Yes, all of those ideas are bad.
Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
151–160 of 167 posts
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#152I'll thank OP for sharing, it always takes courage to admit failures.
There was a thought provoking article (can't find the link) that made the rounds here recently about the "guy who'll never actually build his startup", describing someone who's always going through ideas and says he'll find the perfect idea one day. The article concluded with encouraging people to just build it.
While that type of person exists and there is a harm to overanalyzing, this serves as the converse. Someone who just jumps into ideas without validating them.
At the end of the day, a lot, actually most, ideas are bad, we shouldn't just pretend enough HardWork will overcome that. We should encourage people to brutally validate their ideas early, it'll save you a lot of time.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#153I wish you all success. I'm intrigued by people who are determined to take primary control of their money-making, because I'm so different from that. I am so grateful that companies exist that can manage annoyances like medical insurance, taxes, payroll, etc. so that I can just show up, do stuff I'm good at and enjoy, and then go home in the evening and forget about it all until the next day. I have little skill or i…
You are right, both types are essential! Neither can thrive without many of the other :) Cooperation is the human superpower.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#154Thank you! Needed this 12 months into a new MVP build.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#155Just a nitpick (I notice everything, especially when it comes to spelling and grammar), but on your landing page you mention Let's Encrypt but you didn't capitalize it properly.
Thanks, I noted it down and will fix it today.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#156Well done for persevering, but it sounds like you missed the obvious. If you want to start a business, study business (and marketing). Since you spent time marketing there are 2 conclusions: nobody cared, or you didn't manage to find people who would have. Learning marketing should have taught you both those things. The classic marketing line is: find a gap in the market or an undeserved niche, understand their needs…
What are some good courses/books for understanding marketing and business? Especially interested in anything that focuses on tech or SaaS specifically.
"Marketing for Entrepreneurs: Concepts and Applications for New Ventures" by Crane is outstanding.
Alternatively find a university doing remote courses and pick modules you'll benefit from.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#157Well done for persevering, but it sounds like you missed the obvious. If you want to start a business, study business (and marketing). Since you spent time marketing there are 2 conclusions: nobody cared, or you didn't manage to find people who would have. Learning marketing should have taught you both those things. The classic marketing line is: find a gap in the market or an undeserved niche, understand their needs…
Prioritizing and learning about marketing is important. But I think it is a leap to go from there to taking formal business courses. Many MBAs (I suspect most) will tell you that what they learned there doesn't remotely make up for the cost in time or money of attending. (Most of those pleased with their experience will focus on the networking and career opportunities that opened up to them). In my experience, most b…
Some authors claim many markets are winner takes all, where the dominant firm takes 75% or more of the profits, with the rest split between one or two followers.
So if you want to learn how to start one of those I think strategy is critical, not trying to retrofit one onto an existing product.
It's like any architecture. Better to do the thinking before the building.
But yes, it's far easier to learn anything when you're applying it too. Sure you could learn by trial and error but why not take advantage of the collective learning of an industry?
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.…
> 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. Me neither and I work at a FAANG. I think a lot of those serial entrepreneurs that have never worked in companies have a very skewed idea of what it actually looks like once you're in a decent company.
Most companies aren't decent, far from it. And I doubt most people have a fair chance of landing one of those decent jobs.
Even putting all that aside, working for someone entails doing what you're told even if you don't want or agree with it. That's not how I want to spend my waking hours.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#159I would like to chip in because I know exactly the feeling of the author. The failure is normal and what makes the difference is the ability to continue trying after one failed and having a believe in yourself, but let’s cut the support bullshit and point out the obvious. The author is a one man army at least from the story that I read. Meaning, the projects that you have done were done individually without much help or partnerships, and such projects for the most part will find failure. Why do people sell shit load of material about building in public, building an audience, connecting and being social? Because this matters for success. Those that teach this approach understood that success of tech startup is in people (and not only tech), inside the venture and outside (customers) and that is also why we are writing such articles, for recognition and visibility. Imagine the number of products that are out there without proper audience? Why do we spent hours and hours writing bullshit engagement posts in Twitter when in reality you could build a product instead? Because without that engagement and community, an internet project will have a hard time for recognition and success. Tech oriented founders usually have a block when it comes to social aspect of the business, we are introverts, the thought of writing pitty tweets and liking other’s comments makes as sick, and that is fine as if you have chosen a path of solo enterpreneur, you need to learn to upgrade other skills. I have failed in more that 20 startups in my life and only when I took a step and overcame my dislike of communication I’ve became successful. The key to big changes is your network, the world is this way and now that you made it to the first page of hacker news, you finally understood how to move your products. Good luck.
Re: Failed for the past 12 years as an tech entrepreneur
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate more on this? I think we are getting blocked :|
A link shortener is a simple way for malicious or spammy email senders to cloak their malicious or spammy link in something which is not yet on a block list. So what we find is that as new ones come into the market they are eagerly adopted and we start to see evil links. From our point of view the earlier we put in place a wholesale block the better, because otherwise they may become "too big to block" like bit.ly et…
If security software can read email enough to observe the shortened URL, couldn’t it just see what it expands to and then judge the target URL? Link shorteners don’t seem to have any obvious CAPTCHAs.