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I am done. I give up

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: I am done. I give up

#751

Post by kybernetyk »

mrbuttons454 wrote: post #710
kybernetyk wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nova is fantastic, btw

I know. But their "$99 then $49/year" price is somehow off putting to me. Now I know this is stupid. Because before this model was en vogue I bought a lot of software (Omnifocus for example, or 1Password) and I bought paid upgrades every time there were some available. But this "you just pay $49/year to get upgrades" is somehow psychologically completely different for me. I know it's pretty much the same - but the subscription-feeling of it is off putting. Can't really explain it - just a dumb me thing I guess.

Re: I am done. I give up

#752

Post by danielbraun »

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…

I always knew there was something fishy about Eric Reis. An academia person who's never started a business all of a sudden is a business guru. The entire "startup" industry is basically an MLM scheme perpetuated by VC firms. The same goes for the "Indie" industry - a scheme initiated by Tim Ferriss, Eric Reis, IndieHackers, etc. I'm getting completely red-pilled over here. Fascinating thread

Re: I am done. I give up

#753

Post by chayesfss »

Don't give up! Pivot and find the niche your product can fit! All kinds of amazing app/product add-ons that NEED to be made. I recommend focusing your efforts on whatever app is 'best' in the same category as your attempts and then trying those apps out and trying to figure out what YOU would pay for, then just pivot your attempts to that and try some google/linkedin marketing. I'll be happy to share, just PM me for my linkedin profile and I'll be happy to maybe share some of my lowly point of view friend. DO NOT GIVE UP!!!

Re: I am done. I give up

#754

Post by jeporter »

Good job for trying. What are you giving up on, ever selling something? Ever building something. The communal urgency and necessity around the terms "startup" and "entrepreneur" shouldn't be framed like this. How "hard" any action is and whether it is good to do and if it produces positive outcomes is knowable but only after completion and iteration. People will say if your 0/3 you might get to 1/10 or 1/100. People don't pay for ideas, provide a solution, a benefit, make your life objectively better and analyze that. Most of us are disappointed if we don't have a large monetary outcome, however if you did have that you would just think about money less. Find success in any small thing, keep building, get your morning sun.

Re: I am done. I give up

#755

Post by fastball »

c16 wrote: post #644

Irrespective of what you think of Levels, he's shown me that it's a case of keep trying. He has 215k followers, has tried 70 different things, and only done well with 4 of them [1]. I'm in the same boat - I've tried many things, and most have failed. I currently have a side project with 1k users making no money, and I'm going to try monetise it - but I expect it to most likely fail. And I'm okay with it. There's joy…

You can bump that up with avatarai.me and interiorai.com added to the list[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1605391667959316481

Re: I am done. I give up

#757

Post by ren_engineer »

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…

some luck is involved but just paying attention to trends will give you better odds of success and even if you fail you can still benefit. For example, learning to code is a much better time investment for success than learning blacksmithing. Even if your startup fails, you can make 6 figures as a software engineer and live a good life.

if you consider anything other than becoming a billionaire "failure" I guess that's a different matter.

Re: I am done. I give up

#758

Post by sanderjd »

blagie wrote: post #250
drewcon wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is excellent advice. I followed roughly this path until I was in my late 30s. Now have a startup that is growing because we put in essentially 5 years of groundwork, while working full time day jobs, building product in an industry that isn’t sexy, being “lucky” (patient/observant) enough to ride a new federal regulation, having go throw away an entire product after 2 years and starting a new product in the same…

This is the right model. The vast majority of successful startups I've seen in my extended circle of friends didn't target other programmers or programmer-like consumers. Most startups try to build another database, web framework, or data service, or whatnot, because that's the problem programmers are familiar with. The next ones are consumer products, assuming consumers look like SFO. The competition is fierce, and…

I think one issue (for those of us who are the kind of people that read this site) is that "entrepreneurship" and "startup" are overloaded terms. Most of the discussion here is about "startups" with huge growth ambitions. But what you're describing here is just "starting a business". Both things are "entrepreneurship", but they are extremely different beasts, with different paths to and likelihoods of success.

The billion dollar "startup" narrative is so seductive, but most hard-working ambitious people who want to be their own boss should just be starting businesses in the more traditional sense, taking on smaller investment or debt more wisely, paying attention to costs and revenues, and growing organically. This is no different than business starts in any other era, it just happens that a lot of viable businesses now happen to benefit from focusing on software.

Re: I am done. I give up

#759

Post by trollerator23 »

HEmanZ wrote: post #626

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 peopl…

Excellent advice

Re: I am done. I give up

#760

Post by KETpXDDzR »

moooo99 wrote: post #722
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 selli…

My all time favorite is Robert T. Kiyosaki's book "Poor dad, rich dad". Pretty much everything he teaches about financial success is fiction. In reality he worked a regular 9 to 5 job, failed at starting his own business, and finally made money by selling this book and providing seminars.
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