i'll tell you if it ever happens
Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
11–20 of 65 posts
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#12Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#13I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat. A decade in early stage / founding without an exit that's closer to a car crash. Still trying, I don't have the temperament for consulting or corporate.
Unironically, living on a boat and working on my own thing is my dream right now.
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#14I'm not an Entrepreneur, but I will probably become fairly well-off, slowly by following the Bogleheads strategy.
Which is?
Here[1], you can learn about it. It's simple, but not easy.
For me, it means buying Fidelity 0 funds in a Roth IRA and not selling them.
[1]https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Bogleheads%C2%AE_investment_...
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#15I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat. A decade in early stage / founding without an exit that's closer to a car crash. Still trying, I don't have the temperament for consulting or corporate.
> I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat.
literally my goal. hopefully we can meet up on the strait of malaca at some point
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#16I was successful since the moment I was born.
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#17It's very important to know when to call it quits. If you are at the point where it feels like there is nothing more than you can do other than wait for a lucky-break, give yourself a hard deadline for an exit and stick with it.
This is what scares me about people raising insanely large $10 million seed rounds. It's too much runway. Takes too long to fail.
It took me 4 years of working on 3 different startups, with 2 different set of cofounders, before I landed on the idea/business that finally became successful.
Two of those failed companies were part of YC. Thank god every investor turned us down. It allowed us to shut down and move on to the next idea way faster.
Edit: If you're a founder sitting on a giant bank account with a startup that you're losing faith in... remember you aren't obligated to spend all that money. Investors will respect you for returning the money and admitting it's time to try something else.
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#18I am a middle aged man who lives on a sailing boat. A decade in early stage / founding without an exit that's closer to a car crash. Still trying, I don't have the temperament for consulting or corporate.
Unironically, living on a boat and working on my own thing is my dream right now.
There's gotta be a ton of people in their 20s working remotely and living on a boat right now. They don't have to bust their ass like an entrepreneur either. They're just normal employees.
What is it with boats anyway?
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#19It took about 2 years to succeed in letting go of that business idea.
Re: Ask HN: Entrepreneurs, how long did it take you to succeed?
#20You should almost always stick with an idea for longer than you think. I've had 3 successful projects (one making over 100K MRR[0]) IMO the main differentiator between winning and losing is how fast you are iterating based on customer feedback.
I think about it like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You might hit the bullseye in one shot but usually you'll just hit somewhere random then it's up to you to iterate and find the version of your idea that the market will actually pay for. This is the feedback part of the equation and giving up and throwing random darts may never pay off.