I am done. I give up | Hacker News Reader

I am done. I give up

1,237 pointswakana972 comments

I'm writing this post because I'm done. I can't do this anymore. After three failed attempts at building a successful startup and spending time institutionalized, I'm giving up on my entrepreneurship dreams.

I tried everything - building an audience, making sure my product actually solved a problem, getting paying customers, and writing high-quality content and contributing to the community. But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get anywhere. My efforts were fruitless and I'm tired of trying. I barely had 20 followers, my substack and product blogs didn't get any signups, and while I did get a few upvotes (8) on Product Hunt once, I never had a paid customer. It was as if the world was against me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any progress. I remember trying to interact and hype up my fellow indiehackers on Twitter, regularly engaging with their content, but no one ever paid any attention to me or followed me back. It was like I didn't even exist in the world of entrepreneurship. And even when I did get some attention, it was short-lived and never led to anything substantial.

But it's not just the lack of success that's getting me down. It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips. But the reality is that it's not that simple. It's fucking hard and it takes more than just a positive attitude to make it.

I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. There are so many other indie entrepreneurs out there who are struggling and feeling like they'll never make it. If you're one of them, I want you to know that you're not alone. It's okay to feel defeated and to want to give up. But please don't give up. Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you. There's always a chance for success, no matter how small it may seem.

But for me, I can't take it anymore. I've hit rock bottom and I have nothing left to give. To all the indie hackers, hacker news, and Reddit readers out there, please don't be fooled by the false promises of digital nomad influencers. Building a startup is hard work and it takes time. It's not as easy as they make it seem and it's not for everyone. Don't let your dreams consume you like they did for me, and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PROTECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AT ALL COST! Don't make the same mistakes I did and realize that entrepreneurship may not be the path for you. It's okay to admit defeat and move on to something else.

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> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips.

This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

Running a business is definitely hard. I don’t think it’s for everyone. You need to handle failure, long hours, lack of balance, and disappointment in a sort of irrational way. Kind of like a fanaticism / religion of self. Ultimately it’s probably not healthy!

I don’t recommend persevering due to FOMO. See if working for others scratches the itch so you have something to compare it to.

> This is just startup porn. It’s the same in any category (make money flipping houses!, crypto!, etc.) As a rule of thumb, assume 99% of influencers are full of shit. Stay off instagram.

This 100x! Many of the big influencers in these indie/startup/productivity niches seem to earn a lot of money at first sight. If you look deeper, a lot of these influencer seem to be making a lot of money from courses they are selling instead of operating the business they sell courses about.

My all time favorite is Robert T. Kiyosaki's book "Poor dad, rich dad". Pretty much everything he teaches about financial success is fiction. In reality he worked a regular 9 to 5 job, failed at starting his own business, and finally made money by selling this book and providing seminars.

Just looked at his Twitter. Seems like he's gone off the deep end and is now grifting like Alex Jones. Posts about Fauci, woke liberals, FBI + KGB working in cahoots....pathetic, really.

Pathetic to have different political opinions? Is that where some of us has landed. Anyone speaking against my own views are pathetic worthless and worthy of scorn? Then you wonder why society has divided into culture wars and why so much hate exists in the world.

It’s one thing to have viewpoints, there are a lot of traditionally conservative ideals that have value, but, like many things, become a nightmare scenario when taken to the extreme.

I think the “pathetic” comment is aimed at the fact that if you’re running with the Alex Jones camp, you’re not really on planet earth anymore.

Watching an unwell person publicly spiral into paranoia and conspiracy-obsession and then calling that a "different political opinion" is a pretty bizarre take.

Possibly not when you share those opinions and are into conspiracy and paranoia yourself. Plenty of people like that, unfortunately.

Not familiar with this author and which particularly views he shared - but between COVID passport, COVID being human made, Fauci funding COVID and the FBI paying to hide Hunter Biden's laptop, conspiracy theories are being more accurate than mainstream news.

You are welcome take a look for yourself and ponder whether you'd take business advice from him.

He was always a Trump-like persona whose audience tended towards the same demographic.

I fell into this whole startup hustle bubble a while ago, obviously I also read the book "Rich dad, poor dad". At least I tried, it was bad. Not only was it unrealistic, it also dismissed a whole lot of external factors at play at accumulating such wealth and didn't feel realistic at all. I did not know that he worked regular 9 to 5 and only generated his wealth by providing advice how to build wealth, but its not really surprising and fits the picture fairly well.

It made you poorer and him richer though, so from his perspective it's a good book.

This genuinely made me LOL

Basically, how VCs works too. And that's why we have to take their feedback carefully.

Yes, definitely. Invariably they're looking out for #1 first.

The takeaway I got from him was positive. First, start buying real estate and renting. THEN, with that financial security try to build a business of your own if you are motivated. The first part is hard to fail at, and you can do it while working a full time job.

He also mentioned that property is a liability, not an investment. I guess many property management companies would disagree.

> THEN, with that financial security ..

Nah, you'll just mooch off your stable unearned, unproductive income source for the rest of your life. It's called rent seeking -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking and it's the absolute core of the disease that is modern capitalism.

You are completely correct. I hate this stuff that's peddled on YouTube, it's pretty simple, ask yourself what do they get out of telling you this if they are making so much money doing it. They are making money selling you courses.

