My solopreneur story • Hacker News Board

Re: My solopreneur story

#611

Post by danbruc » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 8:12 PM UTC

pcthrowaway wrote: post #605

danbruc wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not say this. If I build it in five days - and for simplicity assuming no future maintenance, support or service costs - than I would want to make say $5k for five days of work. Profit is revenue minus costs and costs include salaries. So I never said anyone should do anything for free. But I have a problem with making money without doing any work. If you put in a week of work, then you should be paid for a wee…

All the money you make based on work is really free-riding on earlier investments in knowledge anyway. Why should you make $100/hr just because you did some studying 10 years ago? If you do a week of work, you should just be paid for that week of work, not for your 10 years of past experience and your week of work, right? It seems like you're taking a pretty weird stance against market economics, made more strange by…

I already got paid for the past ten years. If you had to attend university to get ready for your job, then you can have a bit more to compensate for that time without income.

I have nothing against market economics in general, I would welcome competitors driving those outsized profits down. When I say everyone should earn roughly the same, then this is what I think would be a desirable state, but in this case market dynamics are unlikely to yield this result because not everyone can switch to doing every possible job for all kinds of reasons.

This is what makes unskilled jobs pay relatively bad despite this work being important and often hard or unpleasant, but the mechanism to change that, leaving for better payed higher skilled jobs to reduce supply is just not available to many.

So I would think that I am in general in favor of market dynamics, but it has to be a working market.

Re: My solopreneur story

#612

Post by hahamaster » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 8:59 PM UTC

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #131

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…

> with ample time left over for nature walks, rock climbing, reading, and more. > Unlike these authors, the money I make is not the most interesting part of my story

You're deluded if you think anyone (other than your mom) is interested in your walking, climbing or reading.

Re: My solopreneur story

#613

Post by nico » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 9:07 PM UTC

4gotunameagain wrote: post #610

nico wrote: post #572

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not juvenile games, it’s hard work. If it was easy games everyone would be raking it in If anything, the juvenile thing to do is to look at reality the way it is and deny it because it doesn’t fit our personal world view I get it, we’d love a world in which we could just do our best work and everyone could see it and recognize it But reality is that people are thinking about themselves and are not searching for…

Nobody said that juvenile games cannot be hard work. And yes, I do believe that most smart people can "rake it in" if they decide to play this game. You mention deny reality. Reality is formed by our actions. Adherence to such systems and the playing of juvenile games ensures their perpetuation. I shall not contribute to what I think is the wrong way to go. And yes, marketing is slyness and trickery. 95% of marketing…

At this point you are either just trolling or being a hypocrite

There isn’t a single organization that doesn’t do marketing one way or another (just putting a sign outside a restaurant is marketing, maybe you also consider that to be tricking people and playing games?)

Pretty sure that without marketing you would either not have a job or not get paid

So you are actually fine with marketing making you money, just as long as you are not the one doing it. Sounds like denying reality

Btw, marketing != advertising, and 95% of people don’t even have the time, budget or large enough audience to do any kind of A/B testing

Re: My solopreneur story

#614

Post by shrimpx » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 9:14 PM UTC

kyawzazaw wrote: post #577

shrimpx wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was just talking myself through why this forum would be unfriendly to this guy Tony. A forum that is run by YCombinator, a company that presumably values entrepreneurship. And my take is that both this forum and YC are fairly aligned on "high impact" ideas and don't value people like Tony, monetizing basic ideas using social media influence.

YC == high impact? Have you seen the cohorts of startups YC has funded?

Point taken. I think they strive for high impact, at least high market impact, in the application phase. What they end up with doesn't reflect what they want, kind of by definition. The extreme majority of YC startups fail.

Re: My solopreneur story

#615

Post by shrimpx » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 9:16 PM UTC

icedchai wrote: post #405

shrimpx wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the guy’s aesthetic just turns people off here. He seems intensely invested in how to make virality happen in any way possible, and building simplistic stuff that’s not advancing the state of tech. People here want to see technical contributions and organic success. It’s kind of ironic since this is a forum made by a VC company, but I doubt the Tony guy could get into YC with his ideas, despite his 70k follow…

He doesn't need investors. Why would he bother?

I don't think he would or should. I was just thinking if he applied, he probably wouldn't get in.

Re: My solopreneur story

#616

Post by unreal37 » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

skwee357 wrote: post #549

adammarples wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are thousands of HN users now who have read your comment and not one of them knows what you're saas is, how to find it, or even what it's called, but we know you think marketing is hard...

