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Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

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Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#91

Post by dagorenouf »

thrwaway2023 wrote: post #85
dagorenouf wrote: post #61

I left a 6 figure engineering job to build my own startup with my wife. For the past 5 years, we spent 2/3rds of our savings on it and almost didn’t take vacation. This year we finally reached ramen profitability. When I look at where we would be if I had kept the job, we would be homeowners, be able to buy new clothes regularly, go to restaurants and take awesome vacations a few times a year. But the missing thing w…

Hi, I just wanted to say congrats, your site and service looks very nice, proposition is clear, there is a spin which makes it different from other design agencies and I like the pricing tier setup, it makes sense (for me)! Made a bookmark for when this will come handy in the future.

Thanks for checking it out, this means a lot. Note about the pricing tiers: you can upgrade between packages as your startup grows.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#92

Post by jl2718 »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #21

Another correlation, very unusual and interesting, is that past infection with Toxoplasmosis (a parasite that grows in cat poop) increases the chances of becoming an entrepreneur by a factor of 1.27 to 2 https://hbr.org/2022/07/a-common-parasite-can-make-people-mo... > they discovered that those infected with the parasite Toxoplasma gondii were, on average, 29% more likely than others to have founded a start-up, 27%…

I'm just guessing, but I think you'll find an even stronger correlations from Toxoplasmosis to the lack of traditional family obligations, and also the latter to entrepreneurship.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#93

Post by redmaverick »

dagorenouf wrote: post #77
prakhar897 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a logo generating site. Can you tell us why it took 5 years for 2 people to make?

On the building side of things, the main challenge is designing all the logos, my wife designed more than 800 so far. (almost every other logo generator site use existing icon libraries) It took a bit more than a year to have enough logos to launch, design the product and code the platform. In part because we were such perfectionists (which we aren't as much anymore). But launching was only the beginning, and soon th…

How did you end up finding customers? And particularly customers who are willing to pay for logos? Any marketing strategies you implemented?

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#94

Post by Darmody »

shon wrote: post #20

It’s an interesting article. In my view, Non-conformists start companies. Possibly aggressive non-conformists most of all. In my personal case, I made many questionable choices, including turning down a job at Microsoft in the nineties (would have been better financially) and leaving multiple great jobs (one of which afforded me corporate apartments in Honolulu and London) to risk everything multiple times to start m…

That's why I can't play almost any game, because I'll grind everything, even useless achievements.

At least I have idle games and I'm also working on one which will probably end up in nothing.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#95

Post by vague_vagaries »

peterjancelis wrote: post #76

My experience: Psychological orphans with a basic income. "Psychological orphans" i.e. kids who had shitty parents and learned to adapt to survive. Then this behavior became a habit and a game. "Basic income" i.e. kids from middle and upper middle class backgrounds so there was no food poverty in the family and long term thinking was possible by the kid, even in the context of the dysfunctional setting. The above is…

^This

My recipe for tech startup founder includes: 1. You were one of the smartest kids at your private school—so you’re opinionated and confident 2. You’re some kind of social misfit with a chip on your shoulder 3. Father is an Engineer, Lawyer, Banker, Doctor 4. Got some private tutoring or coaching at a young age 5. Went to a fancy big-name college

It doesn’t apply to everyone, but during a recent job search I did a little detective work on founders at jobs I was applying for, and this was the large majority of them

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#96

Post by antiviral »

jl2718 wrote: post #90

I ran a large, somewhat infamous hacker house, and watched the beginning of a few unicorn founders. My observation is that everybody talks about being an entrepreneur, but the only people that actually do are the people with no other options. They'll never admit those painful and repeated failures at normal employment, or other areas of normal life. For instance, I have rarely seen men in relationships succeed. Their…

> "Partnered women usually end up quitting in disgust or dumping their partners to gain the benefits of being single when soliciting potential investors"

> "Most young people don't realize that the majority of middle-aged men in this country are legally barred from leaving their state of residence without permission."

I am curious whether you'd like to elaborate on these points you made above.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#97

Post by dagorenouf »

redmaverick wrote: post #93
dagorenouf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the building side of things, the main challenge is designing all the logos, my wife designed more than 800 so far. (almost every other logo generator site use existing icon libraries) It took a bit more than a year to have enough logos to launch, design the product and code the platform. In part because we were such perfectionists (which we aren't as much anymore). But launching was only the beginning, and soon th…

How did you end up finding customers? And particularly customers who are willing to pay for logos? Any marketing strategies you implemented?

We started by sponsoring newsletters and google ads. But it didn't convert and we didn't have the budget to keep experimenting.

Then I started being active on indiehackers.com and reddit to first ask for feedback, then eventually sharing my learnings and lesson in blog post format. This showed promise and got us to a couple sales per week as other founders got curious about us and then considered us when they needed a logo.

Eventually what really helped is twitter. I started tweeting in summer 2021 and talking about what I was going through, and noticed people cared and it led to more traffic to our site. So I decided to go all in and dedicated hours per day on it, trying to bring value and grow. After a few months we 10x revenue and it hasn't came down since (although it fluctuates).

The other thing from twitter is that I met so many people in the industry, this led to hundreds of SEO backlinks from people's blogs writing about us from interviews, podcasts, recommendation articles and so on. This was really the spark that made us go from invisible to visible.

Now this year the big push is to write high-quality blog posts about branding for startups. Hopefully to get some SEO traffic and grow sales even further.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#99

Post by hnuser847 »

peterjancelis wrote: post #76

My experience: Psychological orphans with a basic income. "Psychological orphans" i.e. kids who had shitty parents and learned to adapt to survive. Then this behavior became a habit and a game. "Basic income" i.e. kids from middle and upper middle class backgrounds so there was no food poverty in the family and long term thinking was possible by the kid, even in the context of the dysfunctional setting. The above is…

Wow, that's a really interesting observation and describes me perfectly. I wouldn't consider myself a "real" entrepreneur, but I've always had a side hustle and I own some rental properties.

I took me until the age of 34 and having kids of my own to realize that my childhood wasn't that great, and that a parent's role should extend beyond just feeding their kids. My upbringing made my hyper-independent, so the desire to make myself completely financially independent basically consumed by 20s. It took me a long time to realize this drive, while useful in my career, came from a very unhealthy place.

Re: Who becomes an entrepreneur? Insights from research studies

#100

Post by andrepd »

>Research studies

The author looks at a survey of knitters who sell their patterns online to conclude that "hard workers are more likely to become entrepreneurs". Even more comically, they grab a study about Chinese companies founded by the generation born around the time of the Great Famine, to conclude... that childhood adversity makes for better entrepreneurs! Need I say more?

Unsurprisingly, they miss the prime correlation: parental income and access to wealth.

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