101–110 of 167 posts
I’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…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
VCs actively dissuade founders from doing professional services.
I guess it's because VCs are are after the exponential growth that is possible with a hit B2C product but not realisticly possible with B2B. B2B can generate pretty solid incomes though. My previous employer had 15-20 clients, around 2M EUR yearly revenue, a solid 20% margin, with 30 employees. Fintech.
I'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 was always the idea that being my own boss would be cool, but also a lot of angst about what if I succeed and have to deal with the stress of not knowing how things will be month to month if it's not a breakout success? Most businesses I've seen are not startups that get huge investments. They're small businesses where people struggle much the time, even if they have comfortable stretches.
Eventually I settled on what I would want for any business of my own, which would be a side business or lifestyle business to supplement or maybe supplant my day job. I mostly stopped pursuing that, but am always open to the idea. Through introspection I've realized that were I even to somehow have become the founder of some startup, I probably would have wanted to exit with money ASAP as it grew, because that level of instability is just not what I'm looking for, and not what I think I should be subjecting my family to.
Now, I'm fairly happy with a good job and more free time. I don't necessarily regret all of my attempts at side businesses, but I also feel like I missed more of the youth of some of my children than I should have. That doesn't feel like it was the right trade to make, and that's without even missing a huge amount. That's just not something you can get back, so it doesn't take too many nights a week of being absent for a couple years to add up. But there's freedom in dropping expectations for yourself to be doing more, and trying to make it for yourself. There's a reason people lament the loss of the middle class factory jobs of the last century, there's immense freedom in leaving work at work and having that provide enough money to live somewhat comfortably. There's no shame in that, nor in letting go of dreams of making it big yourself, if you decide that you're happier doing something else.
12 years of learning. Not of failing!
So your new business just does link analytics? Who are your potential customers? I.e. how large is your addressable market? When I see something like this I think of mass emailers. They tend to require link analytics but otherwise I can’t think of another use case. Maybe Twitter or other social media publishing. Since publishing is an application where link analytics tends to be used I would focus there. I can imagin…
The good thing is that you can basically track anything. One of my clients uses short links on buttons and images to track conversions.
And yes, publishing industry can definitely benefit from this.
Thank you for sharing. Out of curiosity, how have you supported yourself all this time?
If you stick with it, I would recommend you spend a lot more time talking to customers, thinking about distribution channels, and getting creative with narrowing your target audience. And build after, not before, you do those things
I'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…
I actually even hate having dominant customers. My ideal model of business is a ton of smaller customers, with none of them having more than 10 per cent share of the total revenue.
Also, finding more ways to grow your business is rewarding - both psychologically and financially. I like "hacking" the question of "how can I introduce product X to more people who might be interested in buying it?"
thanks for sharing your story, it is inspiring. What is your tech stack? python?