What made me more susceptible I think is that my father made his money grinding up, buying a few flats , moving into full on property development. I paid no attention to his business until it was too late for me to learn from him (he died). Sure I worked on his building sites as a teenager, grafted cleaning out flats after tenants moved out (this is while my mates enjoyed their school holidays). He did pretty well and I grew up in a pretty affluent way. The stress was awful for him. I believe it fucked him up a bit. I have a few bad memories of him being a bit horrible. I forgive him that now looking back at the pressure he was under.

After his death I was desperate to emulate him. I began to think working for a salary was a mugs game. I paid for some bullshit property courses. Never went all in on anything thank god.

Anyway, eight years later I've accepted what I am, I'm in a job I actually like. I'll plough my furrow doing software and getting better at it. It's modest, but it's more certain. And uncertainty is the root of stress for me.

One bit of advice he gave me when I was complaining about working and having a manager etc "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time" I can see now that this is a great antidote to the bullshit financial freedom advice on YouTube

I appreciated your comment. However with respect to what your Dad told you :

> "son, the bank manager is my boss, he can call in my loans any time"

that would have been true for him (being in property development). But there are people who build successful businesses or just work for themselves who never go into substantial debt and thus are free of any such 'creditor boss'.

True. Though anyone I know who is owns a business uses debt to grow it. But you make a fair point.

I’ll teach you to become rich by teaching other people to become rich by teaching other…

It’s charlatans all the way down.

I am a fairly successful YouTuber, and the same thing exists in my space. It pains me to see the YouTube gurus out there, fleecing people of their money by selling them dreams. Dreams they themselves have not achieved.

Beware of anyone who is selling risk-free shortcuts to hard work. They also go by a different, less appealing name: get rich quick schemes.

It's the same way many startups make products that they sell to other tech companies.

And the ones that make money whose products sold to those "I bought shits from this popular guy", "I'm trendy now", too much bias.

What do people think of Alex Hormozi in this regard?

i don't understand why people fall for it. if anyone is making a killing in their business, they're not going to sell a book about how to create a killing in thay field. (a) they don't need to because they're already making a killing (b) ahy create more competition for yourself/give away your secrets? if selling your secrets nets more money than the business... then obviously it wasn't a good business

In Italy we said: who knows make business, who do not teach how to make it. We have some journalists here selling courses I did not understand what business they was successful…

Would you mind naming who specifically you would put into that group?

E.g. Would you put Pieter Levels into that category?

This also applies to other fields. People also believe that it is simple to make money through day trading. There are many tiktok influencers and youtubers who portray themselves as millionaires, trading on a beach while digital nomading and giving nonsense advice. Yes, it is possible to make money day trading, but it takes a significant amount of learning, practice, patience, time, and discipline, and even then, the results are not always consistent, and it is not for everyone.

biaheza on YouTube makes a bunch of good videos debunking the git rich quick schemes and showing the other side of the coin. https://www.youtube.com/@biaheza

Is he really though? I did view a bunch of his videos and realized the "Dropshipping course" for 294$. I obviously haven't watched the course, but dropshipping is basically one of the most popular "get rich quick schemes" on YouTube aside from daytrading.

I think he does talk about the difficulties in starting/running a drop shipping store in some of his vids. But I do agree, it add any cred that he's still trying to sell a "dropshipping course". I definitely wouldn't recommend anyone start drophipping, be it following his course or any other.

I've been working on day trading now for just over 5 years. I even took a sabbatical for 1.5 years to fully dedicate myself to it. Still struggling to be consistently profitable. I figure it's going to take me another few years to have be in the place where I feel I can give up my other career entirely. Easily the hardest thing I've ever done in my life.

Definitely right, 99% of influencers about day trading are full of shit

i don't know nothing about day trading but it sounds hard AF to be profitable. even if you by some miracle figure out the winning formula... it won't last. others will figure it out and the game will change again. sounds exhausting!

As I understand day trading is a full time job. How do you work on that for 5 years without profits?

> I figure it's going to take me another few years

What are you planning to learn or what skills are you planning gain or sharpen during that period?

CAVEAT EMPTOR friend. I have day traded for 3 yrs. There is no edge to be had for retail day traders. It’s a suckers game, where the odds are stacked against you, just like in a casino. The platforms that trade against retail order-flow make all the money by front running trades at the sub-millisecond level, on every trade. It’s called electronic market-making. Everyone is a glorified speculator. Evidence is ask any of these influencers for an audited trade history or P&L… you’ll never see one. You may get lucky trading and win big, like a gambler, but if you keep playing, you’ll give everything back, then if you buy on margin or leverage with options, you’ll lose it all and more. There are no repeat fund managers that make the top of the list year after year. It’s just dumb luck, they get paid management fees (2 and 20) to gamble: Please save yourself years of misery.

I don't understand how OP could take that seriously. I can't think of anyone who has built a successful business and can trace their origins back to "I was very inspired by people on Twitter". I thought it would have been obvious that real success takes real work. "Digital influencers" are nothing more than sad people craving for attention online. Their success relies on idiots trying to mimic their "success". It's an emotional Ponzi scheme. Don't get stuck swimming in their vomit.

And you're really almost hitting the point directly - but this guy just seems to "want" to be the owner of a tech-startup, rather then someone with a good tech idea who then turns it into a successful business.

Everyone is selling a dream, and people are willing to buy because they fall in love with the "idea" of the dream - I think unless I had some actually insane, never thought of tech, I would NEVER want to be a tech-startup. Everyone is trying to take advantage of you to fulfil their own dreams, ironically

The insidious part is that these grifters make it seem as if everyone had a fair shot at the startup game, when in reality they just pretend it to make their audience of potential customers larger.

