Earlier quoted context omitted.
Six years and $18 billion.
That's other people's money though.
The best kind!
But it’d make a way more dramatic headline.
I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#42This reminds me that fateful question that we, software engineers, use to hear from our moms/dads/family: "Why don't you start a facebook?"
This amuses me to no end, I have never got that question, the closest thing was "you do websites right? do you know how to hack someone's Facebook?"
I get sent articles with stories like '16 year old creates app, becomes millionaire' with the email title 'you make apps, don't you? So I have an idea...'. And yes, also, at every birthday party; 'can you hack into blah and deface that fraud, because he scammed me!'.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#43This is hilarious. Ten weeks.
Ten weeks?
To build a community?
To build a base of dedicated users and begin to reap the network effect that keeps existing users on the site, and draws in new years?
In the early 2000s, I launched something like an early "social networking" site for geek dating.
We built a strong community and actually were pretty profitable with direct subscriber revenue, though it was never quite enough to quit my day job and I eventually (reluctantly) moved on because of other things happening in my life.
Anyway, we were open for THREE YEARS before I charged a dime.
That's how long it took me to build a community.
I focused on community building/management while I built out the site's functionality. This was very active, hands-on community management on my part. Now, three years is a long time. Maybe somebody could do it in less time. Especially if you had a partner or a team.... I was a lone wolf who was also working some consulting gigs to pay bills.
Maybe it doesn't need to be 3 years, but 10 weeks is beyond a joke.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#44Although a bit harsh in writing, JustStartNoob's comment [0] is honestly a good analysis. The guy had an idea and tried to force it through as hastily as possible with the sole goal of 'making it.' Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/comments/dkyq92/how_i_was...
> "I spent stupid money throwing shit at a non-stick wall, realized the wall was non-stick, so started spending money throwing shit at a different non-stick wall instead". This is the worst possible interpretation of OP's venture, and must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Edit: I'm not saying that $1900 is not a significant amount of money to many people in the world. But it is NOT a lot of mone…
Or you know, someone who doesn't share your living standards.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
$1900 is "stupid money" (as in hella expensive) for 1/3rd of the world's population. For some, it's more than they make in a year -- and yes, those places still have digital entrepreneurs.
And even in more economically advanced countries, $1900 can still be a lot for many demographics, even in the US, for e.g. a student or someone barely making the rent.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#45In my mind social networks are probably one of the hardest things to crack. People are only attracted to it if there are already lots of other people and activity there. It's like a chicken and egg problem and your job is how to make one of them appear out of thin air
The chicken is called advertising.
It is of course a discipline in it's own right, which deserves to be done well. Bad advertising profits you nothing, like badly done anything else profits you zilch.
The egg is of course the (main) activity that people are doing on your respective social network.
Again, this has to be done well. People need a reason to stay. GooglePlus circles is something, you know, people ain't like that.
Look at Gab.com and other successes based on Mastodon. They are very different, but most of them have the same reason for their success: people can post things there, that would get them banned on FB or Twitter.
Look at Microblog.com, you have to pay. People like that, because it makes sure only serious people are on there, which means your connections tend to be more serious.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "I spent stupid money throwing shit at a non-stick wall, realized the wall was non-stick, so started spending money throwing shit at a different non-stick wall instead". This is the worst possible interpretation of OP's venture, and must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Edit: I'm not saying that $1900 is not a significant amount of money to many people in the world. But it is NOT a lot of mone…
Or you know, someone who doesn't share your living standards. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." $1900 is "stupid money" (as in hella expensive) for 1/3rd of the world's population. For some, it's more than they make in a year -- and yes, those places still have digital entrepreneurs. And even in more economically advanced countries, $1900 can still be a lot f…
This all goes without saying. However we're talking about developing and marketing a product in the first world. In this context, $1900 is not only nothing, it's a bargain given the experience OP gained.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "I spent stupid money throwing shit at a non-stick wall, realized the wall was non-stick, so started spending money throwing shit at a different non-stick wall instead". This is the worst possible interpretation of OP's venture, and must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Edit: I'm not saying that $1900 is not a significant amount of money to many people in the world. But it is NOT a lot of mone…
For the benefit of others, the totality of that comment is much richer and more thoughtful than the snarky snippet you quoted.
I didn't add the "snark" to that snippet, and no, the rest is no better.
> If OP had done any research, he would have realised "Russian Reddit clone" was not a good idea with a real likelihood of success. Way too ambitious.
> If OP had planned, he wouldn't have stumbled around aimlessly for 10 weeks and would have understood success, especially when growing any type of "community" based project, takes time.
I've now pasted 60% of the comment, and none of it is useful or actionable and is all rather insulting..."stumbled around aimlessly", "not a good idea", "throwing shit at a wall", these are trash statements and no budding entrepreneur should listen to them.
I'll also add that OPs approach is a typical "move fast and break things" method of finding a product-market fit, and it seems to me that OP did stumble upon a product and a market in a discussion platform for cancer patients. They need a monetisation strategy, but for somebody to turn around and say this is "shit" and was "aimless" is useless and shouldn't be encouraged.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#48So many founders have warped expectations of overnight success, myself included. This probably comes from all the Techcrunch style articles we read about viral product launches and massive raises. 10 weeks is not a lot of time, especially if you are bootstrapping a social network. I've been doing it for about two years and only now am I starting to see some traction and figure out how it all works. I don't mind though because it's a labour of love that I fund thorugh my day job.
One thing I've realised though is that the barrier to entry for creating a social network has gone up significantly, because when users come to your network they expect the same experience that they get from other networks like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Quora, Github, LinkedIn, Medium and so on. Things like:
- A highly relevant, non-repetitive newsfeed of fresh stimulating content.
- Customizable and respectful notifications
- Super tight privacy
- Rich UIs for creating content and comments
- Openness (RSS, ActivityPub etc.)
If you aren't able to deliver the same experience as venture funded social networks as a bootstrapped 2 person team, users typically bail. This in turn stops the network from growing and becoming more useful. Many companies like Quora, LinkedIn and Medium also pay people full-time salaries to produce content that brings people in.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#49Although a bit harsh in writing, JustStartNoob's comment [0] is honestly a good analysis. The guy had an idea and tried to force it through as hastily as possible with the sole goal of 'making it.' Unsurprisingly, it didn't work out. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/juststart/comments/dkyq92/how_i_was...
> "I spent stupid money throwing shit at a non-stick wall, realized the wall was non-stick, so started spending money throwing shit at a different non-stick wall instead". This is the worst possible interpretation of OP's venture, and must be written by a 12 year old if $1900 is "stupid money" Edit: I'm not saying that $1900 is not a significant amount of money to many people in the world. But it is NOT a lot of mone…
I'd like to point out that OP is from Russia. I wonder if he still lives in Russia?
In 2018, the minimum wage in Russia was 11163 rubles per month, which is $174.6 per month. So, it would take a person working for a minimum wage 10.8 months to earn $1900.
For comparison, the minimum wage in California is $11/hour, so assuming a 40 hour work week, in 10.8 months a minimum wage worker in California would make $19,008. I'd guess that you would consider $19k to be a significant amount of money to spend on a project like this?
My point is, while you are right that $1900 is not "stupid money", it might still be a significant amount of money if the OP lives in Russia.
In fact, I'd think that a lot of people living in the United States would think that $1900 is a significant amount of money, especially for a risky side project.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#50People are discussing the very short amount of time he spent, but what about the money?
A service that he created (I assume direct cost zero) without a big community (so server costs should be very low) and VK's advertisement with no engagement rate.
Did he spend almost 1900 in advertisement? Jeez...