How doing too much made a $6k MR business shut down | Hacker News Reader

How doing too much made a $6k MR business shut down

phoenixdown.co

13 pointsnocodebcn10 comments

"Actually, I didn't pay Mubashar as he is my friend. He did all for free and he always does project stuff with people."

Yikes

Mubs helped me as a side project because he's a friend, I offered to pay him but he didn't want anything. He works on a ton of side-projects for fun. Think the interview piece in this section definitely came across badly.

Appreciate the response on this, I think the wording definitely came across wrong and, particularly in an article related to the economics of this side project, it feels disingenuous as a market rate developer would have eaten up the revenue.

What a clickbait title and shameless self promotion. That guy should really pay his "friend" Mubashar now that he has achieved something. Srsly Ben. Pay him.

I'm the guy in the interview...Mubs was helping me as a side project for fun. We've done a bunch of things together over the years. I offered to pay him but he didn't want anything, I gifted him stuff that he wanted instead.

For context, here are the parts that didn't sit well with the other commenters.

> To build the platform, I got a friend of mine, Mubashar Iqbal, who builds tons of things. He's a technical guy and a prolific maker.

> Actually, I didn't pay Mubashar as he is my friend. He did all for free and he always does project stuff with people. I was very lucky that was the case. Otherwise, all of that money would have gone to a developer to build it.

> But I didn't lose anything because it was literally just me sitting there creating.

I think the reason why some reacted to this negatively, is that many of us would identify with the developer, and perhaps even been in situations where we invested effort into projects that didn't work out.

It also reminds me of similar situations in other fields, like the music business, or design, where the "maker" agrees to work for free in hopes of future payoffs.

In defense of the founder, what's missing from the interview is that they were friends, and the developer didn't want anything in return - he was doing it for fun. If the project had been successful, I'm sure they would have arranged fair compensation for his work.

appreciate you summarising it like this!

yeah we had a 50/50 split agreement and applied to YC on that basis too.

See a few comments mentioning me (the developer :)) so here goes ...

When I started working on newCo I was working on it my spare time. I decided it would best for newCo if Ben was able to focus on it fulltime, instead of splitting the revenue with me, then having to supplement his income with other work.

To be clear Ben was willing to share the revenue with me at the time. I was in a place where that wasn't necessary and I thought it would best if it went to Ben until we hit certain milestones which we never did.

MakerPad was something totally new that Ben started after we decided to fold newCo, he did 100% of the work for many years, and deserves all the success it has brought.

Ben is a friend, and I'm happy I was a part of his "startup" journey. I'd be more than happy to work with him on projects in the future.

I go into all my projects with a clear mind, knowing what I'm risking (usually only my time).

Valuable nugget for first-time founders: "I wanted to build it in a way that could scale, which was far too early. There was no need to be doing that."

I've started showcasing previous failed projects from awesome entrepreneurs, so other founders are more aware that failure is just a step towards their goal.

The first interview is about the story of newCo by Ben Tossell. Ben is the founder of Makerpad, the leading community for no-coders.

Hope you can learn something relevant for your next project!

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