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I am done. I give up

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Re: I am done. I give up

#271

Post by ehnto »

vineyardmike wrote: post #75
jlangenauer wrote: post #5

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.

> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? They’re influencers. That’s why people want their attention. I think it kinda has the look of a cool lifestyle from the outside (to some). They’re digital nomads and they travel to cool places and meeting cool people and tweeting big graphs that go up and to the right. They disavow lots of possessions (again a nomad) while profe…

Something worth thinking about in this context, is that businesses simply must exist in a community of some kind. When you start a small business in your local community, you have a pretty good idea of the appetite, and space for, the product you are selling, you just have to win the popularity contest and then make the financials work.

For digital nomads, that community has to be online, which is a difficult landscape. You are competing with every online business across the globe, and it's difficult to gauge the desire for what you're selling. Just being online won't do it, and even if you find some customers, have you found all of them? Maybe you missed a connection to a broader community that needs what you sell. You'd never know.

But from my thrown made of failed SaaS products, the biggest mistake I see solo-entrepreneurs make, often they don't know what they're selling. They know what they're building, and they conflate their solo-SaaS business with venture capitalist powered startup. VC startups aren't businesses yet, they're proto-businesses, they can afford to be a lofty idea and the money can happen later. Solo-entrepreneurs, you don't have that luxury. You have to have the "business" part, the money flow, figured out already.

My advice for someone who is trying to bootstrap a solo-business on the net: have a product that someone can buy as soon as you quit your paying job. If no one can give you money, you're just counting down the days until you can even begin being a business.

Re: I am done. I give up

#272

Post by forgotpwd16 »

>After three failed attempts at building a successful startup

In many stories I read authors said they've done 20+ attempts before getting a success.

>I tried everything

Besides hard work, luck and connections also play a role. Maybe even the most important one.

>Building a startup is hard work and it takes time.

I am not participating in Twitter but think here in HN this is the general consensus.

Re: I am done. I give up

#274

Post by andrepd »

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…

1. Finland doesn't have oil, you're mistaking it for Norway.

2. Progressive taxation is the basis on which the best places to live were built. This is an empirical observation, make of that what you will, but it's strange to give your gut feelings of "basic economics / human nature" more weight than objective reality.

3. Why do is the word "rob" applied to taxation? Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation. Your current life is only possible because you are inserted in a society, it's only far you have a debt to pay society back.

Re: I am done. I give up

#275

Post by MikeDelta »

copx wrote: post #224
vineyardmike wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.

Re: I am done. I give up

#276

Post by jimnotgym »

xvector wrote: post #260
KptMarchewa wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

...and lots of other factors, like access to risk capital.

Re: I am done. I give up

#277

Post by chrischen »

xvector wrote: post #260
KptMarchewa wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

The US is prized because of its large market… not because it’s a tax dodge. The US dan cut off access to any company unwilling to pay local taxes just like how China forces any foreign company wanting to tap into its large market to give majority control to a local entity.

Re: I am done. I give up

#278

Post by necovek »

_448 wrote: post #119
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. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. This is not true! I have seen successful business built from scratch by people who had no connections, no money and no privileged background (and no VC money). And I will say this for sure, i…

You are both right: hard work is a requirement. To make it really big (and sometimes to just make it), luck is a requirement as well.

A simple "proof" using logic is finding someone who worked really hard and failed (called a proof by contradiction): this is not hard, many have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it. Thus, hard work does not lead to success. But it does enable it.

Similarly, there are plenty of cases where someone was lucky but still blew it up (FTX anyone?). So just like with hard work, luck does not mean guaranteed success. It does, however, enable it.

Re: I am done. I give up

#279

Post by joshwolff »

Hate to say it, but you sound like you're victimizing yourself. You're not a victim. And victimhood mentality likely played a large role in your failure. Try to change your mindset and try again when you feel you're ready.

Re: I am done. I give up

#280

Post by jliptzin »

xvector wrote: post #260
KptMarchewa wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation. The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

I looked up taxation in Norway, it looks very similar to ours. Personal marginal tax rates cap at 48% and corporate taxes are 23%. What am I missing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway

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