepreneurship is primarily about raw willpower and persistence despite the odds. As a 20+ year entrepreneur I do not believe this to be the case. I believe the primary skill is observation. Yes, we need to try different ideas, but what really makes a product work is liste…
Yes, I have had a bit of entrepreneurial success. I started off contracting, but looked at the needs of my contracting customers and also their customers. After a while there were too many decent ideas to execute. I could choose the ones that appealed, get a purchase order that paid for development and then sell the developed product to other customers.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#93I have a similar long history of failures, though my failures did generate income - just nowhere near enough to give up the day job. €20k a year at their highest point, €5k a year at other times. I notice similarities in what you're describing, particularly when it comes to your target market and products. B2C not B2B. And generic, anyone products, rather than targeted niche products. A lesson that took me a long, lo…
> Building a generic app for consumers is futile.
But can this really be true? Plenty of B2C software companies make good and continuous revenue. Take for instance the German company Ashampoo. Their products are not exceptionally original and they were always in a crowded market. Yet this company is everywhere in the low-cost consumer desktop software space. I know this company even though I've never even used one of their products. There are many companies like that. Remember OO Defrag? Well, I just checked, OO Software is still around, located in Berlin, Germany. Ever written a novel in German? Papyrus Autor is used by enthusiasts and professional writers since the 80s. These are just examples from Germany off the top of my head but there are similar companies in nearly every country.
Perhaps what you say is true for "web apps" with subscription model, it seems very hard to reach private users and convince them to pay a monthly fee. But I doubt it's true for desktop applications and I'm also not sure it's true in general for mobile apps.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#94Too much "I built", not enough "I asked".
You didn't build things people want, you built things you thought people want.
I hope you find success but really after 12 years I'd suggest you get coaching/mentoring/YC startup school, because while you definitely gained experience from your failures, it looks to me that you haven't learned the right lessons from your mistakes. Even if your current startup is making some revenue.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#95I’ve found limited success and failure. Here is what I’ve learned.
Business is hard and important. Marketing, sales and strategy are necessary, there’s no “build it and they will come.”
Working at small early successful startup has been huge for learning.
Learning from local startups and building relationships with other entrepreneurs is huge.
Startup accelerators and hackathons help tech people learn business savvy and connect with non-tech cofounders.
For the vast majority, software dev is an arcane art and dev chops can be highly appreciated by a businessey entrepreneur.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is an underrated path, IMO. Consulting is an excellent way to hone the non-coding skills necessary for bootstrapping a company: Scoping projects, timeline estimation, choosing tradeoffs, finishing things, selling things, presenting products to others. It's also helpful to be able to get out and talk to other businesses and people on a regular basis. Bootstrapping can be extremely lonely in a way that is hard to…
VCs actively dissuade founders from doing professional services.
Although they should not dismiss it at all as it can lead to extremely successful companies. I have Dataiku or UIPath (they did it for years) as good examples. They leveraged their existing customers to test their first product, with success.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#97I've never understood the drive to own my own business. My parents were both entrepreneurs and it always felt so tenuous and stressful compared to other jobs. What percentage of small businesses actually end up making you more money than a traditional job? If my parents had worked at Walmart with their business degrees, they would probably be making way more $$ at a much more stable company than if they had run busin…
For me, it's mostly about independence. Living my life on my terms, on my own time, and on my own agenda is priceless. I don't have to ask anyone for permission to go for a walk or have a 3-hour long lunch if I want to. I can slack as much as I want as long as I keep the lights on.
Oh, and I passionately hate alarms. Don't want to wake up every morning just because someone decided for me that I have to be somewhere.
Sidenote: Good decision-making matters a lot. You can work for thousands of hours without having anything to show for it, or you can work for an hour and make more money than you've ever made in your entire life. Scary but exciting. See Taleb's Mediocristan vs Extremistan: https://people.wou.edu/~shawd/mediocristan--extremistan.html
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#98I’m sincerely not trying to be mean, but it’s possible you were previously simply bad at entrepreneurship. There is this dominant narrative that entrepreneurship is primarily about raw willpower and persistence despite the odds. As a 20+ year entrepreneur I do not believe this to be the case. I believe the primary skill is observation. Yes, we need to try different ideas, but what really makes a product work is liste…
I guess so. Besides tech, I did not have any other skills to market my product. Since then, I have learnt a bit of Sales, cold out reach, marketing channels, distribution and a lot more. In my 20s my primary focus was to look and do something cool than think about selling the product.
I worked on a project with a big time art director from a big time ad firm. His go-to saying, “build it and they won’t come”. He was making the point that publicity is what makes a product. Of course I had to learn it the hard way a few more times after that.
I’d suggest reading “Traction”. Even if you are getting help with the publicity on your next venture, Traction describes a great framework for focusing your efforts and knowing when it’s time to swap out the old techniques for new ones.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#99I've never understood the drive to own my own business. My parents were both entrepreneurs and it always felt so tenuous and stressful compared to other jobs. What percentage of small businesses actually end up making you more money than a traditional job? If my parents had worked at Walmart with their business degrees, they would probably be making way more $$ at a much more stable company than if they had run busin…
As the saying goes, "Entrepreneurs are willing to work 80 hours a week to avoid working 40 hours a week." It depends on what motivates you I suppose, some people don't mind working all the time as long as they get a feeling of ownership.
It's also easy to look at the richest people alive, notice that they're all entrepreneurs and then conclude that starting a company is the path to riches. This suffers from massive survivorship bias of course, but humans are how they are.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#100I've never understood the drive to own my own business. My parents were both entrepreneurs and it always felt so tenuous and stressful compared to other jobs. What percentage of small businesses actually end up making you more money than a traditional job? If my parents had worked at Walmart with their business degrees, they would probably be making way more $$ at a much more stable company than if they had run busin…
There are personality types that don't mind the extra risk and also personality types that put high value on being at the top of a hierarchy