My experience going to business events is that all of the startup founders who made it had parents well into the top 1% or 0.1% of the income range. That's why it's so common to raise a $100k friends and family seed round and not even feel worried about losing it all.

If OP wasn't privileged enough, he/she might be doing everything correctly, but the results without a $100k megaphone will be very different.

Who are these “influencers” everyone is talking about? Never once in my lifetime I have ever heard anyone say “building a successful startup is easy!” WTF?

No, of course not. If it were easy, why would it take six payments of $24.95+S/H to teach you how to do it?

Shipping and handling for a digital course? Sounds suspect but if it’s guaranteed to make me rich and put me on a beach in six months, I’m sold.

Anyone who thinks working from a beach is possible has never tried.

The screen isn't always readable.

And many people who sit nearby aren't working and maybe living and making memories.

Lifeguards. Ice-cream salespeople. Pamela Anderson. FALSE!

Don’t forget about regular interruptions by the beach sales team network if you end up on a resort there part of the beach path is public access.

Having done enough of the travel to paradise to work to realize for me that it doesn’t provide either with enough depth, and if I like deep experiences I should consider that.

It sounds to me like your expectations are way out of whack.

I’ve seen friends, acquaintances, and colleagues become entrepreneurs. Without an exception, every one that has a serious social media presence is a fraud. They have a company that is either money losing or fed by their parents. They pretend to be entrepreneur geniuses on social media but really have done nothing but basically be instagram models.

The people I know who have successfully started companies are nothing like this. They usually have industry experience directly involved with or at least closely related to what they start (e.g “my company has to do this ourselves every time but we’d definitely hire it out if we could”).

My advice would be stick to climbing in whatever industry you think you’ll enjoy most and just keep your eyes open. Worst case scenario you’ll have a good career

Excellent advice

Also one needs to keep in mind that many startup "successes" are actually either negative or neutral outcomes. I know several "acquisitions" where the end result was investors making negative returns (receiving back pennies-on-the-dollar, if anything.) Meanwhile, the former CEO gets a cushy job as an advisor at the new place, announcements all over social media, etc. The actual companies barely had any revenue.

Yep so called firesales. One of the companies I worked at sold so low all employees options were worthless. But they were in the news and they had been on Deloitte’s fastest growing startups for a few years (never reached profit).

This was the case with Rancher being acquired by SUSE. The financials were so out of whack for a normal acquisition but SUSE had a dire need to acquire a k8s company and Rancher wanted to exit and now the board has huge regrets over spending so much on something thats brought so little value to the business!

Agreed, expectations are everything or at least very important to keep sanity in this area.

Reality is that big majority of startup-s do fail to "make it" 90% of time to even be self sustaining. Financially meaning that you pay from your pocket overall and the resources have to come somewhere, day job or whatever, making it very much overwhelming and can break even a strong man. Only small percentage out of those 10% actually make it to sustainable enough to live by.

Percentages can begin to rise on your favour after learning from failures but there is of course no guarantees, some domains are inherently much less forgiving or have fierce competition. It is important to resarch and understand the landscape you're going into.

If you realise your odds then mindset starts to get clearer, you know what you risk losing and accept that loss is likely, you still put enough effort to win but don't set your mind so deep that everything collapses with the project.

It might be contrary to some suggestions that you have to put everything into startup to have a chance but that is also correct imo, you do have to be able to invest all your available time on the project. Keeping in mind that the project is not absolute everything in life and being able to walk away at right time as to not sunk endless resources to unfruitful endeavour keep you healthier.

I am so sorry you feel bad. Want some advice from an older engineer turned entrepreneur? Be proud of what you have done. Not many people take risks in life. You did. Being the 'man in the arena' is enough. I read this quote from Teddy Roosevelt often:

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

To yours I add this from Teddy Roosevelt:

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

"It is hard to fail, but it is worse to never have tried to succeed."

- Theodore Roosevelt

Thank you for this, this lifted me up.

I'm going through something similar to the OP, I haven't given up yet and don't really consider it either. But, it's really hard. My mental health certainly took a hit and I'm full of anxiety as my savings are not enough to cover the upcoming bills and couldn't find a contracting gig so far to support the cashflow. I've experienced severe panic attacks and bouts of depression. I sometimes dread the passing of days.

Hope I'll find a way.

It might be illogical to say this but I know we'll make it one way or another. I believe in what we are doing and what we built actually resonated with the customers as well. Just need to power through this last mile somehow.

Anyway, reading your comment gave me a little more strength. Much appreciated.

I have had anxiety/depression too my whole life. Took me years to understand it and figure out a path forward. Therapy, meds helped a lot. And it took me decades to get the skill and perspective to start a company. Life is pretty long, if you spend 5-10 years dealing with depression -- you still have a 30 years of work to try new things once you learn to deal with your biology!

TBH that's a perspective I did not have. At 27 years old I feel like I've been slow and like I'm late for some of the aspirations I've had. I tend to look at things from a daily perspective. Today and tomorrow.

Thinking in decades however, reframes and somewhat changes the problems. I'll keep this in mind.

What language do you use. I'm willing to help push for free if I know the language

One of the original startup influencers of his time.

I'm loving all these Teddy Roosevelt quotes -- I have one more, not from Roosevelt, but from the Dalai Lama, that I often think about.

For me it represents doing what you can and the effort spending towards a goal.

"If after trying to save the world, the world is lost, no regrets." - Dalai Lama

I've had this quote bookmarked for 7 years now.

