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A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

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Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#31

Post by WilliamEdward »

wgerard wrote: post #29
rasengan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Working hard will not guarantee that you will be successful, but I guarantee you, that all successful people worked hard.” - Coach Kamogawa thru George Morikawa

It's not totally clear to me that hard work involves quantity (the OP, seemingly) over quality (others who have started fewer, more successful businesses). In general, there are lots of activities which give the appearance of hard work but are actually fairly superficial and detrimental to your long-term goals. Not at all saying that's the case here, more just musing on the idea of grinding for the sake of grinding.

It's almost as if there's a stark difference between working hard and working smart. No one wants to acknowledge that.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#32

Post by mbrameld »

safgasCVS wrote: post #7

I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?

In your scenario would one date around before committing to a marriage or would one just commit to the first interesting person that came along and hope for the best?

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#33

Post by WilliamEdward »

One thing that separates entrepreneurs from normal people is they aren't afraid of having stupid ideas. A good 90% of the ideas on this list, particularly the early ones, are laughable and are ideas you wouldn't catch a serious individual dead trying to come up with. Some people try from the start to be perfect and always fail because they don't understand you need dumb little ideas to be an entrepreneur.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#34

Post by santoshalper »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

Feels like he doesn't give the businesses enough time to gain popularity. Some of them were clearly not bad ideas, like the ad management one.

I noticed the same thing. The one that jumped out to me was something like, sold before it launched for $10000. Why would you build something and take 10 grand instead of launching it? Desperation?

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#35

Post by keiferski »

mbrameld wrote: post #32
safgasCVS wrote: post #7

I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?

In your scenario would one date around before committing to a marriage or would one just commit to the first interesting person that came along and hope for the best?

Presumably if your relationship was extremely successful (if it were a business, it’d be making millions), then you’d be a fool to throw it away.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#36

Post by xky »

xellisx wrote: post #24
myth_drannon wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people see it as a lottery. But in the case you loose (99.9% of the times) at least you learned something in the process.

What can you learn from the lottery...

I think this person meant you can learn from the "lottery" that is startups unlike a regular lottery.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#37

Post by sampl »

safgasCVS wrote: post #7

I don't understand this spray and pray approach to business - I'm not businessman so I may be talking out my ass - but I would have thought business is like a long term relationship. May as well have a spreadsheet of 50 failed marriages. If you aren't in it for the long haul what are you doing?

Think of it more like dating--it's normal to have 50 "failed" dates before you tie the knot. You don't commit until you find a great match. In business, this means the market actually cares about what you're making.

Predicting which software businesses will find this fit is extremely hard. VCs know this, and diversify their investments among many founders (knowing one big payday can make up for 10-100 failures).

Looks like this founder diversified by himself and launched small things faster. And eventually found something worth "marrying".

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#38

Post by wgerard »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #31
wgerard wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not totally clear to me that hard work involves quantity (the OP, seemingly) over quality (others who have started fewer, more successful businesses). In general, there are lots of activities which give the appearance of hard work but are actually fairly superficial and detrimental to your long-term goals. Not at all saying that's the case here, more just musing on the idea of grinding for the sake of grinding.

It's almost as if there's a stark difference between working hard and working smart. No one wants to acknowledge that.

I don't know if it's that necessarily. I think most people understand (in theory, anyway), the benefit of working smart.

I think there's an assumption that the most successful people both work smart AND hard, which is likely true to some degree - e.g. successful pro athletes have staff that likely conduct well-targeted and thoughtful practices, but the hours and effort involved are still quite intense.

I more-so think the problem is that "working smart" requires a lot of careful planning and forethought, and is quite ambiguous in most cases what it actually means - and in many cases just happens serendipitously. Because of that, the process isn't as obvious.

It's much easier (intellectually, at least) to emulate the "working hard" part and to a large degree it's the one we reward the most societally (even in more intellectual circles), so it's not surprising that it's the one that people assume is the most necessary component of being successful - and that the "working smart" part will either come naturally, or after success is had.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#39

Post by noelsusman »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #28
zerr wrote: post #8

> Amazon affiliate sites I think this is a completely different mindset compared to engineers/"nerds", that's why most of us work for others instead of starting our own businesses.

There is nothing wrong with working for others if it fulfills you. I envy people who can have comfortable lives with happy families and a simple desk job that pays for what they need. Something in my brain is telling me I need more or I won't be happy, so I have many startups I'm working on and have exclusively begun working for myself. The grass is always greener on the other side, that much I can say. Enjoy your co…

To each their own, obviously, but I look at this list and it's just... depressing. He seems like the kind of person who gets a lot of fulfillment from things like this, but for me I just see a whole lot of time wasted on bullshit.

That's the main reason why I work for others. You can't form a health system startup that includes dozens of hospitals and thousands of patients per day.

Re: A spreadsheet of the businesses I've started over the past 15 years

#40

Post by Shpigford »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #33

One thing that separates entrepreneurs from normal people is they aren't afraid of having stupid ideas. A good 90% of the ideas on this list, particularly the early ones, are laughable and are ideas you wouldn't catch a serious individual dead trying to come up with. Some people try from the start to be perfect and always fail because they don't understand you need dumb little ideas to be an entrepreneur.

So true! I’ll be the first to tell you the _vast_ majority of those ideas were objectively terrible but every single one of them taught me _something_.
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