I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…
Congrats to that.
We are on a same boat and freedom/independence was our reason too to start.
I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…
I literally just wasted so much money on a logo. Coulda used this post last week.
My primary motivation to start a business was freedom. Having no boss and a ton of spare time. I got lucky and have something almost running on auto pilot. I'm not eager to start another business, I rather enjoy chilling at the pool and browsing HN. I guess this is the opposite of most VC funded YC startups eager to take over the world.
How did you make it on auto pilot, a self serve model?
If you study 10 entrepreneurs you will find 11 different paths they took in their journey. While this is a good read, the advice to everyone looking for the "secret sauce" to starting a successful venture remains the same – there is none. You can try to emulate Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg or whoever else all you want. The moment you idea meets the real world you will be in completely unfamiliar territory with no op…
The secret sauce is generational wealth. People whose parents are extremely well off have a larger chance at succeeding in building their business. Not only does their parents have money, but also the right connections at that wealth level. They basically manufacture their own luck, and their money buys time and labor to get their product first to market. Sometimes the average joe can taste certain components of that…
Paul Orfalea had trouble in school and couldn't hold a job. He started Kinko's because selling things to students that he knew they needed was about all he could do. By carefully building an organization that can use modest employees to serve modest needs he ended up building a business that he sold for around five billion dollars. That isn't a story about secret sauce or generational wealth. It is a story about desperation and making one's own way after being shut out of other opportunities. That seems to emphasize the many ways model over your preferred wealth dominated narrative. Of course wealth may be involved, but that is just one of many potential driving factors.
Another correlation, very unusual and interesting, is that past infection with Toxoplasmosis (a parasite that grows in cat poop) increases the chances of becoming an entrepreneur by a factor of 1.27 to 2 https://hbr.org/2022/07/a-common-parasite-can-make-people-mo... > they discovered that those infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii were, on average, 29% more likely than others to have founded a start-up, 27%…
I'm just guessing, but I think you'll find an even stronger correlations from Toxoplasmosis to the lack of traditional family obligations, and also the latter to entrepreneurship.
My mother cares more about her cats than I. So this rings somewhat true.
My primary motivation to start a business was freedom. Having no boss and a ton of spare time. I got lucky and have something almost running on auto pilot. I'm not eager to start another business, I rather enjoy chilling at the pool and browsing HN. I guess this is the opposite of most VC funded YC startups eager to take over the world.
How did you make it on auto pilot, a self serve model?
It's a niche platform where subscribers/members post listings where other members respond to. The listings are public and indexed by Google, new customer acquisition is driven by organic trafic and word of mouth.
Agreed. I think the dominant entrepreneurial trait isn’t risk taking, it’s optimism.
Arguably, in part, optimism could be considered a derivative of poor risk assessment.
In my experience people are inaccurately pessimistic, in part due to a lack of imagination. So risk assessment that's more accurate will present as more optimistic.
I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…
Tbh it looks more like the dream of being independent was more important to you than actually solving a real problem. I find it very interesting that you value 'any startup' more than owning your own flat for example
definitely, learning to solve a real problem is just something I had to learn to make that dream a reality.
I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…
Congrats to that. We are on a same boat and freedom/independence was our reason too to start. Took us 6 years, we are revenue positive.
The trick: they didn't actually need or want it until you put it in front of them, engineered to induce the want.
Here's an anecdote. I used Linux as my main desktop OS for like 15 years. One day someone paid me to write some Mac software for them. I did the project on a $150 ancient mac from a second hand store, and partially on Linux. When the project ended I bought a new macbook when i got paid because i thought "ok, there's money in doing mac stuff, i better have current hardware". Linux was still my main desktop OS. 2 years…
The true is Windows 10/11, Linux and MacOs are all terrible desktop operating systems. Windows 2000 for example was better than any current OS. It comes down to what types of bugs and issues you're more inclined to tolerate.