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Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

medium.com

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Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#11

Post by jaxn »

vinceguidry wrote: post #9
jondubois wrote: post #8

Succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech (for the first time) is nearly impossible. It's like winning the lottery. I don't think that anyone who succeeds understands (or much less planned for) even a small fraction of all the factors which led them to this successful outcome. Of course when you've succeeded once, doing it again is easy - It's the first time that's hard. I think the author is right to be afraid of starti…

I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder…

The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies.

A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech.

The E Myth is a best-selling book precisely because of how hard it is to go from being someone who knows how to do something to creating a successful business that does that thing.

The sad part about this blog post is that the woman who posted it doesn't seem to be good at the thing she is trying to build a business around. The group she is an affiliate of seems predatory.

My experience: I own 3 retail stores, and a SaaS product. I have been in both the brick-and-mortar retail space and the tech space for over a decade.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#12

Post by jondubois »

vinceguidry wrote: post #9
jondubois wrote: post #8

Succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech (for the first time) is nearly impossible. It's like winning the lottery. I don't think that anyone who succeeds understands (or much less planned for) even a small fraction of all the factors which led them to this successful outcome. Of course when you've succeeded once, doing it again is easy - It's the first time that's hard. I think the author is right to be afraid of starti…

I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder…

I guess even within tech, some areas are easier than others.

I think that basically; the more innovative your product is, the more unlikely it is to succeed.

It's always easier to find a concept that already exists and is successful and copy it (with minor key differences) than to actually innovate with something completely new.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#13

Post by donquichotte »

Terretta wrote: post #2

TL;DR: Soft focus melancholia dreams of showing up an ex and an expensive affiliate marketing "membership" don't magically make you a wildly successful digital nomad -- turns out you may also need to do billable work. PS. I have no money, give me a like on Medium.

Thanks for the TL;DR. She does call it a "brain dump", but I was unprepared for that amount of incoherent ramblings and self pity.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#14

Post by binarysolo »

Reading this just made me sad, as I see this over and over in the tech scene: the author is too obsessed about success and not enough about solving fundamental problems or being any good at them. Esp in tech, there's no value for being half-assed.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#15

Post by WA »

vinceguidry wrote: post #9
jondubois wrote: post #8

Succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech (for the first time) is nearly impossible. It's like winning the lottery. I don't think that anyone who succeeds understands (or much less planned for) even a small fraction of all the factors which led them to this successful outcome. Of course when you've succeeded once, doing it again is easy - It's the first time that's hard. I think the author is right to be afraid of starti…

I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder…

> that the community is failing to give the people joining it the tools they need to succeed

I don't understand this. The tools are out there and available to everyone. It's education and getting skills. The rest is luck. If you want to create a product, you need to have the skills to do so.

Sometimes, it feels like people expect entrepreneurship or making money from a project to actually be easy. It's more like the NBA:

You either bring the skills, get lucky, and start early enough or it's not for you.

But the OP clearly fell for an easy money scheme. Somewhere in her blog she even writes about the absurdity:

"So how do you make money if you can't or don't want to make a project on your own?" -> This is so utterly silly, it hurts.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#16

Post by malloreon »

The first thing that jumps out at me beyond the florid writing is that she chose as her affiliate niche 'make money online,' so she's spent the last year trying to get people like her to buy from her.

Also, 'make money online' is probably the most oversaturated and highest noise:signal ratio niche there is.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#17

Post by vinceguidry »

jaxn wrote: post #11
vinceguidry wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder…

The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies. A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be…

> A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech.

That's patently ridiculous. We know how to market auto mechanic shops. All the knowledge is there, you can even go to a library to read about it. Nothing about the industry has changed so drastically in the last fifty years that you have to throw out the book.

Small business marketing and economics are so simple and well-understood that your grandma can start a catering business, and, so long as she follows the formula, can guarantee she won't starve. She can listen to the banks and the accountants and the lawyers and be confident she's getting good advice.

Ask your grandma to start a website. Nothing about that space is well-understood to the point where she can have any reasonable amount of confidence in any course of action she decides to take. Sure there's forums, there's books, but the landscape changes so often that you have to treat everything as if it's already outdated.

It never fails to amaze me how often people immersed in technology seems to catch Stockholm Syndrome every time they think about business in this space. It's hard. The fact that there's zillions of choices makes it harder and not easier. The fact that you can do whatever you want makes it harder and not easier.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#18

Post by jaxn »

vinceguidry wrote: post #17
jaxn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies. A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be…

> A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech. That's patently ridiculous. We know how to market auto mechanic shops. All the knowledge is there, you can even go to a library to read about it. Nothing about the industry has changed so drasticall…

Have you ever talked to a mechanic about this? I suspect that you would learn some things.

Local marketing is not easy. Putting together capital for real estate, buildout, equipment, etc is not easy.

Hubris is saying that something most people fail at is so easy to execute that a grandma could do it. Not to mention comments like that are both sexist and ageist.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#19

Post by ImTalking »

There wasn't a single logical word in that article; just emotional drivel.

My advise for this young lady is to get off her emotional roller-coaster, plant herself in a chair, turn off all her devices, and begin to think rationally.

Re: Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

#20

Post by jondubois »

vinceguidry wrote: post #17
jaxn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies. A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be…

> A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech. That's patently ridiculous. We know how to market auto mechanic shops. All the knowledge is there, you can even go to a library to read about it. Nothing about the industry has changed so drasticall…

I don't understand why this got down-voted, it makes a lot of sense.

How many successful car mechanics are there vs how many successful software companies are there? I'd say you'd have many, many, many times more successful car mechanic companies than software companies.

The successful mechanics won't make as much profit as the successful software companies, but more mechanic companies will succeed.

It'd be interesting if someone did some research on wealth and income inequality in the software industry; I think the numbers would be mind-boggling.

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