Ask HN: How do you deal with being “nearly immensely successful”? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you deal with being “nearly immensely successful”?

10 pointsgfykvfyxgc10 comments

I “nearly”invented an entirely new class of software, but went out of business before getting there.

Many years ago I came up with a concept that dominates the world of software today, and I did it before anyone else. My idea lacked only one critical feature. Not just idea, but complete implementation, like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

My idea was so very close to being an idea that within a few years others would complete, leading to untold riches.

And for me nothing but failure.

Every day I think about how very very close I was to gigantic success.

How do I deal with this constant looking back?

Surely others feel the same way, nearly being highly successful, nearly finding the winning formula, being only an inch away from winning.

How do people handle this? How do you handle being inches from immense success, and instead being loser?

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You were probably not that close to success. Even if you'd had the complete product that later succeeded, you din't have the world around it that wanted that product.

Definitely dont spent today torturing yourself of the perceived failures of the past. If you can't learn a lesson from it, the time spent recalling it is wasted; and if you're upset about the episode you wont be learning the right lessons from it until the emotion fades anyway.

Over the years, I've also had powerful ideas that could either make a huge impact or a financial success. Quite a few a short time later did make it big. Often the timing was close that the people who carried it through may have had the idea at the same time as me or possibly earlier. That doesn't even matter. The difference is that I didn't act on my convictions.

After a while, I come to realize that success isn't the inspirational idea, that's the precursor. It is the effort put into getting that idea as a product into the hands of the people that can use it. It's quite similar when someone with an idea wants to partner with some devs to implement it, but want most of the company, underestimating the development iterations and scaling needed. The same is also true if you already had the idea and the implementation, even with product-market-fit and need to get the word out and make sales.

You seem to have roughly two options: (1) feel that you were very close to success and failed, or (2) that you had an idea that could be successful with much action and effort. The feeling of failure comes from believing in being very very close to success. You have given no indication that you acted on the idea--the winning formula consists of the refined idea AND the implementation, iteration, sales and marketing. If you did do all those things and failed, you can feel good that you did the best you could and was outcompeted. If you didn't, the feeling of failure should only be focused toward inaction, which is regret. I have some of those but don't dwell on them and direct them at my own inaction rather than as something that happened to me. Maybe this is the way, let the feelings of failure become a regret and learn to move on, don't look back.

I can list half a dozen projects of mine that were ideas ahead of their time. I had novel ideas. I built prototypes/MVPs. I even paid the bills with some of them. But other people came along afterwards and did it bigger and better than I did.

And there is nothing wrong with that. I still make things. I pay my bills. And whether or not I have huge business success, I spend my time each evening with my wife and children in a home we love. I consider that a success no matter how uninspiring my career may be.

So don't look back. Your success in your work does not define whether you personally are a success or a loser. Look at the good of what you have now, not the ideal world that could have been if you had successfully min/maxed every possible decision in life.

If you did it before you can surely do it again. You had the spirit and intuition which led you to see that it could be done. Now do it for the world, not for yourself. That is the missing ingredient.

I built a high frequency trading system on early mount gox and had a ton of bitcoins as a toy project. I abandoned it because everyone kept telling me I was wasting my time.

I would be a billionare today— How do I deal with it? Just move on. Ultimately it is our own fault for not doing what our gut was telling us. So just move on and do something else.

I heard about BTC very early and I considered buying some. If I had invested even 1/10th of the amount that I was putting into individual stocks at the time, I might be extraordinarily wealthy today.

I say "might" because I recognize that I would have undoubtedly sold some along the way. Maybe when it hit $500, $1,000, or $10,000. I would have been a fool not to have sold any along the way. So it's easy to look back and think of what I would have had. But I'm overestimating the gains I would have actually realized.

There's also opportunity cost. If I had put a few thousand into BTC that would have been less to invest in individual stocks. The stocks I ended up picking did very well. Not as well as BTC! But close inspection shows the difference is not as great as it seems in my BTC-dreaming mind.

