Ask HN: How to find motivation to persist when you feel you're going sideways?
I didn't actually found my 2nd, but was invited to be a founding partner and, after 4.5 years, I sold my shares for a good amount, that allowed me to keep going for 3 years with the bare minimum to pay my bills. And, after selling my shares, I founded other 2 projects that failed and 1 that is my current.
After the 4th failed, I decided to take a time out and was invited to work at a prominent startup. Been there for 8 months before deciding I really need something of my own to feel fullfiled.
And I'm currently on the 3rd year of my 5th endeavor, which is generating good money, I have a good salary and good dividends each year. Not anything that will make me really rich, but I'm doing ok.
We have 13 people with us now and for the next 6 months we plan to have 20.
We're a B2B company developing crawlers and automating data routines (RPA/data collecting/enrichment), made around US$500k last year (which is an amazing achievement for my country). We're about to launch our first SaaS, within the same crawler/data collection area, as our previous business model is totally reliant on consultancy/custom development. But now I feel like we're going sideways. From January we don't have as much new leads and the projects that we get are smaller. I know Covid struck and most companies slowed down on investments, but as I mentioned we're in this position from 2 months prior to covid. And now, after 3 years of existence and positive results, we're having negative results for the past 4 months.
I'm afraid our new SaaS won't sky rocket and our current consultancy model won't be enough to hold everything together.
So, I'm starting to lose motivation to keep going. I'm not whining, I'm really looking for ways someone out there found that extra motivation pill to keep going. I used to love having my own thing and worked around the clock like it was fun and all. Trying to find that again.