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I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

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Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#191

Post by pc86 »

firefoxd wrote: post #167

I had two customers. One came to me after he couldn't get a company in the Ukraine to cooperate. He had already paid them $25k and the website was barely useful. This was an san fransisco exGoogle product manager with more money than sense, zero coding skills, and in love with subscription services. I charged him half for 2 months of work and got the website in front of paying customers. Then $1000 a month for mainte…

Probably bogged down by downloading too many pixels ;)

On a serious note though there is something extremely impressive about someone with no coding experience creating a website that makes them money. Even if they're not coding. It'd be like asking someone who can't cook to open a successful restaurant. If it happens at all it's impressive, but doubly so if you don't even hire a chef you just figure it out as you go along.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#192

Post by AussieWog93 »

I've bootstrapped multiple successful businesses, and this guy missed the most important lessons of all:

- Don't gamble hundreds of thousands of dollars of your own money on unvalidated concepts.

- If a gamble doesn't pay off, don't throw more money into the pit.

Being successful in business is literally about taking small gambles you can afford to lose, and then absolutely milking it when one of them pays off. I've lost money countless times on unvalidated ideas that didn't pan out, but it's always at most single-digit percentages of the company's assets.

Startup bullshit-speak aside, they could have easily earned their "real-world MBA" by following some Wordpress tutorials, spending a couple of hundred on hosting and plugins then shooting the idea in the back of the head 6 months later when they discover that bootstrapping a marketplace is damn near impossible.

There seems to be a huge chasm between people who want to be seen as a cool "Founder/CEO", and people who actually want to start a profitable and valuable business.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#193

Post by didgetmaster »

blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

I am coming at this from the opposite end (tech founder looking for a partner to handle the business side). As a technical person, I can build all the features; fix all the bugs; and work on performance issues. But I lack the skills needed to find the right market fit and convince customers to jump on board.

I think the best startups are co-founded by a bright technical person and a savvy business partner. The pattern of Apple which was started by the 'Two Steves' (Jobs and Wozniak) can be a really successful one and one that I would like to follow (https://didgets.substack.com/p/looking-for-another-steve-job...)

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#194

Post by la64710 »

blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

This is why AI assisted app development will help tremendously in reducing the cost for startup founders. It will certainly reduce the number of hours required to develop an app and businesses should not run out of money trying to develop one.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#195

Post by mike_hearn »

newbie578 wrote: post #17
thegreenswede wrote: post #6

You mention to not build the website, iOS app, and Android app all at once before getting market fit. Which of the three would you start with to quickly iterate and get feedback? When you mention that you had to often walk into like a scuba shop to try to get a sign on, were people more receptive if you 'had an app for that' already?

Do Flutter and cover all 3. Okay Flutter Web is pretty bad, but if you are cash strapped and need to move fast, Flutter is the way to go. I expect more and more startups to embrace Flutter, it is easily currently the best solution on the market (for 99% of app ideas). Yes native will always be better, but if you are a startup, your focus should be building an MVP and getting to product-market-fit as fast as possible…

If your idea is one in which users are more than marginally committed (so not a marketplace where people buy only once on vacation) then you can avoid the flutter web problems by shipping it as a desktop app. Flutter on desktop is very responsive and it has the advantage that it's the native environment with the real Dart VM. Also if you want to do anything with hardware then it's a good way to go.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#196

Post by sbilstein »

kevstev wrote: post #187
sbilstein wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh absolutely. Twice I made the mistake of coming onto a startup to fix the “mess” the previous dev shop had made. Both times the founders had developed an incredibly negative relationship with their dev shop. Hell, the company with the Series A was withholding payments, the preseed company at least paid their bills. I naively thought “of course they hate working with a dev shop, the incentives are wrong. I’m FTE wit…

> If they are coming from tech, the fact that they couldn’t convince a former colleague to work with them means they’ll be a terrible manager. I kind of disagree here. I have been a manager at F*NG and just below those places in terms of pay, and getting my guys to jump to a startup without market fit, for the pay that those types of places tend to offer, I don't see how they would make the jump. The product/idea wou…