In your case the opportunity cost might have been your relationships. Think about how busy you would have been running a company that is so successful. It would lead to great wealth. But it would also cause stress in relationships. Maybe you have better relationships because you didn't hit it big. And maybe your relationships are more genuine because your friends are not benefitting from your largesse.

listen to the sibling comments, they are good advice. Also, think of parents and children and rewards: It's better to reward the child for trying, not for their results (e.g. grades in school). You can positively influence your results with more efforts, but you cannot force it. Thus, you shouldn't judge yourself on the results too harshly. What should count, at least for your state of mind, should be that you tried earnestly. Be proud. Try again if you want to or do something else entirely but don't think too much about it. Life goes on and having the right mind set is all you can give.

What did you nearly invent?

I know it hurts. A lot. Feels like you're never going to lift your head above that level, never going to grab that success you want. Feels like a desolate place. I'm sure you feel sad and scared and angry.

I don't know--but maybe the following ideas can help add some more pieces of the picture to what you're going through...or maybe add some perspective. But I'm sorry...this will probably come across as some self-indulgent, brow-beating, gonad-breaking, criticism--an easy chance for one person to take a pot shot at someone else vulnerable, in their moment of Ask HN need--just to make themselves feel better. So I'm sure you'll think it's better to take advice from an actual bona fide "immensely successful" person...than from some random unknown commenter on HN who is probably in a similar situation to you "success"-wise...but who perhaps simply feels differently than you about it.

Realize the importance of consistent, sustained, strategic execution, and that it's not where you start (in your case, your idea, your inspiration, your initial implementations) it's where you choose to go from there: in other words, the long trail of a constant succession of choices that generate those results. Almost goes without saying that persistence is a necessary condition of the above.

Correct your perspective: you weren't "inches from immense success", you were a long, and not-straight-line path, made up of hundreds of thousands of tiny choices, from what you merely imagine yourself to have been on the brink of being.

Also, realize the long tail, comprising two insights: 1) Your idea, or even implementations, did not make you unique, nor did it make you alike to the people who executed with a "completed" realized idea that was "very close" to yours; and 2) For every 1 human who succeeds "immensely" with an idea, there are a-to-the-n other humans on Earth who had the same idea (within some measure of "idea similarity"), for each n in 1..steps-away-from-completion and for some a (maybe related to the idea).

Finally, consider why you might be having this reaction...what would lead you to the compelling-yet-erroneous notion (and correlated emotional agony response) that success was as easy as a few steps from where you were (idea, and code), to where those you see are ("immense success")? Could it be maybe--possibly have--something to do with how the media, Tech Media in particular, lionizes and simplifies the lives of "The Founders" into easily digestible, almost-straight-line mythological narratives? Might it be that, somehow? This mythologization serves a purpose, no doubt--surely it inspires successive generations of founders to pursue those fleeting paper riches, like wise men pointing up at a star--but it's not tonic for the long road, nor for the long dark night of the soul, that presumably many on the Path so often face. On that path, there are deeper secrets to learn, but maybe the tech media does not have the strength to reveal them. So... maybe settle for your miracle (of inspiration, and experience) and learn for next time, for the road for you ahead.

I think the imagination is important..."merely imagine yourself to have been on the brink of being."...is an important thing too. Helps keep your motivation when everyone else thinks you're crazy, and only you can see the path. That's what you need sometimes--you need to be the only person who can see the path, because that's sometimes what you will be. Nobody in the people you talk to or know will be able to support your belief in this...because to their perspective, it's not viable. That's the difference between you and them. One difference. The ability to keep going. So it's not "merely imagining", the imagination is all important. It looms over everything else, and guides. That and your emotions, what you really want. To take you there, that's the only motivation you can really count on: imagination and emotion. Otherwise you won't make it. You'll give up. That's what I think...so those things, imagination and emotion are to be cherished and protected. Like PG's "embryonic" startups, or anyone who knows the feeling of trying to protect a fragile little flame of a thing (an idea, a being, whatever), before it's ready to take on the world without such nurturing protection.

So as well as tempering yourself with reality...which hopefully some of the points above may assist with--you got to keep the flame alive. Be the keeper of the flame. Of your own dream. That's what you need to succeed, one ingredient.

I think without the imagination and emotion emphasis, focusing just on the "reality" and statistical aspects is too dour. Good luck! Whatever you choose to do, good luck !

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