One of the moves in the game that I refuse to play, is shoving your product down the throat of everyone. I’ve seen it live on LinkedIn when one of my followers started to post generic comments, under my posts, such as: “totally agree with you! Subscribe to my newsletter”. I find it disgusting. This might be a surprise for you, but sometimes I just want to engage in authentic discussion. I promote my stuff via Show HN…

You could have been the "I spent three months building an app that helps people unsubscribe from spam without needing to have permissions to their email account. I got zero users. Then I wrote a blog and ... "

You could have mentioned what you did without it being "subscribe here!"

Re: My solopreneur story

#617

Post by nico » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 10:10 PM UTC

robomartin wrote: post #593

skwee357 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Sitting there, figuring out the perfect number of posts to share at the perfect time. I don’t want to do that. I post a lot. On all platforms. But I don’t want to play games. Maybe I’m stupid, but I believe there is more than one way to succeed. Edit: I also feel like this entire industry is based on survivorship bias. You post into the void, tha…

> Not to be offensive, but you sound like the guy who I don’t want to be. Interesting comments and perspective. A few decades ago I was faced with the challenge of selling a product I designed. I sold the way engineers do, which is to say I sucked at it. That launched me into an effort to learn. And, with friends and mentors, I did. I sold millions of dollars in products in the years that followed. Selling is art and…

Great insightful comment. It should be a pinned article at the top of HN for anyone wanting to start their own business. Unfortunately a lot of people will think: ok, I just need to come up with a new way to swim, I’m smart (maybe smarter than most), I got this

I know I drowned a couple of times before accepting reality, and I still struggle with it

Re: My solopreneur story

#618

Post by imgabe » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 10:17 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #597

imgabe wrote: post #569

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people have computers. You don’t need to be in any particular place to learn to program as long as you have internet access. But yes, you might not be smart enough. Which was the point. The supply of people smart enough to program is smaller than the supply of people smart enough to clean toilets. Programming is a more complex and difficult skill than toilet cleaning, which is why it’s more highly compensated. S…

As I said, in theory. Maybe I should better have said in a naive theory, but it does not seem to uncommon that the argument is made that people will just find other job if their current job disappears which, at least to some extent, implies flexibility in what kind of jobs someone can do. Ignoring everything, I also think it would be natural that everyone has the same wage - if you work for an hour it costs you an ho…

> Ignoring everything, I also think it would be natural that everyone has the same wage - if you work for an hour it costs you an hour of your lifetime, no matter what you do.

And you would be incorrect that this is natural. If two monkeys are gathering bananas and one is faster or cleverer than the other, why would it be natural that they end up with the same amount of bananas? Yes, it's still an hour of your life, but some people use their hours better than others and get more done with them.

Re: My solopreneur story

#619

Post by imgabe » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 10:28 PM UTC

danbruc wrote: post #576

imgabe wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utterly insane. If you write a piece of software you can only sell it once? That makes no sense. And a subscription means you are administering a server (or some menagerie of “serverless” resources) which is an ongoing service that requires maintenance and cost, so that’s what people are paying for, a premium to not have to do that administration themselves. Like you just want people to suffer? It pains you if people…

Not sell it only once. Nobody would ever have bought an Office license if it would be priced at development costs. But lifetime revenue should be in a reasonable relation to development costs. And everything gets more complicated with expected support cost and updates and whatnot. I can not possibly mention all imaginable complications. Just take the general gist, if you are not working, then you should not be making…

You are extremely confused about how markets work. People are not going to willingly pay above-market prices for vegetables just because they have extra money. The pay for seasonal workers is not going to change if someone is able to buy Devutils for $3 instead of $30. A year ago the software didn't even exist, so nobody was able to buy it and guess what, the pay for seasonal workers was pretty much the same.

> What if everyone wanted to only work four hours a day and earn $45k per month? Does this sound like an sustainable idea?

With sufficient automation, sure. The goal should be that we all have everything we need without anyone having to work.

Re: My solopreneur story

#620

Post by netipulk » Sun, Sep 24, 2023, 10:33 PM UTC

skwee357 wrote: post #547

hsn915 wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I refuse to succeed!" To each their own, I guess?

If success is posting stupid click bait questions on twitter, then yes, I refuse to do that. I’m not a clown or an entertainer. I share my journey and provide value to people. The people who are drawn to click bait content, are not the people I want to interact with.

I feel with you, but don't delude yourself in to avoiding any kind of marketing. Marketing is an evil necessity, especially if you are starting from scratch by yourself. That's just the nature of our reality. To scoff and say you're content is an ego-fuelled move, one that pushes the problem off for later.

Don't do that to yourself. Learn to market ethically at least, or else it's a real waste of time as your next startup fails because you avoided marketing.