Please understand that rock bottom is temporary.
Entrepreneurship is a story of perseverance being extended long enough to meet luck.
Take time to recover and plan. Then get up try again.
I am done. I give up
711–720 of 1001 posts
Re: I am done. I give up
#712I could probably copy OPs thoughts, to describe trying to learn to play the guitar.
Comparing to entrepreneurship, which feels natural and is something I am reasonably good at, I just could never manage to get past the very minimal abilty to play the guitar. For the past several years I took private lessons, watched YouTube videos, practised and still I sucked. The fact that I enjoy doing it and am ready to invest time into it still didn't help.
Same can be said for my chess skills. Chess is probably the game I play the most and have probably put thousands of hours into it. Still, my elo rating is around 1,500 and has been stuck there for years. One would imagine that I would get better at it with so much time and energy invested, but not.
It feels like it was not meant to be. And the reason it does in both these cases is that there are other things I enjoy more, like being an entrepreneur and being a dad. One can't do everything, and natural affinity and other circumstances will lead everyone down different paths.
Re: I am done. I give up
#713Most people flaunting their startups and stuff are rich and using this firstly to manage their tax liability, making it big doesn’t matter because they already made it. You should be more established before trying again. Stop trying to make your come-up with a startup it’s cringe af.
Re: I am done. I give up
#714Don't start a business unless it's a pain point you are personally invested in. Lifestyle-wise, it's a grind with mental health challenges along the way, as you pointed out. Salary-wise, it's unlikely that your own business will ever match a regular developer job. It took me 4 years of bootstrapping before I had a decent baseline salary, and it's still lower than my ML engineer salary 10 years ago.
I don't get the current culture of starting a business for the sake of starting a business. The lifestyle can be great after a few years when everything is running smoothly. But the marketing ignores the fact that it takes multiple years of grinding to get there, with no guarantees.
Specific to your situation, it sounds like you were reaching the wrong audience. You need to reach the audience interested in your product, not an audience of other entrepreneurs. This takes a lot of time and energy. Marketing needs to be more than 50% of your effort these days. Content marketing on social, blogs, and Youtube tends to do well, but takes a couple of years to ramp up.
Thanks for sharing, and I'm glad you made the right decision for you. Mental health is the most important asset you have - you're wise to protect it.
Re: I am done. I give up
#715Earlier quoted context omitted.
> no outsider is going to jump in giving away their product just to grow market share I wonder how much innovation is being stifled by this practice. I know I have at least one very viable idea (I've shopped it around) that could result in substantial improvement to the overall Internet experience, and I'm doing nothing with it because the minute I make it available, a Big Tech company will either steal it, try to bu…
I hear you, and still: How many Einsteins perished in the fields or trenches? How much innovation and genius is stifled through lack of access to food, water or education? I think that would be an area where improvements would be more impactful than trying to prevent copycats.
Ironically, that's what I decided to spend my time on instead. I was trying to decide whether to do a PhD with said technical project/idea or to do one focusing on non-programming technical skills + history for early education precisely because I think improving the education level of the general public is also a good way to improve things.
Re: I am done. I give up
#716Earlier quoted context omitted.
"High trust" seems entirely contradictory to Danish society. Universal skepticism and a universal dislike for every other human in existence are the core ideologies here. Maybe a tendency to not interfere with tasks assigned to others to avoid having to deal with people is being misinterpreted as trust?
No. My Norwegian colleagues trust that they will receive healthcare. They trust that their representatives in the government are acting more or less in good faith. They trust that money in the government is going towards protections and services and infrastructure. And if you look around in Norway, you can generally get the feeling that the government is taking care of things. Go to America and it seems like the coun…
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Re: I am done. I give up
#717I could probably copy OPs thoughts, to describe trying to learn to play the guitar. Comparing to entrepreneurship, which feels natural and is something I am reasonably good at, I just could never manage to get past the very minimal abilty to play the guitar. For the past several years I took private lessons, watched YouTube videos, practised and still I sucked. The fact that I enjoy doing it and am ready to invest ti…
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Re: I am done. I give up
#718[dead]
Re: I am done. I give up
#719Truth is, trying hard is a necessary, not sufficient, condition to make it. So many products are good in theory, but derivative. Built with the express aim of becoming a startup zillionaire.
This does not work.
So called "rich kids" don't win because they have some kind of magic "safety net" (there are tons of rich kids who bounce around those safety nets their entire lives with nothing to show for it).
No, startup founders from every class, color and creed win because getting or growing wealth and status has very little to do with their reasons for founding.
In other words, they don't set out to "become a founder/entrepreneur". They set out to create something the world really truly needs. Something they couldn't find anywhere else.
Sounds like you started with a certain end in mind – become a founder. In a perverse way, this ruled you out from the get go. Your compass was calibrated to false north.
I'm saddened to hear about your struggles, and support your choice to devote time to healing. However, if/when you do decide to jump back in the game, I hope you bear this advice in mind.
Re: I am done. I give up
#720I am so sorry you feel bad. Want some advice from an older engineer turned entrepreneur? Be proud of what you have done. Not many people take risks in life. You did. Being the 'man in the arena' is enough. I read this quote from Teddy Roosevelt often:
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."