831–840 of 1001 posts
I never had a paid customer
To others, I would suggest building something you have someone willing to pay for is not a bad start for a new venture. May not be as glamourous as burning gobs of VC capital but it's probably more sustainable.
> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips. This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb,…
The insidious part is that these grifters make it seem as if everyone had a fair shot at the startup game, when in reality they just pretend it to make their audience of potential customers larger. My experience going to business events is that all of the startup founders who made it had parents well into the top 1% or 0.1% of the income range. That's why it's so common to raise a $100k friends and family seed round…
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This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…
As someone living in Finland, I would argue the cons balance out the pros. The welfare state also creates massive disincentives for entrepreneurs. There is no free lunch. In addition to the psychological aspects mentioned below (why try so hard when you’ll be fine either way), there are bigger reasons. While the safety net makes it less dangerous to fail, it also makes it harder to succeed. The barrier you need to cl…
> “high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)”
My fixed monthly expenses were over 3x higher in Manhattan than in Helsinki. Housing, child care, etc.
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1. Finland doesn't have oil, you're mistaking it for Norway. 2. Progressive taxation is the basis on which the best places to live were built. This is an empirical observation, make of that what you will, but it's strange to give your gut feelings of "basic economics / human nature" more weight than objective reality. 3. Why do is the word "rob" applied to taxation? Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce…
>!Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation. This is the kind of minimalist state that libertarians would agree to. People talk about robbery when the state is spending money on arbitrary things.
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Disclaimer: solo bootstrapper, currently growing reasonably, but still way below 1M ARR. I did start with a pilot / first customer and then started doing cold outreach, while trying SEO/ads/social without much success for a few years. I tried combining both product-led and sales-led, and addressing a lot of different kinds of businesses, but this ended up making my go-to-market more complicated and resulted in almost…
Looking to pivot to a similar approach, any chance I can reach out to you or follow you on Twitter?
I couldn't agree more about people peddling quick solutions to everything. Any time I see a "learn X in 24-hours" or whatever, I just shake my head. Anything worth learning / pursuing takes time, dedication, and hard work. Nobody builds a company, learns to play guitar, or masters baking in a day, a week, or even a year. People peddling such false promises are just selling snake oil. You, however, have the scars to prove you've been there, lived the journey, and could offer a lot of support to other struggling entrepreneurs.
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As someone living in Finland, I would argue the cons balance out the pros. The welfare state also creates massive disincentives for entrepreneurs. There is no free lunch. In addition to the psychological aspects mentioned below (why try so hard when you’ll be fine either way), there are bigger reasons. While the safety net makes it less dangerous to fail, it also makes it harder to succeed. The barrier you need to cl…
I recently moved back to Finland after a couple of years in New York, and I strongly disagree with this: > “high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)” My fixed monthly expenses were over 3x higher in Manhattan than in Helsinki. Housing, child care, etc.
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You are both right: hard work is a requirement. To make it really big (and sometimes to just make it), luck is a requirement as well. A simple "proof" using logic is finding someone who worked really hard and failed (called a proof by contradiction): this is not hard, many have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it. Thus, hard work does not lead to success. But it does enable it. Similarly, there are…
> A simple "proof" using logic is finding someone who worked really hard and failed (called a proof by contradiction): this is not hard, many have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it. That "hard work" you describe is missing the component of "smart work". If people "have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it", then that is not smart work. When I used the words "hard work" it implicit…
You also used "hustle", which is usually unrelated to "smart", and actually has negative connotations as well (as in a "hustler") — I did not take it as such because that wouldn't make sense. Again: doh!
It helps nobody to be overly pedantic instead of looking for the most reasonable interpretation of what you read.
Having done several options -- entrepreneurship, job, internal entrepreneurship, and consulting, my advice: - Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle. Stay in a job unless you have a good idea and are ready to execute. - Try your idea internally. Starting a new product in a company is easier than outside. It doesn't have a $1B upside, but it has enough upside, in all respects (not just financial -- learning, credibility,…
Well yes and no. Innovating as an employee sucks because somebody else gets all the benefits.