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The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

joanwestenberg.com

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Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#131

Post by VirusNewbie »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that…

Is it possible this has things backwards?

When I was in high school 25 years ago, unless you got lucky with an IPO, tech didn't pay all that well. (I worked in software while I was in high school, so I know some of this first hand).

It was office space. It didn't matter how smart you were, if you didn't go into management, or join Apple/Microsoft at just the right time, you weren't going to live a rich lifestyle.

Not only that, you'd probably be reporting to some MBA type biz guy who has no idea how software works, you'd not be well respected, and your perks were drip coffee and occasional donuts on friday.

Of course brilliant, hard working, talented engineers said "fuck that" and go build something awesome themselves. Things have changed drastically. Now, brilliant hard working people can literally make millions at dozens of companies .

You will report to another engineer who has slightly optimized for soft skills, you get lavish perks (except amazon, but at least you get paid well there), and real equity.

There's a whole spectrum of options for ambitious software folk that didn't texist ~25 years ago.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#132

Post by jimbokun »

mtlynch wrote: post #101
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #74

This article really felt like a misdiagnosis to me. Sure, a lot of these people were just buying hype from these "get rich from drop shipping!" influencers, just like a million other suckers who got dollar signs in their eyes with real estate schemes, pyramid sale schemes, yada yada, a tale as old as time. I don't think this "passive income" trap is really anything new, and I don't think it was some unique thing that…

> You rarely see anything more than a couple hundred bucks a month. There are notable exceptions, but unfortunately a lot of those notable exceptions are scammy, spammy business models. I suspect this is largely sampling bias. I host meetups for indie founders, and several attendees earn their living through solo businesses. When I go to conferences like Microconf, I meet lots more. The problem with measuring financi…

I note neither your post or the one you replied to contain any quantitative data about how many profitable solo businesses there are.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#134

Post by bawolff »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #57
TremendousJudge wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, but the guys selling the courses were/are all obsessed with being at the beach

I'm pretty sure that being at the beach is really just universal marketing shorthand for "being somewhere that no one would ever expect you to even reply to emails from"

Or more generally, just doing whatever you want. I dont think anyone literally wanted to sit on a beach 24/7 365 days a year. However plenty of people would want the ability to just wake up one day and on a whim fly to a hawaii until they get bored then fly somewhere else.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#135

Post by SudheerTammini »

Very well written article, it gets into the core of the problem and explains the hidden patterns. I want to articulate few other variations of this just as a reference.

- The productivity gang, if everyone is so productive and so well organised then what are the outcomes of this productivity?

- Self help - if self help books are solving real problems then where is the need to buy multiple self help books?

- The course trap - if someone is already earning millions dollars where is the need for him to sell $699 course

These are some questions I would ask myself regularly, there is nothing right or wrong because end of the everyone has to servive.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#136

Post by jimbokun »

nightski wrote: post #107
happybuy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Instead, what I think has drastically changed over the past 40 years or so is the ability of a solopreneur to make real money. Hard disagree. As the article notes, I think if you concentrate on a real business, not a scam-y 'get rich quick scheme' business then, especially with the internet, its never been easier to run a solo business at scale. For myself, I wrote an app as a side hobby, which then took off, so I…

A real business is simply one that makes money. Not some gatekeeping criteria presented by the ridiculous OP. Just because you took 7+ years to develop a business does not mean that all businesses require that or that it is the only way.

You keep telling yourself that.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#137

Post by bawolff »

zem wrote: post #28
hannahstrawbrry wrote: post #8

"It was an ouroboros that had incorporated in Delaware and was running Facebook ads," is my favorite line I've seen in a minute, great read

my favourite bit was 8 Free to do what? Sit on a beach, apparently. Every single one of these people wanted to sit on a beach. I've never understood this. Have they been to a beach? There's sand. It gets everywhere. You can sit there for maybe three hours before you want to do literally anything else. 8 I laughed out loud when I read it, because it's so true.

I think its pretty obvious that "sit on a beach" is a metaphor for being able to do whatever you want not literally sitting on a beach for the rest of your life.

At the same time, you guys really can't imagine relaxing on a beach for more than a few hours? Like i'm not really a beach person but back when i lived near the ocean i spent the odd saturday just unwinding on the beach with a book. Certainly wouldn't want that every day, but y'all acting like it would be impossible to enjoy say abeach vacation for a few days seems crazy to me.

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#138

Post by balderdash »

I literally roll my eyes when people tell me about about some massive market opportunity that they feel like they’re better positioned to arbitrage away than people with more capability / infrastructure / domain expertise - and can’t explain why those market participants are ignoring this “obvious” opportunity

Re: The "Passive Income" trap ate a generation of entrepreneurs

#140

Post by ilamont »

> Free to do what? Sit on a beach, apparently.

The author apparently never read Tim Ferriss’ The 4 hour work week which not only whiteboarded some of the described schemes 20 years ago, but also had an illustration of a hammock suspended between two palm trees on the cover.

That was the dream: Set up a system, live on a beach.

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