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Persisting as a solo founder

vishnu.tech

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Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#231

Post by zelly »

xwdv wrote: post #2

Although the author is persisting, I get the sense that he is forcing himself to feel happy about what is essentially a zombie startup* (a photo organizer). It shouldn’t feel hard or even lonely to be a solo founder. There’s so many people you will have to interact with that are not your co-founder. There’s so many people you can share your feelings with that are not your co-founder. And having a co-founder is no gua…

Privacy apps have their place in the FOSS Linux world. Usually GNU/Linux users don't pay money for software though. There aren't really good polished options on LineageOS and the other FOSS Android forks. Maybe OP could sell software to that community (nothing about being FOSS means you can't charge money). Might as well just skip the mainstream operating systems because people there by default don't care about privacy.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#232

Post by undergrowth54 »

koolba wrote: post #173
dsbleia wrote: post #119

>I’ve reduced my information consumption to free up brain cycles. This is so important and not discussed very often. It's so easy to get caught up with the insane amount of information distractions. It is pivotal to narrow down your focus and attention on the really important things (deep work). Eliminate and minimize the pointless information hysteria. I've worked with people who claim they 'work 12-16 hour days'. Y…

The most productive and successful individuals I know oscillate between multi day 16+ hour sessions of hyper productivity and multi day sessions of total procrastination. It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.

Oscillating between high distractibility and hyperfocus rather than fluidly directing attention is essentially the core symptom of ADHD.

As someone who has inattentive-subtype ADHD, I must say that this sort of pattern can result in a great deal of loneliness. It is far better to watch the course "learning how to learn" and use something like the Pomodoro technique to explicitly decide whether to be in

- focused mode

- exploratory mode

- actually relaxing and paying attention to your relationships mode

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#233

Post by afarrell »

totetsu wrote: post #200
koolba wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most productive and successful individuals I know oscillate between multi day 16+ hour sessions of hyper productivity and multi day sessions of total procrastination. It’s never chugging along at a consistent marathon pace. It’s always a series of sprints.

Okay, I've got a month of procrastination pent up, now if I could only release the hyper productivity! When I did my last masters, I somehow managed to get into a hyper-productive state, hacking on an app to collect participant voice data for a fews sessions close to 20 hours straight. (much to the annoyance of the guy who slept in the graduate lab) I don't think it was healthy, but it sure felt good at the time.

as an ADHDer, one thing I've found key is figuring out what things in my environment and mind are the things I want to signal "you're doing the right thing, keep going."

Essentially, what is your 'reward model'? -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYylPRX6z4Q

Test-Driven-Development is one example of this.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#234

Post by afarrell »

double0jimb0 wrote: post #208
jl2718 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the best information has the same effect (maybe worse). If you’re reading this, you may have a problem (I do).

Possibly you have cause and effect backwards. What if the act of ‘thinking’ that you have a problem leads to the heightened distractibility?

Maybe... but as an ADHDer, my experience is that the bigger problem is thinking "I have this problem" but hearing from others "you're overthinking things" or "you don't need that, just get started" and consequently:

1. Never becoming confident enough in the problem to start solving it.

2. Never getting the rubber-duck collaborator to help you even imagine how you would solve it.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#235

Post by amjd »

vishnumohandas wrote: post #71
codecamper wrote: post #53

Looks good, but I don't understand how you can compete with Google & Apple with a photo organizer app. You may want to use Flutter or similar tool so you don't have to write it twice.

The aim isn’t to compete with the companies at large. But to provide an alternative for users who (like me) care both about privacy and convenience when it comes to the niche space of photo storage. The size of the audience might be small, but I’m optimistic about it being large enough for me to sustain this as a small business. And yes, I am using Flutter to build the mobile apps. It does come with its own set of pr…

Firstly, great work on the your product. It already looks quite polished!

Could you point out what problems you faced with Flutter? I ask because I'm planning to use it to build an app.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#236

Post by egghese »

Hey Vishnu, Congrats for your progress with your product. And also best of luck for all things ahead! Noticed the name is "ente" couldn't notice the similarity with Malayalam "ente" meaning mine.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#239

Post by loktarogar »

alexellisuk wrote: post #230
loktarogar wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Over the last two years i've been fortunate enough to have a lot of time on my hands. In that time i've built 3 and a half successful products. 6 days of (thinking mostly, some research) about what to do. 1 day of actually doing it. It's so easy to spend that one day completely and productively - I already know what i'm supposed to do, I just have to sit down and do it. The 6 days (not always 6 - maybe more, may…

Want to share your 2.5 successful products built this way?

I'd rather not, only because they're in a market that relies on the good will of the users (who usually think that people should build these things only because they're passionate about it) and they kind of play off each other. Nothing unethical, but i'd rather not link them together if I can help it.

Re: Persisting as a solo founder

#240

Post by herval »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #225
herval wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that pretty much what all platforms these platforms do these days, with algorithmic feeds? What level of control do you plan to add on top of it? And more importantly - how do you plan to monetize a model that's pretty much dependent on dopamine hits, without making it _more_ addictive/a time-waste?

Some platforms like Facebook and Twitter do, but HN and Reddit are (outwardly) based on votes, so you're seeing what the community thinks is important, not what you yourself do. Mind you, there's a lot of people (myself included) who want to keep up to date on what others find interesting at the moment.

Reddit is arguably the original “algorithmic feed” - votes + the decaying algorithm make it way more “addictive” than if it was just a chronological series of posts, ordered by number of votes.

The popular/news sections of Reddit are also more heavily based on non-vote signals, like FB.

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