A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing. The basic fact is that most startups and most entrepreneurial dreams fail or get consumed by another for their talent/clients. And as an entrepreneur you fight against all odds. Most will fail and you have to be ok with that for yourself. Even how many times you try. It is ok, it does not make you a failure because you tried. It makes you a brave and daring person you tried.

It does not help that the media only celebrates the few lucky ones, and because they were lucky they will propagate all their steps of wonderful execution, but overlooking the fact that they were just with the right timing, market & people. That it was pure luck.

There are more journeys in life to be happy than being an entrepreneur. There are more paths towards personal fulfilment.

> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck.

And for anything with bigger ambitions than a lifestyle business, don’t forget connections. Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford. Just look at the “PayPal mafia” to see how inbred tech investing can be.

Not that most entrepreneurs need or should expect VC funding, but this is HN, run by a VC. You can totally run a business and be successful without it.

> Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford

Is that also true for YC startups? I felt like YC (while still playing the capitalist's game) was providing a more equal opportunity to start-up "luck" by just looking at the numbers :)

No idea but I’d love to see data…

Eg - academic breakdown of founders

- % founders that already knew a YC grad personally

- founders that knew YC investors

- etc

Maybe, but to have good numbers to be in YC to begin with having the right connections helps a lot.

I wasted a decade of my life on the notion that you can bootstrap a startup. It is hard mode and the folks that are so dismissive of VC funding should have that disclaimer.

It's worth noting that investment makes building a business wildly different to bootstrapping. You stop trying to build whatever a successful business looks like to you and have to build something other people believe in. That comes with a lot of compromises, different decisions, and 'selling out'. Some founders find that change in direction very hard to accept. Bootstrapping and investment are different journeys. Neither is easier.

As an example of a possible compromise, recall the risk/return efficient frontier.

If you are the principal investor in your venture, you may be willing to leave some potential return on the table, in exchange for dialling down risk to a comfortable level.

If funds are the principal investors, they have already dialled down their risk via diversification over the rest of their portfolios, and they will view any risk-adversity on your part as inefficient dead loss.

Solid base hit or swing for the bleachers? You may have the option to pick either strategy in the former case, but will not in the latter.

You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup. And woe to you if you are bootstrapped and some VC funded club starts poaching your customers with a product subsidized by their financiers.

I wrote about these options long ago:

https://jacquesmattheij.com/three-roads-to-the-top-of-the-mo...

> if you get screwed, let it be, revenge is costly, you likely can't afford it

"Living well is the best revenge". And if you're someone who has the skills to turn their time into significant value-add, seeking revenge is an opportunity cost that undoubtedly counts as "living poorly".

[caveat: I have had to litigate on occasion, but (a) that is something where hours spent are indirect, via counsel, and (b) it's not exactly "living well", either]

> You can bootstrap a startup, but not every startup.

There are also a lot of products and services that can't be built by venture backed businesses. If you are bootstrapping, there is a big advantage in building something in this category, because then you can go at the pace that's organically the most efficient.

And I wasted a lot of my time thinking that a new company must be a startup and needs VC funding. The news is full of companies getting millions in funding, leading to that impression.

I like that you are not dismissing bootstrapping, but just wishing that people dismissive of VM should have that disclaimer.

I just wanted to provide a counter-example: Bootstrapping worked for me, but I was ready to live happily on 1800€ per month (France, where it’s reasonable), and remain small. It also required being able to part from anyone who would think 500€ a day for a consultant is reasonable, or that 20€/u/m is ok for a SAAS app.

It's hard, but it is possible. I know several bootstrapped tech companies who have pulled it off.

A common thread is the celebration of how far they've come. One from living in a shed (with his wife) in a friends backyard. Another in an unused room of a 100 year old building.

Even with funding there are no guarantees.

Personally, I have a problem with the term lifestyle business. Without plenty of VC money, building and running a business is hard. VC backed up start-ups fit the "lifestyle" business definition a lot better, IMHO. One can play CxO, or chief engineer or whatever fancy title one wants to hold without putting the effort and years in, without actually worrying about those nasty things like profitability, cash flow or actual products. And, with the right connections, if one start-up fails one can still just start a new one.

A lifestyle business is one you can do on your own and fit it into your life. Its goal is profitability only to the point of satisfying your lifestyle’s income requirements.

Historically to the term, people would retire to vacation towns (the lifestyle) and run things like bike shops or an ice cream stand just to have some income, not to be CxO and get rich.

VC-backed startups have a very different "lifestyle" from bootstrapped startups. Building the business is harder but running the business is much easier since you don't have the weight of exit strategy bearing down on you. Those external pressures are now showing up thanks to rising interest rates and investors asking questions.

You can't be coerced to make business decisions like selling out to a competitor or aggressively raising prices if you own the company.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with a life style business to begin with, the negative stigma is there only because certain VCs feel that you are a horrible person for not cutting them in on the action so they can diversify their portfolios.

This. I really dislike the term "lifestyle business". What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy? Why does every business need GROWTH GROWTH GROWTH at all costs, even if the result is a net negative for customers?

I sometimes explain to customers that if my business were VC-funded, it would grow and be developed much faster, but in the end there would need to be an exit and there is no exit scenario that is good for the customers. Think about it: there could be an IPO, in which case the business would need to start addressing a huge audience and increase growth (which always hurts existing customers), there could be a strategic acquisition or an acquihire, very few of which go right (this usually results in shutting down the service within 2-3 years), or the VCs could decide to fold the company, stopping the service outright. There is simply no good scenario.

