Make your bootstrapped startup work - Lessons from the trenches | Hacker News Reader

Make your bootstrapped startup work - Lessons from the trenches

codercofounder.wordpress.com

42 pointsibagrak10 comments

Sorry to sound confrontational but:

Why should we listen to startup advice from a startup that is still just a landing page and a mailing list signup?

You talk about MVPs and getting to launch, but you yourself have not launched... I'm confused.

Look, I am just reflecting on what things could have been done differently, and those that would have maximized the delta with our current status. You don't have to listen to advice, but if you are building something and you are in those first few months of bootstrapping, I do believe the advice is still sound.

When we started out I had a notion of what the primary obstacles to launch would be. I now have a completely different notion of what those obstacles are, and I think it's perfectly fine for me to share what I've learned myself.

Reflecting on something while working through it is interesting to me b/c it's less prone to revisionism. Maybe just refer to it less as advice and more as an experience.

Agreed. I should have stayed away from advisory tone.

People who produce things don't need to justify why those things exist. You, as the consumer, simply choose whether or not it interests you.

It's not like he's asking you to buy a book.

Off topic, but you're building a like-system (I have a part-time hobby one I've been sort of working on too) and I just wanted to wonder how you decided to go ahead?

The biggest concern I had was that the market is saturated with solutions that don't work because of disinterest, and anything I made could be beaten well-enough by Facebook in a good week's work. Sure I had a couple of edges but I couldn't spot the edge that would fix everything, and when I found a local competitor (I live in a pretty small city with minimal startups) I was convinced that everyone must be working on this.

So.. long story short I'd love to hear how you decided this was the thing to work on and how (without giving too much away) you hope to overcome the problems for your product's sector.

Hard to argue with anything in this post except one thing: the fact that you made it in the first place. I really don't mean to be negative, but you should be building when you are blogging.

For the record:

as soon as possible != after you blog about it

a landing page != a MVP

lessons from the trenches != yet-to-be-launched

Please practice what you're preaching and get your MVP out there. Then blog about it. That's something I would want to read about.

Admittedly I got a little carried away with this one, so thanks for bringing me down to earth. I think some of the frustration having to do with our current status is turning into these long winded tirades on my blog. I'll keep them more toned down and private in the future.

I do hope to write something that you will enjoy reading about soon.

You know what they say, those who can't, teach.

"We are building an online social app that lets you stay on top of and enjoy anything that your friends find interesting, good, likable, cool, irresistible and noteworthy, or things they just liked for no reason. Of course, it's also a way for you to tell your friends what you like."

This description reminds me of Facebook.

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