Ugh
I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
51–60 of 92 posts
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#52> Let me draw the bottom line. 10 weeks are spent to create and test 3 different hypotheses. 10 weeks are a little more than two months. That's nothing, wouldn't even be enough to build something good enough, much less to test it, and even less to test it 3 times. So let me rephrase: "Only 10 weeks are spent to create a minimal product, and shallow barely-test 3 different hypotheses before giving up". It can take yea…
I think there is a problem with the current thinking on MVPs where you quickly hack together a product, launch it, and drop it if it doesn't gain traction immediately.
This approach is probably especially damaging if the product is a social platform that you are starting from scratch.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#53For many people today Internet = Facebook. Probably it would have more sense to start with a FB group instead of rolling out own reddit clone.
That's a good idea, if you want to build a social network, it probably makes sense to build an audience first.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#54This 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?"
the "can you hack X" I get most often. But also questions to help with random programs I sometimes never even heard of, that they use at their job or whatever :D
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#55This 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 eno…
Thank you for this. The only waste of time here was a result of this individual’s lack of commitment (sorry, but it’s true) and misinformed understanding of the efforts involved in the launch process of any business, let alone his. I hope he sees this and realizes all hope is not lost if he sticks with it, evolves it, and plans for the ramp period accordingly. Success is never guaranteed, but you have to give it a chance.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
OP is in Russia, from the sound of it. $1900 is a good amount of money there--the average annual salary is about $8500.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#57This post talks a lot about the chicken and egg problem, and the inventors of Reddit faced the same problem - no one will come to your homepage for the internet if it doesn't look like the homepage for the internet.
Do you know what they did? They didn't focus on one community - they faked it. Thousands of fake posts with fake comments. All scripted.
Then one day they started seeing posts they didn't write and it took off.
Reddit was built on lies and you can too :)
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#58> Let me draw the bottom line. 10 weeks are spent to create and test 3 different hypotheses. 10 weeks are a little more than two months. That's nothing, wouldn't even be enough to build something good enough, much less to test it, and even less to test it 3 times. So let me rephrase: "Only 10 weeks are spent to create a minimal product, and shallow barely-test 3 different hypotheses before giving up". It can take yea…
I think there is a problem with the current thinking on MVPs where you quickly hack together a product, launch it, and drop it if it doesn't gain traction immediately. This approach is probably especially damaging if the product is a social platform that you are starting from scratch.
Still, MVPs are not supposed to be "10 weeks total to build, and test 3 hypothesis" either...
An MVP could be a year long or more process -- it's just about not building excess functionality not needed to test the waters.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#59Although 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…
Perhaps off-topic / nitpicking, but is Russia considered first world? By the original definition Russia is _the_ second world, and I'm not sure that it is a first world now.
Re: I wasted 10 weeks of my life and $1900
#60This 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 eno…
Thank you for this. The only waste of time here was a result of this individual’s lack of commitment (sorry, but it’s true) and misinformed understanding of the efforts involved in the launch process of any business, let alone his. I hope he sees this and realizes all hope is not lost if he sticks with it, evolves it, and plans for the ramp period accordingly. Success is never guaranteed, but you have to give it a ch…
Just to clarify, are you saying that if you build a copy of reddit I won't become a millionaire overnight?
Bloody hell, I wasted 11 weeks and $2600 so far.