I've been more than happy to invest in a few of these 'lifestyle' businesses as angel investor. One of them is quite possibly going to be a breakout success anyway. We're all still amazed by it. Not a dollar of external capital beyond the friends-and-family round.

> What's wrong with a stable long-term business that makes founders and customers happy?

And employees.

Last weekend I was talking to one of the initial employees of a relatively well-known monitoring SAAS here in the Netherlands. Apparently their founder/owner had just decided that ~30 employees was perhaps a few too many and that he would like to keep it more lifestyle-business-ish. Fair enough, he's the owner and is allowed to make decisions like that.

This early employee was doing some real heart-searching about what he was going to do though, now that any hopes of personal growth at this company had been dashed. He could probably stay a developer there forever, of course, but any career growth would not be in the cards for at least several years since all management positions were filled and he was already the most senior engineer around.

I don't mean to imply that stable businesses who make employees happy are impossible, but at some point you will just not be able to make everyone happy at the same time.

I own and run a lifestyle business of 5 people. I don’t want it to be any larger. My biggest fear - losing key staff due to lack of career growth.

Next year we’ll drop to 4 day weeks at some point to further reward the staff beyond ever growing comp.

Seriously curious -- what "career" growth do people imagine? Apart from learning new things (which that employee can still do), what would he be looking for? Managing people? More power? Different position on a business card?

Yes, true. I forgot to mention them because I don't have (or plan to have) any :-)

Seconded. I personally try to never use the phrase 'lifestyle business'. Instead I use the phrase 'bootstrapped business', because that is what it is. You have bootstrapped the business yourself organically over time instead of at a fast pace of growth with VC money.

My understanding is that bootstrapped and lifestyle are different things. A lifestyle business should be able to run on autopilot with minimal involvement from the founder (hence they can focus on living their life, rather than working). A bootstrapped business is one built with your own capital - it doesn’t necessarily have to become a lifestyle business.

This seems mostly correct to me. We wouldn't call 37signals a "lifestyle business" but a bootstrapped business.

I wouldn't say that a "able to run on autopilot" is necessarily the defining feature, but rather the attitude towards growth. The simply, the goal in starting and running the business is to support a work-life balance that is more strongly weighted towards life. As such, growing a lifestyle business beyond a certain point is counter productive since that leads to a more responsibility and less time for other stuff.

A bootstrapped business does still have growth as a primary goal and there is intention to reach a larger size and complexity.

While I'm not sure that I like the term "lifestyle" to describe it, I'm not sure what a better one is since "bootstrapped" means something different in this context.

> with minimal involvement from the founder (hence they can focus on living their life, rather than working).

I don't think this is right, most of the "lifestyle businesses" I've seen involve at least "normal" levels of work on their part, but are structured so that the work happens where & when suits other parts of their lives, or similar. At least the ones where that term made sense.

They are often located somewhere that causes some friction, or have opportunities to grow that they don't take on, etc.

Most problems in a Startup are product or distribution.

Most people who look down on lifestyle businesses often have the lifestyle to begin with, or are their… yet to be accomplished followers. It’s koolaid that can lose a decade of so many peoples lives. Anyone who looks down on lifestyle businesses should introspect on where it came from that it’s ok for them to look down kn another’s choices and personal formula. Not everyone has a safety net and building one for yourself let’s you really swing for the fences if you wanted. Or not.

Lots of business skills transfer from small business to big things.

All big things consist of small things.

Getting really good at small things is what makes you really good at big things instead of having the details to others.

Learning enough business skills before you need them means you can self fund though paid customer discoveries but being a well paid enough consultant. But that takes years to get really good at, and many times we don’t really consider if we’re going to love an area for the rest of our lives it’s going to be decades and not years. Having 5 figure monthly skills puts you on a very different and equal footing with investors who buy the time of people in their 20s like a toy. Others are much more conscientious. Anyone who wants to help you investment or not needs to bring more tot he table than money, specifically relationships that are meaningful to you.

How small, is there not just as much innovation and vision required to make an atom work compared to a molecule or something bigger?

Lots of things must be learned by learning to sit stand and walk before running. Entrepreneurship is a pretty harsh self development mirror.

Entrepreneurship is a marathon, as much as people feel it’s a sprint.

If founders take vc money save for angels, founders are almost guaranteed to be replaced as founder by a corporate type one day because founders usually don’t have or develop the business skills quickly enough.

Investment is not for the many, it is for the few. Most startups in all sectors are self funded. I feel this is one of the biggest sleights of hand for our time. Investment isn’t success either, it’s just a different kind of pressure to grow at any cost even if it’s not the right one or the one you might have picked had you waited a few months extra.

If you don’t want any investor to tell you when to go home, it’s often valuable to learn the difference between freelancing -> contracting -> consulting —> product. Lots of transferable skills the least of which is understanding jobs to be done.

You can benefit from a natural relentless curiousity and resourcefulness. Otherwise building a startup falls to being about tech and not learning how to build distribution.

Customers don’t care what you code in. Spending more time hanging around hanging out in online communities vs with customers and their pains is a red flag. Indiehackers is a great read, product hunt is nice too but none will replace doing the work that is hitting the streets and talking to elope face to face even if on video.

To the OP: It’s ok to go build other skills and often they will shed a more positive light on this time. You will discover you certainly have picked up a lot of valuable skills that others will pay for. That experience can uncover lots of needs that have no solution. Or, you may find something that you can do, and consider with a different perspective. You have value. You will add value. You will create value. You will continue becoming more well rounded.

> Customers don’t care what you code in.

Mostly true. I won’t be your customer if you use electron though.

