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How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

indiehackers.com

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Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#11

Post by DizzyDoo »

I started my business with less than $1000. I worked a full-time job and built my first video game product (http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/) by waking up earlier in the morning to get an hour or two in before my 'real' job, and working Saturdays, and doing that for a year. I found customers by putting an enormous about of effort into marketing, and finding only some of it paid off (but what did, really worked). Obviously, having a comfortable day job and not having familial responsibilities lowers many of the risks of starting a business, I'm not sure how I would have approached it had I a family or less secure employment.

The biggest expenses were commissioning a composer friend of mine to produce an excellent soundtrack, and licensing a couple of pieces of development software, but that was I feel like product one taught me so, so much, and product number two has been a similar learning experience. I'll probably know what I'm doing by my sixth or seventh game!

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#12

Post by countryqt30 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #6

Seems like fluff junk. I've noticed a lot of these indiehackers posts are either a 1000 word post that could be distilled to a few bullet points of common sense or are just extrapolating on survivorship bias.

1) I think the blog article is really worthwhile reading, and a bullet-point only list is at the end of the article. Please keep it that way!

2) Yes, this ENTIRE SITE IS 100 % survivor bias - it shares the success stories of startups, nothing else! :)

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#14

Post by schnevets »

DizzyDoo wrote: post #11

I started my business with less than $1000. I worked a full-time job and built my first video game product ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ ) by waking up earlier in the morning to get an hour or two in before my 'real' job, and working Saturdays, and doing that for a year. I found customers by putting an enormous about of effort into marketing, and finding only some of it paid off (but wha…

I know someone who has written two hugo-nominated sci-fi novels, but otherwise lives a typical 9-to-5 work life. I finally asked how he gets his writing done and learned that he wakes up at 5am each day. According to him, "the first thing you do every day is the most important thing".

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#16

Post by DizzyDoo »

schnevets wrote: post #14
DizzyDoo wrote: post #11

I started my business with less than $1000. I worked a full-time job and built my first video game product ( http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900/The_Cat_Machine/ ) by waking up earlier in the morning to get an hour or two in before my 'real' job, and working Saturdays, and doing that for a year. I found customers by putting an enormous about of effort into marketing, and finding only some of it paid off (but wha…

I know someone who has written two hugo-nominated sci-fi novels, but otherwise lives a typical 9-to-5 work life. I finally asked how he gets his writing done and learned that he wakes up at 5am each day. According to him, "the first thing you do every day is the most important thing".

Oh, I absolutely agree! I'm definitely an early morning sort of person, and when you're a self-employed, self-directed programmer, that feeling in the day of 'getting going', digging into a good chunk of work with free hours stretching ahead of you, that can't really be beaten.

So I do get up earlier, and start work earlier than most, but I don't start the day with news sites, or emails, or twitter or anything like that. At best, it distracts from getting the work-day going, and at worst, it introduces an awful lot of negativity. Took me a while to figure out, perhaps it's more obvious to others, but a truly 'quiet' first few hours in a day is very beneficial to me.

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#17

Post by ljf »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #6

Seems like fluff junk. I've noticed a lot of these indiehackers posts are either a 1000 word post that could be distilled to a few bullet points of common sense or are just extrapolating on survivorship bias.

@countryqt30 - looks like you were shadow banned about 200 days ago - might want to ask a mod why, as I can't see anything bad IMHO - but I didn't look hard.

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#19

Post by thanatropism »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #6

Seems like fluff junk. I've noticed a lot of these indiehackers posts are either a 1000 word post that could be distilled to a few bullet points of common sense or are just extrapolating on survivorship bias.

So I spent a few days mesmerized by Jocko Willink, the ex-marine turned motivational coach until I realized all of these people are saying the same: stop daydreaming and keep doing something until it hurts and then continue some.

This is obviously survivorship bias. Everyone who has gone out and achieved success has started by starting. There is no success story that starts without this initial spark and usually a lot of hard work. But all of these are necessary not sufficient conditions.

This (again) goes down to the nature of skill: even in technical or service roles, etc. much of how we go about our jobs (sufficient conditions) is implicit and nonverbalizable; moreover because that, we can't peel our skills to their "core", to their necessary conditions. We clumsily apply an abundance of skill to get by.

This is compounded in the case of entrepreneurs by the fact that besides not being fully aware of what their magic sauce is, they can't also cleanly decompose what was blind luck and favorable timing from the moxie they brought to the table.

--- Summary for nihilists: every lottery winner starts by going to the store and buying tickets and following the draws and praying a lot and at times cursing at God in the rain at midnight. This is the nature of great achievement.

Re: How Seth Godin would launch a business on a $1,000 budget

#20

Post by ianai »

glibgil wrote: post #3

A better guide would be how to launch a business on a budget of 45 minutes a day. I'm sure that's the bigger challenge for most of us

Time really is a hard constraint. If I could dial back my full time commitment to 30 hours per week I probably would have finished that iOS app side project.
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