281–290 of 1001 posts
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…
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^^ +10000 I think a lot of us have been there. There's a big difference whether your service: - is B2B/B2C; - uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth; - targets a broad market or a niche (the more niche it is, the better it speaks to your target market, f.e. coaching vs developer coaching vs coaching Java developers VS coaching Java developers in machine learning vs coaching Java developers that use machine l…
> uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth What exactly do you mean here? because I'd argue depending on the product, each of the 3 could be the way to go over the others. Are you trying to say one is the best way of growing? Curious to hear your thoughts.
I tried combining both product-led and sales-led, and addressing a lot of different kinds of businesses, but this ended up making my go-to-market more complicated and resulted in almost zero sales.
Second half of this year I finally switched it to sales led targeting a very specific niche, and ended up with a very clear and simple offering for a very specific kind of customer.
This feels counterintuitive because you exclude a huge part of your TAM, but it allows you to be the perfect match for a very specific profile.
Instead of getting a lot of leads with a gazillion questions because they don't trust you, they now start thinking about if/how they can afford it after the first online session.
To get the path of the least resistance, you need to address the exact problems of a certain kind of prospect, conveying your value as easy as possible, and making it a no-brainer for them to commit.
But, don't take my word for it, just ask me again by the end of 2023 whether this all worked out of not.
(I did get some very positive feedback from somebody who bootstrapped, scaled up and sold his company, so I do have high hopes/expectations.)
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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.
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…
Citation needed. I’m quite sure that working a second job does not go down well with VCs. In most cases the networking required and high risk of failure is only achievable through having well-off parents.
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…
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.
In our culture there is an immense preoccupation with the unfairness of this but the reality is that if you don't come from wealth and privilege, you need a different playbook. Dwelling on the inequity neuters you. If you want to win you need to figure out what the playbook is and then do the right things.
I found a playbook that worked by reading all the self help and business books I could (preferably from the public library because that was free and I was poor). My playbook ended up being: move to a country with a lower cost of living, and get good enough at freelancing online that I essentially had a safety net and a long-term runway for other pursuits.
I then tried a few different business models, each failed a bit less than the last until I hit a winner which bankrolls about a dozen people on my payroll.
A rich guy wouldn't have had to go through all that but I don't care. It's totally irrelevant to the requirements for success in my reality. Which were build my own baseline from scratch and then fail until I succeeded.
People born into easier paths than mine have sneered at many many elements of what I did over the years (living in a "shithole" country, working with a "shitty" tech stack, taking "shitty" Elance gigs that didn't pay enough, etc. etc.). Other people who were able to tolerate remaining victims of the system tuned out my story and focused on other things, like bitching about politics. I'm worth more than most of the people in both categories now and I feel like this is just the beginning. I haven't had children yet but if I do they will have fewer disadvantages than I did.
There are different and easier playbooks than the one I used. If I was starting again I would probably go into a more conventionally profitable vocation and save for 15 years, studying business and coding on the side, and then start a business.
But either way the point is your playbook if you start poor needs to be different. It's not as easy as the one the rich guys have but that fact is a distraction. You should be too busy figuring out your plan to care.
For some people it is the right thing, for others it is not. There are many factors involved. Things like "How much can I accept to not do what I want, but to do what I am told by an employer?" or stress resistance.
Best wishes!
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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…
Perhaps Peter has earned his cash by working really hard. But perhaps not, perhaps he just exploited other people to hustle his way up some corporate food chain.
Yeah, sure, and then die one day realizing that you spent your life chasing illusionary goals that were injected into your mind by bulshitters on twitter. Way to go, mate!
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This . I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers? I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and…
Most problems in a Startup are product or distribution. Most people who look down on lifestyle businesses often have the lifestyle to begin with, or are their… yet to be accomplished followers. It’s koolaid that can lose a decade of so many peoples lives. Anyone who looks down on lifestyle businesses should introspect on where it came from that it’s ok for them to look down kn another’s choices and personal formula.…
Mostly true. I won’t be your customer if you use electron though.
I touched on this in an essay I wrote years ago
https://austingwalters.com/an-essay-on-wealth-and-freedom/
While I think trying to build a startup is fine, it’s probably not the best way to build wealth. To put it bluntly, you are most likely to build a successful startup when you have domain expertise and nothing to lose. That’s why funding a kid who has no family and a few years experience is probably a decent bet. They are cheap, passionate (work hard for the money) and think a bit differently than the entrenched businesses (the YC model).
If you want to build wealth, you probably take a different path. Find a good job in tech, work for 4-5 years playing politics a bit. Then cash out and find a mid-tier position at a remote job in rural USA, 30-60 min from a major city. Find a wife / husband from the area and buy 20 acres and have a farm. You’ll be wealthier and happier than anyone in the city and still be able to access most amenities within a short drive.