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I am done. I give up

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Re: I am done. I give up

#202
Have you considered buying a working business? There's no shame in not starting from scratch. You can get something with proof of concept and take it to the next level. Even Tesla had some parts in place when Elon came in.

Re: I am done. I give up

#203
This hits very close to home, so I'll provide as much advice I can give.

First: don't focus solely on the huge product launch / startup mentality. As a solo dev this is a recipe for a depressive disaster. Instead, I recommend you do a mix of things, like creating youtube videos, software courses, software consulting, and so on. This way you cast a wide net and if any one of those areas doesn't do well or hits a rough patch, you can put more effort into the others. Yeah, it's a grind, but that's kind of the social contract we sign when we go indy / soloprenuer.

I have a modest following and I very often repeat your warnings about these so called digital nomad gurus and entrepeneuers, at least those you see all the time on socials. I hate that whole scene - the crap those people push out is mind bogglingly useless banter. It even drove me to delete my Twitter completely a few months back because I kept seeing like 6 of the same software accounts upvoted to the moon just by repeating stupid trope without any hands on advice, implementations, or anything of any real actionable value. Those people either got lucky or were first to market, but the overwhelming majority of them don't know a damn thing about software, let alone building full stack products or apps used by real customers.

However, as you've said yourself: building any successful startup is extremely hard, time consuming, and can be extremely frustrating at times.

If it helps further, I was exactly where you were only a few weeks ago and I posted nearly the same thing here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835532. This industry is unforgiving and we all have weeks or even months of dark times. I had just felt cheated by a few people I had otherwise trusted (so a slightly difference sense than your post I guess, but same discouraged theme). Fast forward two weeks later and I'm working for myself again and loving it.

and usually, once you're an entrepeneuer, it likely won't go away ;) just don't force it, who knows, you may return with a badass product weeks, months, or years from today!

Hope this helps and that you can enjoy the holiday season with whomever you may have in your life. Take a break! Best of luck, happy holidays, and best wishes.

Re: I am done. I give up

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But most successful entrepreneurs I know started their first successful company in their 20's or 30's, rarely 40's. “Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45” https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes... Discussion on HN here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409

Yes, I saw that when it first hit. I'm sure they did a great job at researching that but it really does not match my experience at all. And I see a lot of start-ups (up to 50 / year) from the inside, at least a few hundred founders if not a 1000+ by now over the last 15 years. The bulk of the successful ones is late 20's to mid 30's.

There might be something interesting here.

- people in the VC entrepreneur world are seeing mostly 20s and 30s be successful

- VC world is, as one previous commenter put it, swing for the bleachers

- researchers are saying average age of success is 45, so more than half are 40+

This seems to perhaps indicate (though needs research) that

- those 40+ prefer bootstrapped businesses

- bootstrapped businesses are over half the successful entrepreneurs, so tend to be more successful

Many things could be wrong with this:

- different definitions of successful

- research bias

- geographical bias

However, it's something that seems to bear investigation.

And if true, what is it that is driving the budding entrepreneur to think that to be more successful they need to seek VC funding, when it may actually be the opposite. Would you rather take a 1 in 1m shot at 1m/yr, or a 1 in 10k shot at 300k/yr? Numbers made up in the question of course, research needed to figure out what they are.

Re: I am done. I give up

#207
Mate, if you failed to make $10 online it means there is something seriously wrong with your mental model of how the world and business works.

I am sorry about your health, of course get that addressed first.

Then ask yourself what you want and get someone who had more success than you to point out what's wrong with your beliefs and approach.

Re: I am done. I give up

#208

Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? As a group they seem the people with the least amount of money to spend on products, and are some of the most cheapskate people on the planet. Here's some advice: if you want to make money selling a software product, sell to people who are able and willing to spend money on it.

This. It's the "developers trying to sell products to other developers" conundrum. You know the development workflow. You came up with a great tool to increase productivity for developers. You set a low price of $50. And yet no one is going to buy it because "lol I could do this in a weekend".

Developers are cheap bastards (I'm still fighting over whether I should shell our $99 for Panic's Nova editor or not - even though it would be the perfect fit for my editing needs. But I'm a cheap bastard and VIM is good enough so...)

I guess "indiehackers" aren't much different. Only maybe they have less disposable income that old fart developers?

Re: I am done. I give up

#209
Considering all the comments about the amount of luck among the top performer entrepreneurs I am always flabbergasted by how HN is so vocally opposed to the confiscation of fortunes in excess of 1bn .

It seems like the natural consequence, the bigger the lottery win, the bigger the cut that society takes out of the lucky winner.

It’s only natural and if somebody were to spit on 999.99M they deserve to also have that remaining amount confiscated.

Re: I am done. I give up

#210
post #103

I tried 10 years building numerous projects since 17 until i reached the $1mil one. I did it because I loved building stuff, it wasn't a burden for me like i see it's for so many people that want to become entrepreneurs because they see on Tiktok how good others have it. If it becomes a burden, then it's a problem. Also, luck may play a big role, but there's something you learn failing over and over again. You start…

^^ +10000 I think a lot of us have been there. There's a big difference whether your service: - is B2B/B2C; - uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth; - targets a broad market or a niche (the more niche it is, the better it speaks to your target market, f.e. coaching vs developer coaching vs coaching Java developers VS coaching Java developers in machine learning vs coaching Java developers that use machine l…

> uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth

What exactly do you mean here? because I'd argue depending on the product, each of the 3 could be the way to go over the others. Are you trying to say one is the best way of growing? Curious to hear your thoughts.

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