Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 279 posts

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#261

Post by rudasn »

hu3 wrote: post #42
jwr wrote: post #30

I can see a number of data points in the comments, let me add another one. I started a self-funded SaaS business fairly late (in my 40s). I was tired of being dependent on others, especially as others mostly failed me in the past. I wanted to be independent: no investors, no bosses, no employees. Just me. It took five years of slow growth to get to a stage where I didn't have to worry about revenue. Do I regret it? H…

Thank you for sharing your experience. It's the style of life I want to pursue. I'm starting a B2B SAAS business (the dream) on the side where I also plan to work on my own (no investors, no employees) and maybe be helped by my wife. My question to you is: Do you have experience with free tiers? I'm thinking about having a free tier to lure in customers and allow them to play around with the app without having to com…

B2B cofounder here. It may be more helpful to you if you frame your question as "what can I build that would make them want to commit their credit card right away".

Focus on what exactly your customer would be paying for, and build that, as opposed to what may look interesting to some random visitor to your site.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#262

Post by revelio »

okeuro49 wrote: post #62
revelio wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. It depresses me no end that this comes from the BBC. How predictable. You can argue that the Californian sun-always-shines mentality is unrealistic, but you can't argue with the results it generates. Perhaps the British attitude is just normal and not anything in particular, but compared to the attitude of the people at the top it's a culture of defeatism. I think it may also be reflective of the culture and men…

I wouldn't usually be so cynical, but I noticed recently how the BBC was responding to the inflation crisis, by somehow making it out to be some external thing that nobody could control, and nobody could have predicted. When in fact there were many people saying that the massive state spending programs during coronavirus, were going to contribute to a high rise in inflation, and that policies such as paying the wages…

Yes their bias and lack of reliability will be their undoing in the end rather than any defeatist attitude, but one of the reasons to not set up state backed entities in the first place is how hard it is to get rid of them even when they start failing at their core mission.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#263

Post by revelio »

HPsquared wrote: post #54
revelio wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the reason it's harder to get money for those sorts of businesses is because they're much less likely to generate large returns. The BBC couldn't / didn't want to find any tech entrepreneurs for this article (it's not like the UK doesn't have them), so they focus on people doing contracting or agency work. Of course it'll be tough to get investment in such a low margin and competitive business, VCs don't inv…

Most businesses don't generate extraordinarily large returns. Successful tech companies are in the long tail. Where's the investment in the middle?

That exists but it goes by names we don't use much here like corporate paper, bonds, etc. Bigger than a bank loan but smaller than a (modern) VC round.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#264

Post by sph »

orangepurple wrote: post #241
daemoens wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never seen anybody cite the Unabomber before.

Ted's major major mistake was using violence and intimidation to raise awareness

'James Q. Wilson, in a 1998 New York Times Op-Ed, wrote: "If it is the work of a madman, then the writings of many political philosophers—Jean Jacques Rousseau, Tom Paine, Karl Marx—are scarcely more sane.'

Thanks to this thread for introducing me to this manifesto. I have heard of it, but I didn't know it was a critique of our industrial world from a "madman" wishing to return to more primitivistic roots. As someone going through the same concerns, without the violence, this essay seems right down my alley.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#265

Post by jwr »

hu3 wrote: post #42
jwr wrote: post #30

I can see a number of data points in the comments, let me add another one. I started a self-funded SaaS business fairly late (in my 40s). I was tired of being dependent on others, especially as others mostly failed me in the past. I wanted to be independent: no investors, no bosses, no employees. Just me. It took five years of slow growth to get to a stage where I didn't have to worry about revenue. Do I regret it? H…

Thank you for sharing your experience. It's the style of life I want to pursue. I'm starting a B2B SAAS business (the dream) on the side where I also plan to work on my own (no investors, no employees) and maybe be helped by my wife. My question to you is: Do you have experience with free tiers? I'm thinking about having a free tier to lure in customers and allow them to play around with the app without having to com…

I do have a free tier, but it is for a different segment (hobbyists), and no "conversions" from free to paid are expected. In a way, I maintain it as a hobby and a service to the community, also hoping for some PR and visibility.

In general, I would strongly discourage a free tier in B2B SaaS. Nothing that has value is free. If you need to offer something for free to "lure in" customers, then I'd say your main offering does not provide enough value. Also, you will be "luring in" customers who expect and want free stuff, this is not the kind of customer you want.

