Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluedevil2k | Hacker News Reader

> I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses

These aren’t businesses. These are websites. Most people on HN can build a website. It takes some coding and some tech knowledge. Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on.

While what the author did was neat and fun for him, let’s not pretend this is the path to a successful web business. I’d bet there’s few “micro-bets” that are generating any meaningful amount of money.

View on HN

This is one of the most disappointing comments I've read on HN. The patronizing negativity is bad enough, but it's not even accurate. Read the article about Earlyname. The author absolutely understands marketing, advertising, and customer acquisition. Oh, he also owns a real-life ice cream business with two locations and (as of 2018) three non-founder employees (https://rippleandroll.com/), so I assume he knows about cash flow and legal matters too.

I never said he didn’t know these skills, I said if he’s not willing to put the time to marketing and advertise each of these websites, then they’re not businesses. There’s nothing wrong with having a hobby of building web apps, I do it too. But a business is more than tech.

Read the Earlyname post. He is putting in the time to do those things.

Please keep in mind that we may not all share the same idea of what a business is, what a meaningful amount of money is and what success looks like.

When you repeatedly make sales and profit, you’re past the hurdle of not losing money on the operation. It’s a nice milestone on the entrepreneurship journey and worthy of a bit of celebration.

Exactly. By definition, in the US, this is a sole proprietorship and has no hard requirement s for legal filings/business plan/etc.

What definition? You can call anything a sole proprietorship. It doesn't ever have to make money.

> we may not all share the same idea of what a business is

The IRS has an opinion [1], and its a really good list! Make a copy of it and put a recurring appointment in your calendar to revisit it, think about it, and write down your comments.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/faqs/small-business-self-employed-other-...

Out of curiosity, who do you worry is "pretending this is the path to a successful web business?" Because the author certainly isn't doing so.

If you scroll down just a few paragraphs from the sentence fragment you quoted, the author says:

> "My main goal for the next six months of Tiny Projects is to learn how to get better at making money on the internet from my projects.

A Product Hunt launch can easily get you a spike in traffic, but afterwards I really don't know what I'm doing. There's this whole other level afterwards called "sales & marketing" that I want to master."

The author is extremely explicit throughout the piece that these are not built to become large businesses—hence the constant use modifiers like "tiny" and "micro." He also makes it clear that he treats this as a training routine for getting better at idea generation, shipping products, etc.

In my opinion he’d be better off focusing on 1, maybe 2, projects and seeing those through to “completion” (whether that’s positive MRR or closing). Which 1 or 2 products? Well he should have done his market research ahead of time and known from his list which ones were most viable. Better yet, he should have found customers ready to hand over their CC information.

I’d bet there’s few “micro-bets” that are generating any meaningful amount of money.

The narrative would change and it wouldn't be getting called a "micro-bet" anymore if it did though, no? ;-) We used to just call these "side projects" which I prefer as a term for any sort of cheap experiment you throw at the wall to see if it sticks. I've had several, had two acquired for non-negligible amounts, and another has been my full time business for 10 years now.

You are too negative. "tiny businesses" implies that the author himself does not believe these to be fully fledged businesses, for probably the same reasons you are listing.

I applaud this initiative, instead. It's commendable that someone decided to build not just one, but several things; for fun, and perhaps some profit.

Then, if one of those ideas turns out to be very promising, the rest of the "business" can be quite trivial to setup, at least initially.

I took this same approach and from about ~50 things, 5 made enough money to make it time well spent overall.

They were tiny like the projects listed here, so it's possible it could work out for the author, and I'm still sticking to the same approach now.

Launch something quick with little self-criticism, then double down on anything that seems to have traction.

This is what MVP actually is.

MVP as in minimally viable product?

Yep, that's how I'm reading it at least.

Yep

So 10% worked - is that not about normal for business?

It's normal for boom or burst startups. It's way bellow normal for small business.

But well, it's a perfectly fine ratio here.