Haha. I became a user of superhuman recently and have been thinking the same.

You’d might get stuck with Flutter instead :)

This is a million dollar comment - there is a lot in here that is right and is quite literally an insight on the path to creating millions of dollars of value.

- It is about building solid product and distribution at this stage, other stuff can wait

- If you can self-fund customer discoveries (essentially get people to pay you while teaching you about the market) you are 80% of the way there

- If you have nothing else, business skills plus an enormous amount of elbow grease will go a long way

That's my own personal lens on it anyway

Aw, thanks. glad it was useful. I do wish I didn’t write it from my phone. So many typos. :)

About creating millions in value, it really does compound, and it’s about capturing the value too.

I have self-funded customer discovery regularly, if they won’t buy a discovery, they probably probably won’t buy a solution. It’s ok to educate them, let them try to solve it on their own and then the good ones come back.

Getting investment can be super helpful though. I like knowing how’s to get 2-10x value out of each dollar. It helps with growing fast. Current recession likely makes it easier for me to raise investment in some ways.

I sometimes go out of my way to recommend everything but my own solution. It’s better when they connect the dots, and if they can’t.

Most B2B saas in time need a professional services division of some kind - so why not get the customer to pay for the sales cycle, as long as it might be. It’s an easier form of seeming the breakthrough. I hang out in Academia and other slow industries though sometimes and have to pass the time. It’s changing though thankfully.

Many customers want to pay to learn and get comfortable and build buy in to become a 10-20y customer.

Business skills get you in the room for conversations at the level of strategy and direction, way better than selling in. It’s great leaving management consultants making way more than you adding no value to the convo because they don’t get the fundamental shift in the business is doing the change not studying it.

Lots of people will say that’s not advisable to go this deep, and they might be right. I’ve found going deep on things leads to warm introductions to other people’s problems. Demonstrating care about someone else’s business done right does open doors. Doing things that doesn’t scale gets you access that doesn’t scale to the many.

I’ve recently come across an author by the name of April Dunford that made my add value first and awesome approach fell a little less alone, and special which is awesome. She is amazingly well written and spoken. Going to read more of her stuff in the next few months.

I accidentally closed a paid pilot over a lunch by making fun of all the software in my space including my own as the reason to refused to put it in place for him even though it would get him forward in the short term. He is a pioneer and because the future needs to be built in his world his tools have to be as well instead of doubling down on tech anchored the past.

I find most sales are the byproduct of trust in showing people how to navigate the information overload out there. It’s good to get the bad fits out of your hair, the rest more than make up for it. I’m going to try to make 2023 more vocal about being very different and see how it goes.

Couldn't agree more. I learned that the hard way. Building a business with a nice funding cushion and salary is way way way different than bootstrapping.

Edit: Timebox it. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Even with VC money, running a business is hard. Just look at all the VC-funded startups that go bust! The term lifestyle business is useful because it frames and contrasts a VC-funded business that must have explosive growth and then IPO or be bought out or else die, and a business that's fine just existing with no need to take over the world, ever. A lifestyle business is one that can be trusted because it didn't take VC funding; it doesn't have the dying need to sell out to Apple or Amazon or Google or Microsoft or Adobe or IPO.

I think they meant was that if one of these VC backed lifestyle businesses fails, the CxO guys running the show just shrug and go sink an other one, who cares.

VC-backed is mutually exclusive with being a lifestyle business. I could see if they just generically said rich, because yeah it's easier to be rich than poor in this world, but that's not what they said.

Even with VC money, running a business is very hard. Accepting VC money means you just sold a big chunk of your business to people who want to see it grow at maximum rate at any cost. Most won't blink an eye at burning out every single employee including the founders, for example.

Running a business is always hard and will always be hard, since it's a competitive activity against other humans who are also clever, hard-working and ambitious. Non-hardworking founders need an incredible niche or they will eventually be driven out by competitors who are just as smart but work harder.

You say this but but VCs are still quite limited in their control until about series C. Literally all the founders I know who have raised over $1m have pretty good lifestyles (house, car, frequent travel). It's worlds apart from the bootstrappers I know who remain frugal despite being profitable

> wihout plenty of VC money, building and running a business is hard

But..isn't that how it always worked?

>Most founders are still men from Ivies or Stanford.

That's the key part of the "entrepreneur" story the OP missed. From Gates over Zuckerberg to Musk, all these people were born rich, into well-connected families. If you do not belong to this ultra-privileged class of people, your chances of doing what they did is practically zero.

Indeed, this has been a topic of many discussions in the past and I do believe that connections and privilege form a more important factor in success than many would like to admit.

Connections, privilege, but also it's about personal net capital invested. Entrepreneurs with ordinary net worth are underdiversified, with a concentration in their own business. If you have high net worth, you have less exposure so the stakes are lower and you require a lower rate of return to compensate you for the risk (CAPM).

There's no way I wanted the pressure to run a business in my 20s. A decade or so later with a cushy job gives me the financial freedom to do this without the high risk of failure, since if it tanks I'll still have other investments. Most entrepreneurs are in their 40s apparently according to research.

If this were true, wouldn't the other side of that statement be true? Since all startups seem to be privileged white males - shouldn't they all succeed and have funding?

where did the previous poster say "white males"?

I think i was replying to a different comment, and accidentally placed it under this one.

Connections, where you were born, and where you go to school are also luck.

It's true that luck is a big factor. Every time you try something difficult, you're rolling the dice, and most outcomes are failure. However, there is a strategy you can apply to maximize your odds of success: position yourself so you can keep rolling the dice.

