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Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

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Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#141

Post by gfxgirl »

baby wrote: post #97
dvt wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I can't help but think about the 9 founders of other companies that had the same resolve in the same situation, but things did not work out so well. Everyone on HN knows that the startup life is, in many ways, a lottery. But that doesn't mean it's not still one of the most reliable ways of exercising self-determination, working on something you're truly passionate about, taking full responsibility for your fate…

Point of GP is that failing while hitting unexpected medical issues in the US will destroy your life with high probability. There is no prize for those who lost, just a feel-good stories for those like OP who “survived”.

Would be nice if there was a book/site that listed the 100k failures and their personal stories to the 1k success stories.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#142

Post by steve_taylor »

Lean startup dogma dictates that if you’re not embarrassed by v1, you took too long to build it. Had you followed that advice and posted it to HN, you’d have been torn to shreds and wouldn’t be telling this story. Congrats on building a product so good that met and exceeded the standards of the HN community and went on to be a successful business.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#143

Post by dvt »

gfxgirl wrote: post #141
baby wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of GP is that failing while hitting unexpected medical issues in the US will destroy your life with high probability. There is no prize for those who lost, just a feel-good stories for those like OP who “survived”.

Would be nice if there was a book/site that listed the 100k failures and their personal stories to the 1k success stories.

There are hundreds of post-mortems online, and they're often shared and upvoted here on HN. The idea that this community only celebrates unicorns and success stories is pretty unfounded.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#144

Post by jldugger »

grecy wrote: post #61
jldugger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because we _let_ people choose cheap plans, and don't use federal taxation to shift the costs to the wealthy. And we tie health insurance to employment, so all those fringe benefits you were unaware of suddenly cost real money when you start your own biz. If OP had been required to carry a stronger insurance policy, their runway would have been even shorter. And if the tax regime gifted Americans universal health car…

[flagged]

Though If I'm reading this right the minimum tax rate for citizens of Quebec is 30 percent: https://www.canada.ca/en/financial-consumer-agency/services/...

You will not have to worry about medical bills, no. But it will be harder to build the nest egg you'd need to bootstrap a company, since the tax brackets only go up from there. Wealth formation might explain why Canada has fewer tech startups and entrepreneurs than California, despite the decreased insurance risks associated with national health care.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#145

Post by Scramblejams »

ativzzz wrote: post #116
Scramblejams wrote: post #28

Amazing story, glad you made it. Potential customer here, and I have a question. I'm a programmer, very happy making backends, setting up the infra, maintaining it, and so on. I often want to make web pages, but I just hate dealing the web front-end stack. Is this product a good fit for me? I could visually design the website, avoid getting my hands dirty with HTML/CSS/JS, then have an easy way to connect it with a b…

From my experience with a different but similar tool, it follows the pareto principle. It will do 80% of the work very effectively, but as your business grows and you need more niche functionality, you will need a developer to figure out a way to make the platform behave in a way which it doesn't expect, which can be time consuming. So great for MVPs or getting a business bootstrapped quickly and cheaply, but once yo…

For a business, I agree. I should have clarified, I'd be happy with something that works pretty well at the hobby level.

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#146

Post by bradlys »

dvt wrote: post #140
pedrosorio wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of the FIRE movement? Plenty of engineers working at FAANG and investing in index funds have enough money to retire comfortably in their 30s. That’s what the GP means by financial independence, I believe. Also “senior” engineers (>5 years of experience) at these companies make a lot more than 200k a year.

> Also “senior” engineers (>5 years of experience) at these companies make a lot more than 200k a year. No they don't, look up the numbers. Average salary on most websites is around 180k. Principal engineers start making north of 300k (at FAANG, which is already a subset of a subset) but it's very difficult to snag one of those. I like the FIRE movement, but ironically, I think it's pretty analogous to doing your own…

> No they don't, look up the numbers. Average salary on most websites is around 180k. Principal engineers start making north of 300k (at FAANG, which is already a subset of a subset) but it's very difficult to snag one of those.