Do not get caught in the race to the bottom with your pricing. Do not listen to pricing advice on HN: people here are not your customers. Many expect B2B SaaS to offer $19/month plans, which is impossible. In my opinion, any B2B SaaS with an ARPU lower than $50/month is doomed to fail. If you find a counter-example, it will be a company burning through VC money to get "user growth", or a loss leader from a big corporation. Think about it this way: at $19/month you are looking at $228/year revenue from a customer. Ignoring all other costs, if you spend ONE HOUR PER YEAR supporting that customer, you are already losing money.

Build something that provides real value to businesses, price your service fairly, err on the high side, and see what happens.

Trying without having to commit is important, but that's what free trials are for. I had free trials with a credit card required for the first few years, because I was afraid of the support load. Then I switched to free trials with no credit card required and in retrospect I should have gone with that from the beginning, since the niche I'm operating in is fairly small and most of my customers are smart engineers, so support load wasn't an issue.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#266

Post by ClumsyPilot »

JamesBarney wrote: post #252
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your benchmark was Rich. Rich is a relative term, it means more money that everyone else. If everyone owns 5 houses, to be rich you have to own 500

The status is zero sum, wealth is not. We all live in bigger houses with more amenities and greater food security than our ancestors.

If you compare to peasants who lived 100 years ago, sure. But go back two generations, and as inequality has risen swaths of people have fallen into property.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#267

Post by jwr »

randlet wrote: post #63
jwr wrote: post #30

I can see a number of data points in the comments, let me add another one. I started a self-funded SaaS business fairly late (in my 40s). I was tired of being dependent on others, especially as others mostly failed me in the past. I wanted to be independent: no investors, no bosses, no employees. Just me. It took five years of slow growth to get to a stage where I didn't have to worry about revenue. Do I regret it? H…

How do you deal with the bus factor as a B2B? I lost a few larger contracts because customers would not risk making a one person business a core part of their workflow.

I don't. I don't hide the fact that this is a single founder business. If a customer isn't comfortable with that, then they look elsewhere.

I sometimes explain that I've been doing this for eight years now and this is my life's work, which is a much better guarantee of stability than a VC-funded hotco startup, where winds can change any day. I also sometimes explain that if you are the customer of a VC-funded startup, something is certain to happen in a couple of years, and there is no outcome that is good for you, the customer. The startup could be sold to a bigco (bad, they will ruin the service or shut it down outright), go for an IPO (bad, huge pressure on user base growth at the expense of maintaining existing features), have another investment round (bad, increasing pressure on user base growth), or simply get shut down.

But these kinds of discussions are very rare, in general I haven't found this to be a problem. Or, in other words, I have enough paying customers for this not to be a problem :-)

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#268

Post by danjac »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #146
FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

This ignores generational change. You can bump up your kids to the next level. You see this most often in many of the immigrant families First generation are janitors. Second generation are accountants/engineers. Third generation are doctors/lawyers Fourth generation are entrepreneurs

So sucks to be you if you happen to be on the janitor tier, no?

That's not really what a meritocracy is supposed to be.

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#269

Post by ochoseis »

boplicity wrote: post #74
FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

> Middle class kids can afford one throw. Gotta disagree with this. As someone who grew up middle class, I was fortunate, in a lot of ways, to also learn to be prudent with money. I started bootstrapping microbusinesses with almost no monetary investment. This eventually allowed me to support myself (on a very low budget), and then, later, on a slightly larger budget. Eventually, one of these businesses became succes…

> Maybe they don't have some of the same luxuries my family was able to give me: a couple of years of college paid for, attending a few business/marketing conferences as a teenager, examples to follow from my dad and brother.

Success is the intersection of luck (having college paid for, a supportive family) and preparation (learning business skills early on).

Re: Entrepreneurs who regret starting businesses

#270

Post by inglor_cz »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #8

Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good…

"Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to..."

Yeah, if. The old military adage about capability and intent comes to mind. Rich kids do have more raw resources, but they may, at the same time, lack motivation. What do they have to gain by throwing, and especially by learning to throw accurately and at a desirable target?

Motivation is quite a big factor in success. Motivated people fail, too, but unmotivated people rarely succeed; there is always enough distractions around to spend money and time on (sports, sex, travelling, gambling, drugs etc.).

Post reply on HN