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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#721

Post by bandyaboot »

Tycho wrote: post #666
bandyaboot wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I’d cite Elon Musk level capital accumulation and his decisions on how to allocate his capital over the last year as a perfect case study of the theory that, while capital accumulation can be a good thing, we also don’t want all our eggs in too few baskets.

Actually it’s quite good - because he spent $40bln we got to see detailed evidence of government agencies working hand-on-glove with corporations to censor information and shape political outcomes (a few years ago it was trendy to refer to this as arrangement as “fascism”).

We got to see his curated version of that. Someone who has become a firmly entrenched partisan cultural warrior.

Re: I am done. I give up

#722

Post by moooo99 »

rapind wrote: post #704

> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips. This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb,…

> This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

This 100x! Many of the big influencers in these indie/startup/productivity niches seem to earn a lot of money at first sight. If you look deeper, a lot of these influencer seem to be making a lot of money from courses they are selling instead of operating the business they sell courses about.

Re: I am done. I give up

#723

Post by mijustin »

freediver wrote: post #712

I 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…

I don’t think “learning to play the guitar” and “becoming a successful entrepreneur” are equivalent.

Statistically, entrepreneurship has a high failure rate because it’s incredibly demanding, and the path to success isn’t linear.

Re: I am done. I give up

#724

Post by glangenderfer »

poorbutdebtfree wrote: post #698

I don't know what an indie entrepreneur is but this startup scam really look off in 2011 when Eric Reis released the book Lean Startup. Within 4 months there were already Lean Startup Consultants on LinkedIn. Within 8 months people like Ash Maurya were releasing hardcovers on product market fit when all he had ever done was sell a rails app for 4 figures. The scene has obviously evolved since then but just as goldrus…

sir, not everything is a scam or a conspiracy. There have been hucksters since the beginning of time.

If you're the type of person who can't stand working in an authoritarian environment as an employee, starting your own business is worth it.

Re: I am done. I give up

#725

Post by throw10920 »

kybernetyk wrote: post #208
jlangenauer wrote: post #5

Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? As a group they seem the people with the least amount of money to spend on products, and are some of the most cheapskate people on the planet. Here's some advice: if you want to make money selling a software product, sell to people who are able and willing to spend money on it.

This. It's the "developers trying to sell products to other developers" conundrum. You know the development workflow. You came up with a great tool to increase productivity for developers. You set a low price of $50. And yet no one is going to buy it because "lol I could do this in a weekend". Developers are cheap bastards (I'm still fighting over whether I should shell our $99 for Panic's Nova editor or not - even t…

Developers are also the kind of people who will refuse to pay money for or use proprietary software on principle - regardless of price! I constantly see people on HN suggesting (often highly immature) open-source alternatives to free or reasonably-priced proprietary software for no other reason than the fact that it's open-source.

Just like being an author, it's hard to make a living writing (books : software) unless you're either very skilled+lucky (Brandon Sanderson : Jetbrains) or sell to companies (HR/marketing position at a company : either making B2B software or working for a software company yourself).

Re: I am done. I give up

#726

Post by HWR_14 »

hcks wrote: post #506
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

Absolutely, and this explains largely why most of the massively successful startups we all know comes from the Nordics and not from places with poor social security like the USA

Is that sarcastic?

I really cannot tell.

Re: I am done. I give up

#727

Post by glangenderfer »

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.

my living expenses in cancun were $700/month. How bad do you want it?

Re: I am done. I give up

#728

Post by weakfortress »

mnky9800n wrote: post #389
pavlov wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail. Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and pref…

Unfortunately another component of the Nordic model that makes it work is that everybody trusts the government. This is what makes the Nordic model hard to translate to other settings in my opinion.

Don't forget the other reason: a homogenous society.

Re: I am done. I give up

#729

Post by pupperino »

One thing that stood out for me is how much emphasis you put on having an online presence in a certain community as a driver of your business. I have next to zero information on how you actually spent your time, but it seems much of it was on chasing the social clout, hoping it would give you momentum. Online presence and social clout are not goals, they're side effects of successful directed effort - but of course you can also build a low-agency audience with startup porn.

In the long run, there aren't hacks in this business. You really do have to identify a real demand which meeting is both technically feasible and economically viable given the current interest curve and technological frontier. Making sure your product actually solves a problem and getting paid customers is non-negotiable, not something you can just try and see if it works. You make it sound like you put these requirements in the same relevance bracket as building an audience or getting noted on product hunt.

Anyway, hope you go through this moment in your life with lessons learned and experience you can put to good use wherever you see fit.

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