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After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

indiehackers.com

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Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#91

Post by macromaniac »

ta1234567890 wrote: post #45
switch11 wrote: post #3

This is a difficult post to respond to Firstly, your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety If you have to 'lose sleep' after contacting someone on LinkedIn about your product, then you are just not suited to doing a startup Secondly, there is nothing to feel bad about Vast majority of people are not suited to starting a company or working in a small startup Lots of good jobs in middle and large…

On a related note, social anxiety can be awefully crippling, I personally struggled with it for decades. The main tool that helped me overcome it was the book The Charisma Myth. Can't recommend it enough, it literally changed my life. It does take some work and dedication though.

Thanks for the recommendation, Ill give it a shot. It feels good to know other people have beaten it. Social anxiety has prevented me from working with others in any form (feedback, delegation, marketing).

I remember first day of speech in college when it was my turn to speak. I got up, walked out the door, and dropped the class.

It was hard to even work up the courage to post this comment. But i did. Baby steps.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#92

Post by yayr »

Apparently, this is a list of things built over the year:

- https://nomadnest.org an alternative to Couchsurfing

- https://coffeelist.co - a coffee community

- https://nomadasdigitales.com - a digital nomads community in Spanish.

- https://lanzame.net - a Product Hunt in Spanish.

- https://classline.io - a SaaS for teachers to simply communicate with students over email, this is using the technology that I created for nomadmail.

for one person this is just too much to get it right in one year I guess. How much time can one really spend to deeply understand customers and their wants/needs?

Apart from that - answering the classical questions like what problem does it solve? why now? etc. points me to a lot of issues with copy-solutions, especially some of these ones during a pandemic.

thinking ahead: if the code quality is good, I can imagine a lot of people paying decent money on learing how he did it - although also in this niche there are some players.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#93

Post by Aeolun »

switch11 wrote: post #3

This is a difficult post to respond to Firstly, your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety If you have to 'lose sleep' after contacting someone on LinkedIn about your product, then you are just not suited to doing a startup Secondly, there is nothing to feel bad about Vast majority of people are not suited to starting a company or working in a small startup Lots of good jobs in middle and large…

Or, you know, the stuff didn’t work out for reasons other than their social anxiety. While it undoubtedly doesn’t help, the bigger factor might be the actual products they were trying to produce/sell.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#94

Post by jacekm »

phs318u wrote: post #84

The regret you feel having lost a year would probably pale in comparison to the lifelong regret at not having tried to achieve your dream. There's plenty more positives you can take from this experience. 1. You learned how crippling your social anxiety can be (perhaps you already knew?), so maybe you can take some steps to work on that. 2. The door of indie developer is now firmly closed, which means you can explore…

Exactly. "Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do".

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#96

Post by OJFord »

switch11 wrote: post #3

This is a difficult post to respond to Firstly, your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety If you have to 'lose sleep' after contacting someone on LinkedIn about your product, then you are just not suited to doing a startup Secondly, there is nothing to feel bad about Vast majority of people are not suited to starting a company or working in a small startup Lots of good jobs in middle and large…

> Thirdly, the scale of stuff you are talking about is miniscule

> I walked away from a Green Card to start my company

> If I didn't succeed, I would have lost access to the developed world FOREVER

What? I'm British; before HN I'd never heard of a 'green card'. Maybe it's a policy that the USA won't let you in if you walk away from one once; maybe Canada cares about that too.

But I assure you, the majority of the 'developed world' (a) doesn't give a shit about; and (b) isn't equipped to take into consideration, American 'green cards'.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#97

Post by lhnz »

A lot of people within these comments are saying crazy things like "your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety" and talking about people's startup suitability as if what is important is having the right personality trait. Others talk about how he "[learnt] a valuable lesson" or act like he is only a few more failures away from a successful startup. It's condescending and misguided.

I think he's the only one giving worthwhile advice here. You're very unlikely to succeed at bootstrapping a startup and people often don't realise this or act like through perseverance they will definitely succeed. He's lucky to have realised that he had other things in his life he cared about more after only a year.

Many people want a family or want to buy a house. Others want to enjoy their 20s (or 30s for that matter). Others want to put money into investments or a pension for their old age. You could sacrifice all of these things chasing a startup dream and end up with nothing. There is a high likelihood of this. Unless you believe you've very different odds or a much lower cost (e.g. an investor) you probably shouldn't do it.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#98

Post by hyperpallium2 »

Sales doesn't suit everyone (most people aren't in sales). Here's an alternative I used - though for a product not as an "indie hacker", so maybe not applicable.

- It took a bit more than a year.

- Meanwhile count users, not revenue. (need a free version)

- Marketing, not "sales". Your product does a useful thing, for people with some need. Create a "pitch" - a short, memorable description of the problem and your solution. The idea is word of mouth: people repeat your pitch to someone who needs it, like a virus. (A meme, by Dawkins' original definition). Free sales and advertising.

- Focus on the product, not yourself. Like Feynmann saying his nerves disappear when focussed on the thing he's talking about (not him). Avoids self-consciousness.

Less efficient than sales and advertising, but a way to make money without them.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#99

Post by DoofusOfDeath »

Waterluvian wrote: post #72
switch11 wrote: post #3

This is a difficult post to respond to Firstly, your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety If you have to 'lose sleep' after contacting someone on LinkedIn about your product, then you are just not suited to doing a startup Secondly, there is nothing to feel bad about Vast majority of people are not suited to starting a company or working in a small startup Lots of good jobs in middle and large…

When I was 13 I had a paper route. It was almost all modern except three or four households that still used the collection model. The paper company would take their subscriptions out of my pay and send me to collect and keep it and any tips. I decided it was easier to just take the pay cut than knock on those doors. The whole concept still makes me intensely anxious and I would sooner quit a job than begin dealing wi…

Glad to know I'm not the only one. I had to give up my paper route (mid 1980s) because I was too shy to collect. I could get up at 5:30 a.m. every day and spend an hour biking hard to deliver the papers rain or shine, but I collections freaked me out, even though all my customers were nice people.

The crazy thing is that it never occurred to me to discuss this with my parents, nor (AFAIK) did they ever consider having me see a counselor. I just kept on carrying a private shame about my cowardice.

I really hope that parents are better these days about noticing when kids are privately suffering with various neurological / psychological issues, and that more resources are available for helping.

Re: After losing my savings as an indie hacker, I can't do it anymore. I quit.

#100

Post by marzell »

alfonsodev wrote: post #66
switch11 wrote: post #3

This is a difficult post to respond to Firstly, your issue doesn't seem to be anything other than social anxiety If you have to 'lose sleep' after contacting someone on LinkedIn about your product, then you are just not suited to doing a startup Secondly, there is nothing to feel bad about Vast majority of people are not suited to starting a company or working in a small startup Lots of good jobs in middle and large…

I think you are confused, this was posted on Indie Hackers under the self care section, not to hacker news directly. Besides that, there is no point to compare risks and suffering, both are relative and subjective experiences. And lastly, social anxiety could be (or not) by it self a major problem, bigger than losing a Green Card, your comment sounds too condescending and not really useful.

I disagree... In the article, the writer says, "If I share an article on Reddit I feel anxious for a week"..

Clearly he was in the wrong line of work. I'm not saying it wasn't worth sharing in self-care, but I don't feel we should be overly sympathetic when the bottom line is that the guy seems to have made a series of predictably bad moves. It sounds like he was hoping to make short term sacrifices for some sort of startup dream outcome, but clearly that only happens a small amount of the time. He's probably on r/entrepreneur right now dreaming about drop shipping.

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