I think you're out of touch with modern TC. There are many engineers at FAANG pulling past 300k/yr - many going past 400k/yr. One management track + one senior engineer can clear $1mil/yr. I know plenty of people in the valley who do this reliably... https://www.levels.fyi/2020/ - just check out what a senior engineer can make...

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#147

Post by DavidPeiffer »

gfxgirl wrote: post #141
baby wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Point of GP is that failing while hitting unexpected medical issues in the US will destroy your life with high probability. There is no prize for those who lost, just a feel-good stories for those like OP who “survived”.

Would be nice if there was a book/site that listed the 100k failures and their personal stories to the 1k success stories.

I'm picturing your idea like StumbleUpon, but with 1/1,000 of telling a success story. Don't Stumble too fast or you'll miss the success among all the failures!

It's sort of like a failure resume, which is certainly an interesting exercise.

https://www.uni-goettingen.de/de/document/download/bed2706fd...

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#148

Post by monsieurbanana »

dvt wrote: post #139
monsieurbanana wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Virtually all self-made millionaires+ started companies[1] The article you linked makes no sense related to your claim. Unless you're saying that millionaires+ (whatever the + means) don't exist outside of Forbes. > There's really no other way to get there Joining a startup as an early member? Working in finance or computer science or medicine with ridiculous salaries? Here's a link[1] with thousands of jobs with a…

> How about the QOL of not knowing for a long time whether you'll succeed or fail? Or having to deal with investors, marketing, managing people, aka everything that you probably don't want to be working with? This is kind of silly to bring up. Obviously people starting a company are okay with managing people and dealing with investors (or if not, being bootstrapped). You're saying "being an elite athlete sucks becaus…

> Obviously people starting a company are okay with managing people and dealing with investors

I must have dreamed all the posts and comments about people learning that they were actually not made for being a founder, that marketing is more important than what they like doing (programming), and that the stress of creating a company is higher than they thought.

It's nice that you found your path in life, and I have nothing against that path being creating a company. I just don't see what's your goal by repeating that everyone who doesn't agree with you is a "survivorship bias naysayer". Self-reassurance you made the right choice?

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#149

Post by baby »

dvt wrote: post #129
baby wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure why you're having such a virulent reaction to my comment? That's probably the most important point about this whole thread, at least this is what I got from the post. If you want to feel good and feel empowered to build your own start up from OP's post, then I don't know what to think of your risk appetite.

> If you want to feel good and feel empowered to build your own start up from OP's post, then I don't know what to think of your risk appetite. You're attacking a strawman here. My point was merely that cynicism (which your post conveyed in spades), much like solipsism, is an unproductive dead-end. Feel free to make your case, but I'm fairly confident I'm correct.

Not sure how you can describe my post as cynic[^1] to be honest. I think it's the reverse: people who find joy and feel butterfly in their stomach when 1 guy survive but the 9 others die on the streets are nothing but blind.

[^1]: "an inclination to believe that people are motivated purely by self-interest; skepticism."

Re: Thanks HN: You helped save a company that now helps thousands make a living

#150

Post by hansvm »

scrozier wrote: post #93
dvt wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was specifically talking about founders (but even early stage engineers can do extremely well if the startup takes off). The upside is much higher doing your own thing rather than working at BigCorp (the two aren't even remotely comparable, but neither is the risk). Not to mention the end goals/QOL of working on what you want, commanding your own ship, being financially independent, etc. Virtually all self-made mil…

You're making a giant logic error. It may well be true that most self-made millionaires started a company. It is certainly not true that most people who start companies become self-made millionaires, which was the premise of your original post.

I think the more salient question is whether starting a company is the most reliable way to become a self-made millionaire (one of the things they're actually claiming), which could be true even if the chances were low. The parent comment's error (or perhaps an intentional omission if for example they thought it to be self-evident) is in not taking into account the volume of people starting companies vs the volume of people doing other things which could turn them into millionaires.

On that note, I do think there's a flaw in the logic or premises (or unstated assumptions -- maybe "millionaire" is code for some larger quantity of wealth) somewhere. A decade in FAANG with conservative spending habits will easily create a millionaire with a near 100% success rate, and it would be surprising if starting a company would have better odds than that.

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