After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code • Hacker News Board

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#231

Post by frickinLasers » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:26 PM UTC

jefftk wrote: post #219

zarzavat wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about wages compared to house prices?

Some things in the "basket of goods" we use to compute inflation have gone up more than others, and housing is definitely one of them. You can compute exactly how much by dividing https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA646N by https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MSPUS Here's a sheet where I've done this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14NVqsKXnswG27TiwENpi... But note that some of the change here is peopl…

Average rent per square foot since 2014 has increased by 42% [1]. By your unadjusted income chart, incomes have only increased by 33% in that time. In my case, existing just to the left of the income median, that's meant going from comfortably affording a 2br apartment and weekly dinner out, to barely squeaking by in a small 1br. Add in a $600 car payment (which I have managed to avoid), and it's not possible to live reasonably.

[1] https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/average-rent-by-yea...

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#232

Post by NoGravitas » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

slowmovintarget wrote: post #13

ltbarcly3 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying AI can't rescue a bad product idea by automating things? Like more efficiently doing something nobody wants done isn't a business?

My opinion: In software, the best use of AI is to create a do-what-I-mean UI. That is so-called AI (more to the point, use of LLMs and vision, speech, and audio processing) can allow new modes of interface that help a user operate the computer and achieve something that was nearly impossible with the user at the raw controls. This will not produce superior work to someone who knows what they're doing at the controls.…

As long as the consequences of then producing something which was not-quite-what-they-mean but them being unable to recognize that are not too high.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#233

Post by acuozzo » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:29 PM UTC

sfjailbird wrote: post #115

mediaman wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people even think about selling $10/mo licenses. Just go sell $2-4k/mo SaaS to a medium sized traditional industry that has ancient, crummy software with a target customer employee size of 50 - 1,000 people. Customer problem discovery is easier, you get reputation network effects within the vertical, you gain trust because you learn the industry lingo, you can actually solve peoples' problems b…

There's gotta be a name for this fallacy. "This enterprise software sucks and is extremely expensive, so we will build something that is actually good and become billionaires!" This is the graveyard of engineer driven startups in the enterprise space, who make the mistake of thinking that software quality matters. The fact is it is not a top priority, if it is even a priority at all. In the enterprise space, if you'r…

> there is no software priced between $1000 and $100,000

Nitpick, but this is the price range for most professional film restoration software.

The target is often small restoration houses with workstations at 10 or so seats.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#234

Post by liontwist » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:30 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #72

liontwist wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you start making a product and trying to sell it when do the dice rolls come in?

Every step of the way. - right product? - right market segment? - right marketing? - right execution? - right scalability post basic execution? - right sales approach? - right post sales approach? All of these have 10 different paths (in reality), any of which if you take the wrong one could end up in some kind of expensive dead end or spectacular failure.

Probability models are an attempt to cope with a lack of information. But you not having complete information doesn’t mean the world is like that.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#235

Post by motorest » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

palmfacehn wrote: post #196

realce wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 100m is not a sustainable model for a nation or world's economy. Everyone needs to eat, not just the single individual who runs fastest.

Value creation isn't a zero sum game. Increased productivity benefits everyone. Whether it hyperscales or not, genuinely profitable businesses add value to the economy. This in turn creates more opportunities for everyone willing to participate.

> Value creation isn't a zero sum game. Increased productivity benefits everyone. Whether it hyperscales or not, genuinely profitable businesses add value to the economy. This in turn creates more opportunities for everyone willing to participate.

Your comment contradicts the "hyperscale or bust" mentality. Hyperscale is not a necessary condition to be competitive. You can put out a better product/service even before economies of scale are reachable. In the meantime, this hyperscale nonsense is nothing more than cargo cult mentality where the need for a sustainable business model is replaced with hand-waving and mindlessly repeating "hyperscale" as a mantra, which has been the death of countless startups.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#236

Post by lazide » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

liontwist wrote: post #234

lazide wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every step of the way. - right product? - right market segment? - right marketing? - right execution? - right scalability post basic execution? - right sales approach? - right post sales approach? All of these have 10 different paths (in reality), any of which if you take the wrong one could end up in some kind of expensive dead end or spectacular failure.

Probability models are an attempt to cope with a lack of information. But you not having complete information doesn’t mean the world is like that.

Do you think it’s possible for anyone to have all the information?

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#237

Post by tptacek » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:36 PM UTC

ericjmorey wrote: post #100

tptacek wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need funding to cover your monthly nut, you need a plausible path to hyper-growth; the portfolio math doesn't work for investors otherwise. If you set out to build a small-scale sustainable business, and you succeed , you can avoid funding. But if you're pivoting to something entirely new mid-to-late-ways through your company, you've probably burned down most of your reserves.

> If you need funding to cover your monthly nut, you need a plausible path to hyper-growth; the portfolio math doesn't work for investors otherwise. If you only look towards people like Peter Thiel, sure. But the people that cleaned up his mess with SVB aren't so insane.

No, it's true of more or less any investor.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#238

Post by gtech1 » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:42 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #124

Hendrikto wrote: post #118

> While we gained some traction with some startups, we ultimately weren't able to build a hyper-growth business. […] We then decided to pivot into a vertical B2B SaaS AI product […, but] we haven't been able to find enough traction to make us believe that we were on the right track to build a huge business. American startup culture is so weird. Not everything needs to be a hyper-scaler, not everything needs to be hug…

American startup culture is so weird On the one hand, sure. On the other hand this relentless focus on "hyper-scale" or bust is what has pushed the US startup scene to where it is and probably why it is so far ahead of the rest of the world. If you told most European startup founders that in 5 years you'll have plateaued at 15-20 employees, a steady income flow, and you'll be paying yourself $200-250k a year, they'd…

I'm actually 'stuck' in this situation right now. Make about 350-400k/year with no prospect to clear (much) more or exit. I mean, why should I exit ? To risk doing something else and 0.1% chance of making millions, or go along this way a few more years while building my investment portfolio.

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#239

Post by acuozzo » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:44 PM UTC

presentation wrote: post #107

ianpurton wrote: post #106

The developer tools market is REALLY difficult. Nearly every architecture decision is "which open source tool can I use to solve [problem]". No one wants to pay for anything and that's ok.

That said most developers don’t have any awareness of problems outside of those they experience… which tend to be developer tooling issues. So you get a ton of companies building dev tools startups despite an incredible amount of need elsewhere. I feel like a lot of value could be unlocked if there were some way besides random chance and networking for skilled developers looking to start something to discover people…

> if there were some way besides random chance and networking for skilled developers looking to start something to discover people

The main problem here is that non-programmers are often so entrenched in their workflow(s) that they fail to see what can be automated and wind up proposing nice-to-haves instead of tasks critical to their mission.

Moreover, they're more likely to dismiss 80% solutions because the introduction of new unknowns/things-to-check adds enough uncertainty to make them uncomfortable. "The new thing always puts things here instead of there and it doesn't handle these cases. I miss the way we used to do things."

Re: After 3 Years, I Failed. Here's All My Startup's Code

#240

Post by sbochins » Wed, Dec 18, 2024, 4:45 PM UTC

“It’s refreshing to see a founder’s honest postmortem that doesn’t just blame ‘bad timing’ or ‘market conditions.’ Instead, he’s ripping off the Band-Aid and laying bare the pain points—no hype, no quiet pivot into mediocrity. It’s the kind of retrospective that should be required reading before your next ‘growth hack’ session: get the fundamentals right or prepare to pen your own ‘closing up shop’ blog post.”