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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#621

Post by mguerville »

The influencers you see are the 1% who made it, and given luck plays a role it's indeed possible they made it "easily" and therefore candidly but erroneously preach that story.

I've failed a half dozen times too, but only at side-hustles, and that discouraged me from going all in, but I've also been successful once (albeit very moderately) and that was with the least effort of all my attempts. So I think the lesson is to keep trying only if you value the journey as much as the intended destination, that way even if you don't reach the target you'll presumable still get some fulfillment from the journey (for me it was learning no-code tools, learning to produce professional quality print materials, etc.)

Re: I am done. I give up

#622

Post by WJW »

mrobins wrote: post #170
jwr wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This . I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers? I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and…

> What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? And employees.

Last weekend I was talking to one of the initial employees of a relatively well-known monitoring SAAS here in the Netherlands. Apparently their founder/owner had just decided that ~30 employees was perhaps a few too many and that he would like to keep it more lifestyle-business-ish. Fair enough, he's the owner and is allowed to make decisions like that.

This early employee was doing some real heart-searching about what he was going to do though, now that any hopes of personal growth at this company had been dashed. He could probably stay a developer there forever, of course, but any career growth would not be in the cards for at least several years since all management positions were filled and he was already the most senior engineer around.

I don't mean to imply that stable businesses who make employees happy are impossible, but at some point you will just not be able to make everyone happy at the same time.

Re: I am done. I give up

#623

Post by rchaud »

opyate wrote: post #320

Succeeding in the startup world reminds me of the funfair analogy: The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon. The middle class kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and also miss. Then they will walk away, saying…

> That book is the catnip that folks like you and me base our life decisions on.

For sure, this was me in college and grad school. Little in the way of real-life experience, so I borrowed liberally from these business books, the details of which are often simplified or omitted for the sake of the narrative. Unfortunately in life, it is those omitted details that make up the pain of taking risks.

Re: I am done. I give up

#624

Post by gdilla »

Another way to look at it - from here on out, you have the experience to start and maneuver from a better place. That's pretty valuable.

All the hustling in the world won't fix a bad idea, a bad or non existent problem-solution. A lot of ideas just aren't viable businesses, no matter how good one or two people might think it is. On the other hand, you don't really know what can get traction unless you're willing to kill your ideas aggressively.

Only big changes give you big changes in outcomes. Small tweaks to an idea get you small change in outcomes - in the early going. Sure at scale, a button change can be a million dollar benefit but not when you're seeking out the "does anyone give a shit and will they pay for it stage"?

Re: I am done. I give up

#625

Post by safety1st »

bumby wrote: post #555
ip26 wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much privilege does it take to move to Guatemala or Pakistan?

I dunno. What if they’re currently living in Bangladesh?

It's ironic you should mention Bangladesh because there's a guy on my payroll who lives in Bangladesh and I'm flying him to an international conference soon. It does indeed take more paperwork than usual, it will be a unique opportunity for him and probably not his last with me, he's a great employee.

Re: I am done. I give up

#626

Post by HEmanZ »

It sounds to me like your expectations are way out of whack.

I’ve seen friends, acquaintances, and colleagues become entrepreneurs. Without an exception, every one that has a serious social media presence is a fraud. They have a company that is either money losing or fed by their parents. They pretend to be entrepreneur geniuses on social media but really have done nothing but basically be instagram models.

The people I know who have successfully started companies are nothing like this. They usually have industry experience directly involved with or at least closely related to what they start (e.g “my company has to do this ourselves every time but we’d definitely hire it out if we could”).

My advice would be stick to climbing in whatever industry you think you’ll enjoy most and just keep your eyes open. Worst case scenario you’ll have a good career

Re: I am done. I give up

#627

Post by moneywoes »

logicalmonster wrote: post #542

Just a comment for wakana. First, I feel for you, and would say hang in there. Most startups even from very successful people, don't work out. It's up to you, but you could pursue something as a hobby in the background of your life that won't drive you batty or present too much risk if it fails. If you pursue anything next time, do something focused on fun and cheap that you love and won't harm your mental health eve…

Any other poignant examples? Like a review site like glassdoor would they fake reviews?

Re: I am done. I give up

#628

Post by bumby »

safety1st wrote: post #625
bumby wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno. What if they’re currently living in Bangladesh?

It's ironic you should mention Bangladesh because there's a guy on my payroll who lives in Bangladesh and I'm flying him to an international conference soon. It does indeed take more paperwork than usual, it will be a unique opportunity for him and probably not his last with me, he's a great employee.

Working remotely != moving for geo-arbitrage. If anything, it's the opposite, where the employer is taking advantage of geo-arbitrage.

Re: I am done. I give up

#629

Post by lowercased »

kubb wrote: post #133
jurmous wrote: post #10

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail…

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail. If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again. It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die. One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

I had a friend/colleague build a successful startup.

I didn't know him on day one of his startup, but I knew him from very early on. He had some initial customers, and was making progress, but slow.

Early on, through connections, he landed a remote contracting gig that paid a full 40 hours/week, but usually didn't consume more than 10-15 hours of his time per week, and that went down over time. It was supporting a legacy system, so there wasn't a whole lot of new dev/work, but it was seasonally important, and had to be up/maintained/etc. That was, IIRC, something like $60/hr. So, early on in his startup, he ended up having a 'side gig' that was paying $100k/year, but only taking up ~12 hrs/week most of the time.

That left plenty of time to focus on building out things the initial handful of customers wanted. It also gave him a lot of time to just... grow slow. Ended up getting to .... $30k/month in recurring revenue while employing just a couple of folks (part time, IIRC), and... then one of his larger competitors decided to close up. He had a few months of non-stop working building data migration tools to convert competitors to his platform. But that took him to another level.

Getting a remote consulting gig paying guaranteed base while not consuming much time was very... lucky. He didn't look for it, but knew it was a good deal when it arrived, and he jumped at it. This was crucial to the 'afford to fail' part referenced above (apologies for the long post here - that was the trigger phrase).

That second part was very 'luck' based as well, but he was prepared to capitalize on that luck. This was years in to the journey, and the startup was already comfortable with respect to revenue/profit/etc.

But... he built that over years, very slowly. No amount of 100 hour weeks could have landed him any of the competitors' clients early on, because he wasn't known.

During that build, he could 'afford to fail' because of that remote contract. And now... he can try new things and afford to fail for the rest of his life (assuming the gamble isn't too big!)

A lot of word of mouth, a lot of slow growth, a lot of initial luck, a lot of patience. It worked out for him over about ... 8-9 years, but any of those pieces missing early on would have resulted in much lower growth, or stalling, or he might have given up and moved to something else.

Re: I am done. I give up

#630

Post by htkibar »

pcl wrote: post #440
dkga wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with taxation - or else the Arab Gulf or Cayman Islands would be entrepreneurial hubs, not California or the Toronto area. It’s all about the price of quality labour. It’s about access to long-term risk capital (aka venture funds) + high quality labour at affordable prices. As in, entrepreneurs having cash to fund projects and being able to actually hire people that will help build them. Try hiri…

> Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway: your hourly cost would probably blow up. Depends what you’re comparing to. Total comp for great engineers in Oslo is lower than for their peers in Silicon Valley.

Total cost to the company may not be. Employees are costlier to the companies in Europe.
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