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My solopreneur story

news.tonydinh.com

281–290 of 669 posts

Re: My solopreneur story

#281

I am really fed up with this kind of indie hacker story. MMR updates are superficial. Weak signal. I'm confident most are absent of critical info and some are entirely made up. I don't disbelieve anyone in particular, but when a mechanism of virality proliferates, it often gets deployed without the backing substance. "How I XYZ" around money is similarly misleading. Most entrepreneurs I know cannot recreate their own…

I don't understand the complaint here. He's sharing his journey - he's not selling you a course on how to be an indie hacker. If you want to take any lessons from this, that's up to you.

This sharing is also promotion for what they are selling: shovels and dreams

Re: My solopreneur story

#282
post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I concur with this assessment. I don't want to discount the hard work of the author of the post, but this post could have also literally been "My slot machine win: $3 to $1.2M with one pull of the handle" I'm under no illusions that my success has a lot to do with being in the right place at the right time, a lot of luck, and a lot of hard work.

Are we reading the same article? "One pull of the handle"... the guy wrote about iterating through like 10-15 (more?) different ideas over the course of 2 years, with most of them failing for one reason or another. Apparently, the meme that success is entirely luck is so pervasive that when exact evidence to the contrary is provided people still miss it.

Seriously. There are at least four different comments on this thread about how the author was lucky, is showing his lottery ticket, pulled the right lever and is writing about making money without doing anything.

Re: My solopreneur story

#283

I am really fed up with this kind of indie hacker story. MMR updates are superficial. Weak signal. I'm confident most are absent of critical info and some are entirely made up. I don't disbelieve anyone in particular, but when a mechanism of virality proliferates, it often gets deployed without the backing substance. "How I XYZ" around money is similarly misleading. Most entrepreneurs I know cannot recreate their own…

Maybe I am a very sceptical person... but every time I see a similar story I can't help thinking about survivorship bias.

Re: My solopreneur story

#284
post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why isn't there enough revenue to support other devs? Lots of people have money to spend, they just don't want to spend it on bad products. Induced demand via increased competition is a real phenomenon [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

Induced demand leads often also to a race-to-the-bottom in pricing. Almost everyone is just using a few basic apps, going against the consumer train is very hard, and only companies are spending money on software.

There is always a competitive advantage to be had; products, especially software products, are not commodities.

Re: My solopreneur story

#285
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped paying for Youtube Premium. Did that make Youtube better? Maybe I'll find time to build that when I'm not building API integrations with Youtube.

If everyone thinks like this then no, it won't get better. But I stand by my statement, no matter how many downvotes I get. If you don't like a product, stop paying for it, and either find alternatives or build your own. Its quite rare that you're going to influence their roadmap by getting a ticket filed.

Don't you think it'd be a lot quicker if multiple people were filing a ticket for the same issue then to build the entire product yourself?

Re: My solopreneur story

#286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also this is just lol > The great entrepreneurs of our world are hardly motivated by money Yeah come on like Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, Gates, Hoffman etc aren't motivated by money lol. For a forum created by an accelerator, it is weirdly anti-success.

Are these people entrepreneurs? What risks did they take. I wager almost none, they were fine whatever happened.

How would you define an entrepreneurs? I think risk-taking correlates with entrepreneurship, but I don't think I'd use it in a definition.

Re: My solopreneur story

#287
post #191
post #21

So many envious people, including myself, but at least I admit it. Go back to your corporate cusion or VC lap, and resolve that jira please.

It's possible to find this kind of thing distasteful without being motivated by envy.

“You’re just jealous” has for a while now been HN’s go to any unwelcome criticism, whether the criticism is valid or not. I suppose that’s what goes for “thoughtful and substantive” comments nowadays. In that spirit l, I suggest these people are just mentally underdeveloped, to the point where the best weapon they have are childish quips.

Re: My solopreneur story

#288

In reality the title should be: this is how I got lucky in my journey, I jumped into the AI hype just like thousands of other developers, but pure luck made it for me, and now I make X amount of money. I’m not the first to jump into it, I’m not the brightest since there are way smarter people than me who tried similar ideas, I didn’t build anything groundbreaking, and I didn’t invent anything new. I just got lucky. N…

How do you even get to this take? The guy clearly explained how he has built MULTIPLE successful products. So there is obviously more going on than sheer luck. And jumping on the AI hype is exactly what being a good entrepreneur is all about: recognizing an opportunity/gap and capitalizing on it. And the reason he was more successful than those thousands other developers is because he understands that there is more t…

The first is the hardest. After that you can leverage your brand

Re: My solopreneur story

#289

An arrow indicator for a twitter profile pic, a screen cap tool, and a wrapper around ChatGPT. I kinda want to shoot myself. Largely useless products that made someone rich that rely on two other ecosystems. That’s the way I guess? I’m so not an entrepreneur. Edit: apologies for using a suicide metaphor. I was being sarcastic. I’m in my 50s, really like my job, and am on a path to a good retirement. It just amazes me…

[dead]

Re: My solopreneur story

#290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry but you can’t fall downhill into 45k a month. You also can’t write down a cake recipe for 45k a month like you seem to be expecting. As someone who, over the last two years, has created a more modest 5 figure MRR business, I can assure you, you don’t know what you’re talking about. It takes a lot of skill and understanding of the market and market forces to be this successful. Being able to do the same thing ag…

Their hiatus on the whole greed thing appart, I think they meant the same as what you said? That there's no lessons to learn, because doing the same thing again wouldn't work. And if even the person who succeeded first hand would fail to reproduce their own success a second time, then those who are just reading about it have even less of a chance to be successful with that advice. I think that's interesting to explor…

>"how I achieved financial success", because it kinds of gives out this illusion to others that they can as well

Why do you think this is unachievable for others?

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