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The side hustle from hell

blog.jacobstechtavern.com

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Re: The side hustle from hell

#21

Post by jakey_bakey »

vessenes wrote: post #13

Oof. Sorry. Missed in this story because Jacob is in Europe/UK is that this level of absolute incompetence in a launch team is, in my experience, extra common on that side of the pond. There are of course some fantastic startups launched out of the UK and Europe. Spotify, Deepmind and Raspberry Pi come to mind. But, as a rule on the investment side, I'm always super skeptical. Inevitably cap tables are worse, investo…

Haha to be fair I have been adjacent to lots of startups like this. I also spent a few months attending weekly zoom calls for a side hustle that was effectively some mid level bored corporate people blowing off steam. They were a few steps behind getting a bankloan.

Re: The side hustle from hell

#22

Post by codingwagie »

Aurornis wrote: post #6

This is the classic dead-end startup story from beginning to end. It checks all the boxes: - 3 non-technical cofounders - Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers - Attempt to outsource development followed by disappointment - Relentless scope creep - Zero go to market plan, just an incessant belief that more features in the app will solve all problems There is also one less obvious point that…

I think its completely possible to start a side business, people just dont 100% validate business ideas before building

Re: The side hustle from hell

#23

Post by jakey_bakey »

wibbily wrote: post #9

Currently at a startup that did the same thing wrt having their app built overseas. Protip: don't. Endless bullshit, excruciating trying to get anything out of them. We ended up with an app just like this guy's, locked aspect ratio and all. If I find another startup whose product is an app, and they can't find a local developer to write that app, I'm running. Why outsource your core product!?

It's the classic case of believing that ideas at 90% of the value and execution is something you can delegate. Think Kendall from Succession.

Re: The side hustle from hell

#24

Post by Aurornis »

zelda420 wrote: post #14
Aurornis wrote: post #6

This is the classic dead-end startup story from beginning to end. It checks all the boxes: - 3 non-technical cofounders - Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers - Attempt to outsource development followed by disappointment - Relentless scope creep - Zero go to market plan, just an incessant belief that more features in the app will solve all problems There is also one less obvious point that…

Throughout my long career in the tech industry, from established giants like Oracle to a hyper-growth pre-IPO Airbnb, I've observed a consistent pattern: engineers rarely advance more than one level above their initial hiring position, regardless of their performance or tenure. The only exception were juniors who could rise to a senior. But senior to staff, or whatever you want to call it is almost unheard of unless…

> The only exception were juniors

The article mentions being an early career junior in the first few sentences.

Re: The side hustle from hell

#25

Post by jakey_bakey »

toast0 wrote: post #19
Aurornis wrote: post #6

This is the classic dead-end startup story from beginning to end. It checks all the boxes: - 3 non-technical cofounders - Flurry of activity for everything other than acquiring customers - Attempt to outsource development followed by disappointment - Relentless scope creep - Zero go to market plan, just an incessant belief that more features in the app will solve all problems There is also one less obvious point that…

> unpaid startup jobs Unpaid job is an oxymoron. If they can't or won't pay you, it's either volunteer work, or a hobby. Why do charity work for a business that thinks it's going to be big; there's plenty of funding out there, let them find it and then they can pay you, and you can do work for them. If you want to do an hour or a day or maybe even a week of work for free, ok. Maybe that's fun and interesting and you…

It's easy to be naive as a dev in your mid 20s. It's easy to sell a vision of billionaire startup success to a naive person. Often we sell it to ourselves.

Re: The side hustle from hell

#26

Post by jakey_bakey »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

I love this story. Why? Because it is the story of so many startups. I was so perplexed in the mid-90's when the dot com "boom" had started by people who wanted to do a "startup" but had no idea what that meant. Like the author, people with a feeling of Destiny that they would be some leader of something that everyone talked about. I had the same beliefs when I left Sun where clearly I would never be "famous" but by…

Do you think a million monkeys with a million typewriters could come up with Oracle Database 11?

Re: The side hustle from hell

#28

Post by jakey_bakey »

xivzgrev wrote: post #4

I get it, why a young ambitious 20-something would be sucked into this. Sometimes you just need to make your own mistakes to learn, even if you read / hear from others that you shouldn't do that thing. C'est la vie.

I would even say it was a worthwhile experience. I've built my career off the startup I landed in, I probably wouldn't have got there without being burned here.

Re: The side hustle from hell

#29

Post by VWWHFSfQ »

photochemsyn wrote: post #8

Very surprising that well-designed contracts (with well-designed exit clauses among other issues) aren't at the top of the 'ten red flags' list. This isn't just a problem with tech startups - business partners down the ages have been burning each other with flimsy contractual agreements and 'trust me buddy' rationales when questioned about the contracts. This is one of the best use cases for LLMs by the way - they ca…

> watch 'The Social Network' and pay attention to things like stock-split clauses

> but I think it's understanding contract law that matters more

It's best to just pay a real attorney instead of trying to learn something from a TV show or fact-check the hallucinations of an LLM.

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