Well, in this scenario, you are actually the 'former' colleague getting recruited to be a co-founder while the other folks stay stable. You just admitted you would and I wouldn't be surprised if there is a PM or even another engineer who would want to join forces. That's different than a complete stranger recruiting you -- I would be very wary.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#197

Post by sbilstein »

flashgordon wrote: post #118
sbilstein wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh absolutely. Twice I made the mistake of coming onto a startup to fix the “mess” the previous dev shop had made. Both times the founders had developed an incredibly negative relationship with their dev shop. Hell, the company with the Series A was withholding payments, the preseed company at least paid their bills. I naively thought “of course they hate working with a dev shop, the incentives are wrong. I’m FTE wit…

Great advice. Any guidance on asking the right questions as a way if filtering out these traits/behaviors in CEOs?

Be nice but remember you have objective skills and you need to suss out the CEOs objective skills.

1) Can they raise money? Proof is good here. Sometimes someone will say "I want you as my co-founder to go and raise my seed round" and you can condition leaving your current job on getting at least some checks in. Remember, this founder _knows_ you can deliver the goods, you are an employed software engineer. Can they?

2) Can they recruit? The process might be a mess but are they treating your time and concerns with respect?

3) Do they view you as an equal partner? Make sure you nail down exactly what they want. If they want a true co-founder, ask for 50%. If they don't, make sure you understand what it means to be an employee to a non-technical founding team.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#198

Post by moomoo11 »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #158
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons that I am working on the project that I'm on now (for the last couple of years), is because a friend of mine had set up a 501(c)(3), and was looking to develop an app, out of his own pockets, and through solicited donations. The main problem was, he didn't really know what he wanted (non-technical). He asked me to sit in on a couple of his enquiries to developer agencies. It was a shitshow. I had r…

> "Get back to me, when you know exactly what you want." This is so important if you want to maintain a good relationship. I'm working with a client who has very little money and while the system he wants is almost trivially simple, he's funding it out of his own pocket. After he initially was bouncing from "cool idea" to "cool idea" and had a heart attack at my very reasonable price, I told him to take a step back a…

You’re a good person that’s awesome. Sometimes it’s necessary to guide people to the water (but ultimately it’s their choice what to do).

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#199

Post by wstuartcl »

blagie wrote: post #9

I have a very high level of scepticism towards non-technical founders without deep pockets: 1. There's an agility to being able to change things yourself, at 2am if necessary. That's very important to startups. 2. There's a discipline to not accruing unreasonable technical debt of the type that will sink you two years in that you can't expect from someone who doesn't deeply care. 3. Managing devs generally requires u…

This or that non-technical person finding a technical co-founder while not being realistic about the stake each provides to the company. Ideas are worthless (infinite numbers of them are forgotten every day), executing ideas is what has the potential for realizing value.

I have seen so many people who do realize they need a technical partner, but arrive at the table thinking the valuable asset is the idea.

Re: I lost $209k of my own money trying to start a business

#200

Post by satvikpendem »

mike_hearn wrote: post #195
newbie578 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Flutter and cover all 3. Okay Flutter Web is pretty bad, but if you are cash strapped and need to move fast, Flutter is the way to go. I expect more and more startups to embrace Flutter, it is easily currently the best solution on the market (for 99% of app ideas). Yes native will always be better, but if you are a startup, your focus should be building an MVP and getting to product-market-fit as fast as possible…

If your idea is one in which users are more than marginally committed (so not a marketplace where people buy only once on vacation) then you can avoid the flutter web problems by shipping it as a desktop app. Flutter on desktop is very responsive and it has the advantage that it's the native environment with the real Dart VM. Also if you want to do anything with hardware then it's a good way to go.

Desktop is AOT compiled, not a VM, I'm pretty sure. Which makes performance even better, then.
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