> A big fact of the entrepreneur world is that it is hugely based on luck. Luck of finding the right idea, the right market, the right timing, the right connections, the right customers, the right employees, the right financing.

This is not true!

I have seen successful business built from scratch by people who had no connections, no money and no privileged background (and no VC money). And I will say this for sure, it is lots of hard work and hustle. Luck comes to those who do these things first, it is not the other way round.

They were very lucky to succeed then. Entrepreneurship is so heavily weighted towards the wealthy, privileged, well-connected set.

> They were very lucky to succeed then.

The people I known are serial entrepreneurs, so this certainly is not luck. Yes, some ventures do not succeed, but then the company immediately pivots to things that are actually making money.

As I mentioned earlier, it is not easy. It is lot of hard work and hustle.

ive seen people that haven't so your point is invalid

See my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34106282

Completely agree. Am on my 3rd company, all of them have reached profitability fairly easily.

If you don't want to rely on luck, you have to work from the bottom. The VC, top down approach is very risky indeed, but a different game exists.

Finding people who have problems that could be solved through better software is not hard. Listen to them. Make their life easier. Generalize, improve, start selling to other people who have the same issues. Spot opportunities related to your market, your tech, your customers.

There is a ton of demand, especially at small/local scale. If you are efficient, a moderate amount of upfront work can provide ton of value to countless people. They will gladly pay for it, especially if they feel listened to.

How do you do that with no connections, no money and no privileged background ? Do you just cold message people asking what they need ?

Cold email is a hit and miss approach. Just go talk to people face to face. Initially it seems like a non-scalable approach but it works wonders. The silicon valley, VC preached mantra of hyper scale is what muddles the minds of most entrepreneurs. Everyone starts thinking of million of users rather than 100s of users. There is a very interesting presentation from YC startup school 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

You will recognise the speaker :)

I consider "just talk to people" to be in the "connections" category

Doesn't have to be. You can form connection with people who you don't know. But first you have to talk to them.

Where are you finding these customers?

May I ask what industries you’ve targeted?

Businesses or Customers?

> Where are you finding these customers?

Look around you. What problems do you see, for yourself or for others?

If you want to solve your own problem then that is easy. Then you have to look for other people in your circle (online and offline) who have this same problem and then charge them for that.

If you see someone else with a problem, then talk to them face to face to understand the real issue and whether they will pay. See if there are at least 5-10 people with this same problem, and you have some opening that will start a business.

After that you have to keep hustling to keep this growing. It is a hard slog, but that is how it actually works.

> May I ask what industries you’ve targeted?

Education and general SMEs.

> Businesses or Customers?

B2B, B2C and also B2B2C.

There is lots of hard work.

There is luck involved too.

It may not be obvious from the outside and may not require connections, coming from money.

Every successful startup and bootstrap story there are elements of being lucky.

The right idea at the right time has an element of luck.

Being featured in a major publication or website.

Meeting the right clients.

Hiring people with unknown connections or skills or just hiring the right people.

Even down too day to day operations, there are events that luckily happen. Catching a bug, calling a client at the right time, raising prices, choosing a new feature to roll out that brings product market fit.

There is definitely skills, planning, research and hard work.

But if you've worked for a startup you know there is an element of luck.

I've worked on/for dozens of indie/bootstrapped startups.

Currently employee #8, developer #2 at a funded startup.

Follow the dream, the journey is part of the fun, do it responsibly financially and take care of your mental health, take time for family and friends, have hobbies. It's not for everyone but most people can do it.

Don't become consumed by the entre-porn. This is a real problem. It's addicting and can easily affect your mental health.

I always recommend this talk for those interested in creating their own startup, still relevant today. Thanks @DHH. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

You are both right: hard work is a requirement. To make it really big (and sometimes to just make it), luck is a requirement as well.

A simple "proof" using logic is finding someone who worked really hard and failed (called a proof by contradiction): this is not hard, many have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it. Thus, hard work does not lead to success. But it does enable it.

Similarly, there are plenty of cases where someone was lucky but still blew it up (FTX anyone?). So just like with hard work, luck does not mean guaranteed success. It does, however, enable it.

> A simple "proof" using logic is finding someone who worked really hard and failed (called a proof by contradiction): this is not hard, many have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it.

That "hard work" you describe is missing the component of "smart work". If people "have worked really hard and don't have much to show for it", then that is not smart work. When I used the words "hard work" it implicitly includes smart work. Otherwise the person should not be an entrepreneur. If I start digging a hole in the hope that some how I will build a castle is not smart work. Hard work, definitely but not smart work.

When I used "hard work", I also meant "smart, hard work". Doh.

You also used "hustle", which is usually unrelated to "smart", and actually has negative connotations as well (as in a "hustler") — I did not take it as such because that wouldn't make sense. Again: doh!

It helps nobody to be overly pedantic instead of looking for the most reasonable interpretation of what you read.

At the end of the day, you as a person are a combination of luck. Your intelligence, hard-working personality, physical and mental health that allows you to even try. Things that you might have some effect on, but are mostly a lottery.

"Luck favours the prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur

Luck doesn't mean you didn't work hard. It's just that intangible that explains why 2 people can work and hustle the same amount and have differences in results.

One of the privileges people don't often think about is being able to afford to fail.

If you don't risk destitution after your startup fails, you can try and fail many times, learn and try again.

It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die.

One of the many reasons the rich get richer and the poor, well you know how it goes.

The average American watches 4 hours a day of TV.

