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I am done. I give up

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Re: I am done. I give up

#241

Post by mensetmanusman »

vineyardmike wrote: post #39
jurmous wrote: post #10

A 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…

Connections, where you were born, and where you go to school are also luck.

Re: I am done. I give up

#242

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

You can do everything right and still fail. It's just the way a system is works when there are more people trying to be successful then there is room in the space for them to be successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

What's more frustrating is that people can also do the wrong things and succeed anyway.

Re: I am done. I give up

#243

Post by Swizec »

kubb wrote: post #211
noduerme wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average American watches 4 hours a day of TV. Most startup founders work other jobs while building their project - if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job. But they're spending those four hours (and many, many more) on labors of love. Sure, there are some trustfund kids who get to play founder and have the odds stacked in their favor, but that's neither the soul nor the joy of starting y…

The TV numbers are surely skewed by retirees? Who built their billion dollar company while working a day job again?

Jeff Bezos, for example. Amazon was well on its way to product market fit and full validation that its gonna work by the time he quit his dayjob.

Same for Zuckerberg and school.

You don’t hit a billion dollars while having a dayjob. You validate the idea and approach work and can get you there.

Anthony Bourdain famously quit his job only when it had become absolutely impossible to keep alongside his public persona work because interviewers/journalists kept disrupting restaurant operations at his job.

Re: I am done. I give up

#244

Post by rtuin » 

  I'm writing this post because I'm done.
  [...]
  But for me, I can't take it anymore. I've hit rock bottom and I have nothing left to give. [...] Don't let your dreams consume you like they did for me,
I find this really alarming and hope that OP is OK'ish now, and that this is not a suicide note.

Re: I am done. I give up

#245

Post by Scarblac »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #239
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier 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…

The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everyw…

Norway got rich off oil, Finland isn't especially rich afaik.

Re: I am done. I give up

#247

Post by helloanoop »

jusssi wrote: post #187

Getting no success is hard. But getting some initial success can be a trap. I spent 15 years of my life scraping by in various attempts to make something that sticks, and (too) slowly failed to find it. Finally I sold out to the dark side (consulting). The money is decent and the job is something I can forget when I clock out. Not being able to retire early will be my own fault for chasing the dream for too long, had…

I feel you brother. The gut wrenching feeling of having waited far too long.

Re: I am done. I give up

#248

Post by KptMarchewa »

throwawaybbq1 wrote: post #239
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier 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…

The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce. This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everyw…

Norway, not Finland.

>The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce.

Sure, the thought of being worth only 150 billion dollars rather than 300 would stop Bezos from starting Amazon.

Re: I am done. I give up

#249

Post by Skinney »

drstewart wrote: post #216
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier 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…

[flagged]

Nokia, Remarkable, Ericson, Spotify, Tidal

Re: I am done. I give up

#250

Post by blagie »

drewcon wrote: post #223
blagie wrote: post #40

Having 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…

This is the right model. The vast majority of successful startups I've seen in my extended circle of friends didn't target other programmers or programmer-like consumers.

Most startups try to build another database, web framework, or data service, or whatnot, because that's the problem programmers are familiar with. The next ones are consumer products, assuming consumers look like SFO. The competition is fierce, and very few succeed.

My experience is that in virtually any other industry -- I don't care if you're in construction, shipbuilding, or farming -- there will be many low-hanging fruit which people in that industry won't be competent to solve. If you:

- go into some (nearly random) industry;

- keep your head up enough to gain an understanding how it works; and

- build out a network of connections you trust and who trust you

entrepreneurship is easy.

I guess the other piece is keeping your toe deep enough in tech that you can pull together a good team and solve problems a typical IT department can't solve. But that should be the easy part for readers here.

You can even start consulting. In the same way as a tech company doesn't want to outsource its core competency but is happy to outsource legal, payroll, and similar, the opposite is true in most industry. I've seen industries on HN where you (the typical HN reader) could outperform a whole 20-person team because the tech they hire is so incompetent. That's not a tough sell.

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