161–170 of 193 posts
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I think you have it reversed, a lot of fun things suck when they make you money.
"a lot of fun things suck when they make you money" That has not been my experience...they become more fun.
Let's think about what it means to "make money". The phrase itself is already misleading because no one can make money, money is "made" by the central banks by changing some numbers in mainframe databases. These mainframes are connected to some local distribution banks like credit unions which then enable economic activity by business loans and other kinds of "investments", e.g. local government services like street…
> Most of the time people are just fighting over scraps and the best they can hope for is some steady source of income that pays their rent and affords them some basic luxuries like visiting Las Vegas and watching a few acrobatic shows. I'm sorry to react so strongly, but I think it's demeaning to suggest that the life condition you described is one of "fighting over scraps". It's also... (I'm struggling to find the…
Nobody likes leaving the cave.
GP is not suggesting people deserve to become super-wealthy, but is pointing out that it is very hard to get out of financial survival into thriving without considerable luck or an unusual degree of innovative ability and ready access to capital.
I read a comment on hacker news that I cannot find now, but it resonated deeply with me. Don't try to answer the question "what do you want to be?", answer the question "what do you want to do?" I answered the wrong question, I said "I want to be a musician". And what I did was teach music I didn't care for, perform music I didn't care for, work for people and gigs I didn't care for, made a salary I didn't care for.…
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I feel like this isn’t so much a 2 decade thing but a 1 decade thing. 10-20 years ago, the open source and maker movement was at its peak. Even stuff like cryptocurrency was often motivated by interests other than money but instead ideological idealism. I think that changed a lot after a boom in startups and people just getting insanely rich for silly things… powerful fear of missing out killed a lot of the ideologic…
This includes the drive to monetise everything. Hobbies, interests, skills - everyone now thinks: “how do I turn this into a side hustle? Must monetise all the things…”
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Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and therefore build something that nobody wants. If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn drab.
I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least have one user. If you make what you think other people want, you might end up with zero! Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they ended up being some of the defini…
That’s a big reason I’ve avoided paid gigs.
I got forced into retirement, but have since learned that’s one of the best things that ever happened to me.
These days, I do software for free, that is better than most commercial software, partly because I don’t need to make the types of compromises that profit-generating companies do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Eh, at the same time, I think the problem a lot of entrepreneurs have is that they overfocus on "what you are interested in" instead of "what the market wants", and therefore build something that nobody wants. If you can find a perfect intersection, that's beautiful, but probably uncommon. Some of the most lucrative businesses are stuff like (anti)fraud/security/payments that is pretty darn drab.
I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least have one user. If you make what you think other people want, you might end up with zero! Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they ended up being some of the defini…
This is it.
This is how I approach in writing software.
99.9% of the stuff I write is going to have one user. But it's one more than zero, and in the 0.1% of the cases where it does have >1 users, well, I call that a success.
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I disagree with that. If you make what you want, you at least have one user. If you make what you think other people want, you might end up with zero! Nobody wanted an open-source Unix-like OS, a keyboardless touch screen with third-party apps, a mini hard drive with a display and headphone jack tacked on, maps that could be infinitely panned instead of clicking arrows, etc. But they ended up being some of the defini…
Nobody wanted those products but they did want the problems solved that those products addressed. IMO, focus on the problems - those often exist before the solutions have manifested.
Where the author made a mistake was in trying to make "what the market wants" rather than just making stuff he/she actually wanted to make and trying to see if it was possible to make money from it. If you try to make "what the market wants" rather than what you want, you're going to make garbage and further saturate a market that is already filled with garbage that was designed to cash in on "what the market wants".…
Even as a career you have a similar problem. You have to do what your employers want and it needs to be done right the first time.
A hobby should not be turned into a business or career unless you can only focus on what you like.