"Building a startup is hard work and it takes time." "I'm giving up on my entrepreneurship dreams." Take time to recover mentally and financially. You can always try again at a later time (or not), and do it in a gradual way, not all-or-nothing (take a look at the 37Signals books). You at least tried, and won't have regrets of never have attempted it. Though it is hard to see it right now, you probably have learnt a few things that hopefully you can put to use in the future. Good luck and hope things improve.
I am done. I give up
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Re: I am done. I give up
#222> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips.
Most of them sell the idea they are successfull. But once in a blue moon they share their real MRR and you are shocked. Because most of them make 1-2k and behave like they are successfull and can live from it. Most are just pretending and are never successfull at all. But they know each other and push each other which make it seem you are the outlier of being a ”failure“.
Re: I am done. I give up
#223Having done several options -- entrepreneurship, job, internal entrepreneurship, and consulting, my advice: - Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle. Stay in a job unless you have a good idea and are ready to execute. - Try your idea internally. Starting a new product in a company is easier than outside. It doesn't have a $1B upside, but it has enough upside, in all respects (not just financial -- learning, credibility,…
This is excellent advice.
I followed roughly this path until I was in my late 30s. Now have a startup that is growing because we put in essentially 5 years of groundwork, while working full time day jobs, building product in an industry that isn’t sexy, being “lucky” (patient/observant) enough to ride a new federal regulation, having go throw away an entire product after 2 years and starting a new product in the same space/customers, showing customers we were in it for the long haul FOR THEM, with a well rounded seasoned founding team, business model first, taking the right amount of investment from the right investors at the right time.
In that way I think entrepreneurship IS actually a lifestyle, but the behaviors are not what OP alludes to. The lifestyle is falling in love with a problem or a type of customer or both and just seeing what you can do to help while building a business along the way…SUSTAINABLY. If your version of lifestyle is somehow BEING caught up in acting a certain way based on influence (I have no idea what an indie hacker is), that seems destined for failure.
TLDR. Go live your life, get a normal job to build security, don’t try and start a company at all, wait for a problem/opportunity to find you.
Re: I am done. I give up
#224A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…
> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. And for anything with bigger ambitions than a lifestyle business, don’t forget connections. Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. Just look at the “PayPal mafia” to see how inbred tech investing can be. Not that most entrepreneurs need or should expect VC funding, but this is HN, run by a VC. You can totally run a business and be…
>Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford.
That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.
Re: I am done. I give up
#225>But please don't give up. Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you. There's always a chance for success, no matter how small it may seem. This advice is the exact opposite of the wisdom in the rest of the post. I’d say it’s okay to give up. If someone has a long term miserable life thanks to building their startup, then perhaps consider doing something that makes you more happy. There’s nothing wro…
> This advice is the exact opposite of the wisdom in the rest of the post.
Very much this
Re: I am done. I give up
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…
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Name a big UK startup?
Nordic countries have the safety net countered with a mentality that is borderline entrepreneur-hostile and the law of Jante on top of that so safety nets may be the few pro-entrepreneurship things they have. Finland of the lot is also capital poor so no huge investor funds or such.
Re: I am done. I give up
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.
You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup. And woe to you if you are bootstrapped and some VC funded club starts poaching your customers with a product subsidized by their financiers. I wrote about these options long ago: https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...
> You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup.
There are also a lot of products and services that can't be built by venture backed businesses. If you are bootstrapping, there is a big advantage in building something in this category, because then you can go at the pace that's organically the most efficient.
Re: I am done. I give up
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…
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Conveniently forgetting some decently sized ones that actually came from the Nordics.
At least in Finland, most of the stuff that would be big is sold early, the founders take the 10M and retire to their cottages in the middle of nowhere (edit: I don't mean this the bad way, I'd probably do it too).
Re: I am done. I give up
#229Look at it this way. You are no SBF in terms of failing, ie it could be worse. Cheer up and know that you tried.
Re: I am done. I give up
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.
This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…
Flip side of the welfare state is the heavy tax burden.
Heavily progressive income tax makes it harder for individuals to accumulate capital for enterprenial endeavours, be it their own or investing in others'. This limits early stage investments and growth.
Also, there are limited incentives in investing in careers and productivity as net income is surprisingly similar in lowest 10% and highest 10% income earners.