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Comment by z9znz | Hacker News Reader

He had/did the perfect combination:

- right place at the right time (almost certainly a factor here)

- actually building and releasing something

- promoting it, letting the world know about him/it

These success stories are really nice, but it's important to recognize that it usually takes all three of these key elements to be successful.

Obviously if you don't do anything, you cannot get success. But if you do something, and the timing or market is wrong, you may not get much or any success. And if you do something but never make an effort to let the world know, then you may get a little growth but not real success.

We can't control the market timing so much, mainly because we can't accurately predict the future. With some research, maybe we can improve on this, but it's still no guarantee.

So, the best policy is to just stay in forward motion. Built a thing, promote it, and repeat. Maybe with 5 things in current operation, one of them catches.

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Founder here - that's a great analysis.

The way I manufactured right place/ right time was using this framework: https://twitter.com/clokehead/status/1340949414081392640?s=2...

I got similar advice early in my career.

You don’t have to create the wave. Find an existing wave grab a surf board and figure out a way to ride it.

This is why we have a glut of indistinguishable "50-hour video courses" on every micro-topic imaginable. Everyone's trying to sell a shovel.

Perhaps, but some of those courses are actually useful; and some of the creators build solid businesses.

What is becoming a problem is the super low quality, autogenerated derivatives. But those are more a symptom of a broken internet (youtube/google search) than anything else. Now that garbage on youtube cannot be downvoted, and since youtube does not (has never?) shown up/down rating numbers on content before you click to view it, it's exceedingly difficult for the viewers to find the good stuff.

Awesome. Thanks for the advice!

I think this is mostly right, but it makes it seem like successful apps are more of a crap shoot than they really are.

Too many (most?) apps are built without spending any time researching whether it solves a real problem people have (and are willing to pay for). I get it, we want to build things, not do market research.

Most people think that to build a successful app, you just have to "come up" with a brilliant idea and then go build it. That's not the case at all (while it does occasionally work, THAT is pure luck). Successful apps usually happen because the founder(s) saw a real pain point or gap in the market, and then build something to solve that.

You'll notice that the approaches are almost completely opposite:

- Build something and hope that people need it - Find a problem that people actually have and build a solution that solves it well

Of course, this doesn't guarantee success (nothing does), but it vastly increases your chances of not wasting time building something nobody wants.

Also, I'm not naive about the different backgrounds/privileges people have; of course luck plays a factor here. I'm speaking directly about people who are already in a position to create an app (i.e. a lot of HN readers)

> So, the best policy is to just stay in forward motion.

forget who said it, but I like the quote "Action produces information". If you just try a lot of stuff, at the very least you will learn what works and what doesn't.

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