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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#951

Post by j45 »

jen20 wrote: post #288
j45 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most problems in a Startup are product or distribution. Most people who look down on lifestyle businesses often have the lifestyle to begin with, or are their… yet to be accomplished followers. It’s koolaid that can lose a decade of so many peoples lives. Anyone who looks down on lifestyle businesses should introspect on where it came from that it’s ok for them to look down kn another’s choices and personal formula.…

> Customers don’t care what you code in. Mostly true. I won’t be your customer if you use electron though.

Haha. I became a user of superhuman recently and have been thinking the same.

You’d might get stuck with Flutter instead :)

Re: I am done. I give up

#952

Post by kirso »

FollowingTheDao wrote: post #457
MLH6ft1 wrote: post #291

Dude at least tell us what you were working on? I mean there is zero context to this post. How am I to process the fact your product got zero sign ups when you haven't even mentioned what it is. "Don't make the same mistakes I did", what mistakes have you even highlighted here (and I mean mistakes related to your product and not the fact that you fell for the honey trap posts' of social media influencers)???? 257 com…

> Dude at least tell us what you were working on? Why doe sit matter? Jesus, he was just institutionalized, you people are cruel. And who cares about how long ago the account was created?

I believe its because the person wants to gain a benefit from the post instead of being empathetic or giving his/her take on it.

Well, not everything is about you. Be kind and empathetic.

Merry Xmass everyone!

Re: I am done. I give up

#953

Post by arendtio »

Some time ago I read 'The Hard Thing about Hard Things' by Ben Horowitz and what you describe reminds me about 'The Struggle'. Ben Horowitz wrote about it in a blog post too [1] and I find it gives a much better impression how entrepreneurship feels like, than most other descriptions.

Always monitor your mental health and when in doubt, keep it first.

[1]: https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/the-struggle-2/

Re: I am done. I give up

#955

Post by Nomentatus »

The vast majority of new businesses fail. Always have. Using the "E" word doesn't change that. SO don't start a business that isn't really worth the risk; have a Why, have some special sauce that nobody else has (such as genuine intellectual property), or develop it fast; or maybe a very uncommon insight about the future.

The good news that you have valuable experience, should you bump up against those last mentioned factors at some point.

Re: I am done. I give up

#956

Post by daitangio »

moooo99 wrote: post #722
rapind wrote: post #704

> 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,…

> This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram. This 100x! Many of the big influencers in these indie/startup/productivity niches seem to earn a lot of money at first sight. If you look deeper, a lot of these influencer seem to be making a lot of money from courses they are selli…

In Italy we said: who knows make business, who do not teach how to make it. We have some journalists here selling courses I did not understand what business they was successful…

Re: I am done. I give up

#958

Post by chrisyeh »

It's hard to bring something new into the world. If it were easy, it would have already happened.

Nearly all startups fail. They're trying to do something new, and the status quo is one hell of a competitor. Doing nothing is easy and most people's default choice.

Don't jump into entrepreneurship because you're lured in by the potential results; start a company if the process, regardless of the result, is something you enjoy or need.

Back in the early 2000s, after my first failed startup, I tried doing the math.

If only 10% of VC-backed startups succeed (the numbers for bootstrapped startups are even worse) and assuming that I could manage to get VC backing for my idea, and further assuming that each failed attempt to start a company could consume five years of time (you have to account for the time you likely need to spend working for established companies between startups to rebuild your finances after years of below-market pay), and finally assuming that at age 30, I would get four more attempts before I'd be 50 and face increasing ageism that would prevent me from raising money, then the math was simple:

There was a 0.9 X 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9, or 0.66 chance that I'd spend my entire career chasing this dream and never succeed.

I had to get comfortable with this as a default outcome if I wanted to keep going down the entrepreneurship path.

It's a little better if you're starting out at age 20, but even then, 0.9 to the 6th power is still 0.53. In other words, the majority outcome for entrepreneurship, even if you persevere for 30 years, is that you never succeed.

Yet it may still be worth doing because A) I'm sure you think your odds are better than average and B) It's what you really want to do.

Re: I am done. I give up

#959

Post by proteo5 »

Learn to rest, but not to give up. Rest for some time. It seems that you just need to learn a couple of things to continue, also to find mentors that have build real and tangible things, not the ones that you see on youtube. The foundation of everything is to provide value to the customers. If you allow me lest talk.

Re: I am done. I give up

#960

Post by data_maan »

IronIvan wrote: post #314
data_maan wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment distorts what is happening by using the word "robbing". Why not "supporting"? Perhaps Peter has earned his cash by working really hard. But perhaps not, perhaps he just exploited other people to hustle his way up some corporate food chain.

This type of thinking is pure toxin because it essentially reinforces exactly what you don't want. If Peter did in fact work hard and now he's stripped of the results of his labor while being told that probably he only managed to accumulate capital because he was just exploiting others, what incentive landscape does that create. Is a lot of profit a function of factors much less commendable than creating value for ot…

Pure toxin is a bit harsh, no?

I can tell you what kind of incentives such a system promotes: different ones!

In particularly a welfare system gives incentives to people who want to create something out of intrinsic motivation, not because of financial motivation. Many of the things the most profitable companies use are actually but on tools and mathematics that were created without any financial freedom.

So I would rather reserve the word "toxic" rather for the current system consisting of purely financial motivation to hoard money that your are so vigorously defending.

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