Even on a small business/startup average youd maybe see 50 businesses start, and 5 succeed

> These aren’t businesses. These are websites. [...] Not everyone can build a business. That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management, legal, on and on.

Incorrect. The word business is defined simply as "the practice of making one's living by engaging in commerce." or "a person's regular occupation, profession, or trade."

A kid with a lemonade stand has a business. My dad ran a plumbing business that did zero marketing or advertising and had no regular lawyer. According to your definition neither of these are businesses.

Gee, you know come to think of it - Knowing who your customers are is marketing, talking/blogging about your business (however small it is) is advertising, accepting cash and knowing what's in your bank account is cash flow management and avoiding breaking any laws is legal. So, whichever way you look at it - you're wrong.

It is easy to mistake “business” with “being incorporated”. This is terrible because it assumes economic action requires a kind of social legal structure, which is totally false. Viz. jails, war times, very small business...

While there is a danger of spreading yourself too thin (as the author notes, one project a week was far too intensive) there's mileage in the idea of "throw a load of ideas at the wall and see what sticks". It helps you validate an idea quickly and, if nothing else, builds a portfolio you can show to potential employers or clients.

Rob Walling has some good stuff on building micro-SaaS businesses https://robwalling.com/

> let’s not pretend this is the path to a successful web business.

I disagree. There is no point in setting up legal and marketing and advertising if the business is not functional. This is a perfectly suitable path to a successful web business. Obviously he would need to expand on those areas you mentioned if he wanted to make one of these his career but this is the first step on that path.

This is a prime example of the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

The full quote is:

> I believe there's a big advantage to this "micro-bet" approach of launching many tiny businesses, and then sticking with the ones that become successful.

The full quote changes the context. From what I understand, he sees it as a way to validate business ideas with small amount of effort.

Small amount of effort? He put 6 months into this. That’s not small. We see sooooo many articles on HN saying “know your customer before you write a line of code” or “find people who are ready to write a check”. Like a dozen of these articles a month from coders who are writing a post-mortem or telling us lessons learned. It’s like we all forgot those important lessons when we read this article.

I am not so sure it didn't work. What if you had a massive success every 100 tries? That would be worth it, almost the same as VC funding.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

This is addressed in the 'negatives of tiny projects' and 'conclusions' sections of TFA.

> That involves marketing, advertising, customer acquisition, cash flow management

The most projects mentions involved at least a few of hese things, and the last one, Earlyname[0], had them all and has been more profitable than many many "businesses" in SV right now...

[0]: https://tinyprojects.dev/projects/earlyname

But sometimes this is what it takes to find something that sticks or find some meaningful spin-off that generates hundreds and thousands in revenue.

This is the best approach starting out to see what the audience responds to, but the next critical step is to stick with what works for at least 5 full years doing all the things you've mentioned plus SEO (which is a big big).

My main business started as a side-project. Not as tiny as the ones in the article, but it wasn't meant to be my main source of income. And yes, it took years of marketing to reach a mature state, but the essence is that experimenting is what usually brings the real money.

You kind of make my point. You turned your website into a business by spending the time to convert it. Experimenting is fine and it’s fun to build websites and web apps, I do it too. But if I’m not willing to spend the time to listen to clients, figure out what they want and what they’ll pay for, then to me it’s just a hobby.

Fair enough

> I’d bet there’s few “micro-bets” that are generating any meaningful amount of money.

That's the whole point of micro-bets. You acknowledge the fact that a small % of them will generate any meaningful $, so you deliberately minimize your losses by making the bets small.

Reminds me of the book "The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work".

Just because you are a good engineer, does not mean you are a good entrepreneur. Most engineers think it's just about building a good product. This is not true.

It actually is entirely about building a good product if by good product you mean something people want.

Building a good product will get you a pat on the back. What you need is a good product + leverage. http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

You are proving my point

If no one links to your good product, it's not in the webgraph.

If your product makes money that is irrelevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com