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Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

deepsouthventures.com

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Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#61

Post by martin_drapeau »

leetrout wrote: post #4

> I didn’t raise any money for these projects. I funded them with my 9-5 salary. Solo. And the reason for that was simple – why on earth would I vehemently abandon boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the 9-5 world only to raise money & adopt a board of boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the startup world. If I’m gonna build, I’m gonna have free-rein decision making to pursue any and all ludicrous busines…

Your thread is 9 months old. Do you have a product and a bit of traction? I was in a similar place to you back in 2019. Via side gigs I built a product that served a niche. Eventually, raised 180k with TinySeed (specialized in boostrapping B2B SaaS). Best move ever. Gave me and my cofounder a runway to find product market fit. We're now 8 full time at Activity Messenger and doubling year over year.

Have a listen to the podcast Startups for the rest of us. All about bootstrapping. Get inspired and start building.

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#62

Post by brink »

codazoda wrote: post #56
Fin_Code wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm right at your starting point. Can basically build anything but committing to an idea is the sticking point. What product would you want to start with today?

Reach out if you want to start a conversation. I'm thinking maybe a Slack for people at this stage. My email address is in my profile.

Sent an email.

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#64

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

During the interview at the last place I worked, the owner described starting the company (20+ years earlier) because he got tired of being laid off. Figured that the risk of his new venture failing was probably on par with getting a job and being laid off again, so why not go for it?

Can't really argue with that :-)

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#65

Post by throwaway42668 »

leetrout wrote: post #4

> I didn’t raise any money for these projects. I funded them with my 9-5 salary. Solo. And the reason for that was simple – why on earth would I vehemently abandon boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the 9-5 world only to raise money & adopt a board of boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the startup world. If I’m gonna build, I’m gonna have free-rein decision making to pursue any and all ludicrous busines…

FWIW… look at the portfolio pages of lots of VCs. They’re absolutely filthy with boring companies with boring products that obviously have absolutely no prayer whatsoever of being a “venture scale” business. Despite that fact, they managed to get multiple investors to put in Millions in capital. How?

They bullshitted the right sounding bullshit to a specific audience who absolutely laps up particular flavors of bullshit. Sometimes the flavor changes (e.g. DevOps, enterprise SaaS, crypto, AI), but they’re always hungry.

You of course don’t have to raise money if you don’t want to, but I’m sure you could do it too for damn near any idea you come up with as long as you also figure out how to relieve yourself of any sense of self-respect and prostrate yourself in front of the altar of VC buzzworthiness and tomes of fortune cookie wisdom.

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#66

Post by Jun8 »

Peter, if you read this comment I suggest that you start writing a book immediately, if one's not in the works: your simple but thoughtful writing style is awesome and makes the deep insights you provide even more delightful. I, for one, plunk down money to read 200 pages of this stuff interested with anecdotes from personal life.

What are the insights I gained from this particular piece:

* self depreciation is funny if done in earnest

* note that the OP had a huge handicap (not knowing to code and ignorant of web technologies) but he was not clueless: he had deep knowledge (at least deeper than most site operators) about the ad business and how to monetize

* building up from the above, he innovated in an area what he knew, i.e. ads. He didn't try to jump into the idea de jour. Too many first time entrepreneurs miss this point.

* he used simple tools and approaches(e.g. Yellow Pages, source view) but used them effectively. Didn't try to go after shiny tools, e.g. get on a bootcamp to learn web frontend development

Overall vibe (don't know if it's a persona or the real thing, judging from the wackiness of his ideas I'm guessing the latter) from his writings is a person who you'd want to grab coffee (or beer) and just hang out with.

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#68

Post by marginalia_nu »

renegade-otter wrote: post #58

I was putting off starting my SaaS idea for years (has to do with assigning code reviewers based on specific file patterns and notifying them on Slack) but the idea was much more marketable 10 years ago when I first had it. GitHub did not even have the concept of CODEOWNERS back then. After getting laid off, I decided to roll the dice instead of looking for another work-for-hire. Yeah, it's too late, but I needed thi…

> If you have an idea, and you think the time is right - take the chance. Not knowing what will happen is part of the fun. Don't look at it as taking risk, look at it as rowing through a river and without knowing where the river goes. If you don't row, you will never find out what's around the bend.

I think you kinda need to re-evaluate your relationship with uncertainty when doing something like this.

As a wagie, unexpected news is nearly universally bad news (layoffs, corporate mergers), whereas the status quo is neutral-good.

When you're starting up a business, unexpected news can be good (new customer, new investor), but the status quo is neutral-bad (slowly running out of momentum and funds).

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#69

Post by marginalia_nu »

swayvil wrote: post #50

I for one would appreciate a list of "software products that the world needs and if you made this then you could make some money". (Not a video game)

Build what you feel the world needs, instead of what you think other people think the world needs. It's much harder to guess what the average person will want than what you want. The world is big, so odds are other people will feel the same.

It may or may not end up being a niche product, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Re: Being laid off and unplanned entrepreneurship

#70

Post by tredigi »

leetrout wrote: post #4

> I didn’t raise any money for these projects. I funded them with my 9-5 salary. Solo. And the reason for that was simple – why on earth would I vehemently abandon boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the 9-5 world only to raise money & adopt a board of boneheaded micro-managing layoff kings in the startup world. If I’m gonna build, I’m gonna have free-rein decision making to pursue any and all ludicrous busines…

I respect the part of diving in to build something on your own.

I don't respect what he actually built. Leeching off others' work and while doing it blasting out ads which ended up being the first wave of making browsing unpleasant in the early 2000s. Without any actual contributions.

And that then paired with "I didn't know how to code, and I hated reading." It's this attitude that software engineering is somehow what you do after having watched a fews youtube videos and discovered stackoverflow. My aunt still thinks that. Thanks for perpetuating that myth.

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