Most startup founders work other jobs while building their project - if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job. But they're spending those four hours (and many, many more) on labors of love.

Sure, there are some trustfund kids who get to play founder and have the odds stacked in their favor, but that's neither the soul nor the joy of starting your own project. In my experience most of those types are miserable even in success.

The TV numbers are surely skewed by retirees?

Who built their billion dollar company while working a day job again?

Jeff Bezos, for example. Amazon was well on its way to product market fit and full validation that its gonna work by the time he quit his dayjob.

Same for Zuckerberg and school.

You don’t hit a billion dollars while having a dayjob. You validate the idea and approach work and can get you there.

Anthony Bourdain famously quit his job only when it had become absolutely impossible to keep alongside his public persona work because interviewers/journalists kept disrupting restaurant operations at his job.

If you have a billion dollar company there are better sources of entertainment than binge watching tv. I would assume half literate serfs are watching the most tv.

> if they can afford to fail, it's because they have that other job.

Citation needed. I’m quite sure that working a second job does not go down well with VCs. In most cases the networking required and high risk of failure is only achievable through having well-off parents.

Citation: I started two failed startups while working day jobs... and could afford for them to fail because I had solid work, despite the thousands of hours I had invested in them over years.

You can't really tell if something's possible if you begin by simply complaining it's impossible. Is the world rigged toward helping rich kids? Sure. But fools and their fortune are quickly separated. Using inequity as a basis for complaining and giving up before even trying is really the fastest road to bitterness... and it's not even a fair or knowledgeable take, since it doesn't come from true personal experience or personally failed attempts which are, if nothing else, highly educational.

This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

Unfortunately it's rarely discussed in society as such. The political parties that built these welfare states have traditionally been associated with worker unions, and entrepreneurship isn't high on their agenda. The Nordic right-wing parties got ideologically married to Thatcher-style neoliberalism and prefer to yammer endlessly about tax cuts instead of thinking about how the welfare foundation can help entrepreneurship.

Fortunately there are some successful people who talk about this. For example in Finland the Supercell founders (gaming company with $10B exit) have been emphasizing the importance of the welfare structures for enabling entrepreneurship opportunities.

My intuition is that effective entrepreneurs generally have a strong conviction that they won't fail, and in any case wouldn't want to fall back on taxpayers if they did. They will also disproportionately be averse to paying social democratic tax rates once they, in their mind, inevitably succeed.

This doesn't strike me as something inherently part of entrepreneurship in a world-wide context, but rather something particular to anglo saxon countries, and especially Americans which are big on neoliberal ideology. Americans are also the most anti-government of any people I know.

The Netherlands is split in this I think, but the entrepreneurs I know are nothing like this. They appreciate the safety net and often happily pax taxes, its more that they hate the labour involved. And everybody I speak to has acutely aware of the possibility of failure. Maybe its my circle though, there are also more radical libertarians in my country, but they are a rarity.

My view, from the U.S., is that most founders want to make it on their own and keep the returns close to the vest (aka "low taxes).

The risks are too high to found a company for little payoff.... and most founders that exit already pay a significant tax on exits (even when they are structured to reduce tax). Entrepreneurship is too hard of a game to put up with the mental and work grinding for a decade for small returns. Everyone focuses on the "money" a founder may make (with heavy survivorship bias) - but don't focus on the high probability of losing years, or a decade, of lost revenue and social life if a company fails.

HN is filled with want-trapreneurs who are mis-guided about the game they're entering.

Is "my intuition" a euphemism for "I've read an Ayn Rand novel"?

It's funny, I read that as a retelling of John Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaires" quote, not as a Randian Just So story. Being averse to paying tax isn't a desirable quality in a person.

I personally think being opposed to high rates of taxation is a desireable quality in a person but that was orthogonal to my hunch, which I was trying to present as neutrally as possible, with no value judgment. The parent comment is unnecessarily inflammatory.

Travis Kalanick (Uber's founder) collected unemployment while working on his startup.

Oasis (and lots of other British bands) got dole money while honing their craft. I think it's one of the reasons Britain tended to hit above it's weight in the 80s/90s.

Flip side of the welfare state is the heavy tax burden.

Heavily progressive income tax makes it harder for individuals to accumulate capital for enterprenial endeavours, be it their own or investing in others'. This limits early stage investments and growth.

Also, there are limited incentives in investing in careers and productivity as net income is surprisingly similar in lowest 10% and highest 10% income earners.

Their tax rates are only a few percentage points different from ours. I think the difference is that we funnel 20% of it to the military (2% for Norway) and their tax code probably has fewer loopholes for the rich to exploit.

Their total tax burdens are much higher than US citizens' tax burdens unless you're making 7 figures of W-2 income. The top marginal tax rate kicks in an order of magnitude lower in those countries, and hits most of the middle class. In the US, it hits very few people.

Also, the military is 20% of the discretionary budget, but 10% or less of the total budget.

For a full picture factor in outgoings for world class health and education per person (and other benefits that are free | much cheaper than US); these are very low cost for individuals and offset higher taxes by offering better value for money.

If this is indeed the case, shouldn't there be an influx of skilled professional and entrepreneur immigrants into all of these nordic welfare states?

Something doesn't quite add up, as there's appears to be a constant shortage of such talent.

Sweden actually is one of the favourite destinations for immigrants.

Perhaps high skilled ones would prefer a country with better climate ... :-)

"World class" health and education brings you some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world[1]. Doubling Canada's rate and adding a bit more really screams world class.

You do pay out the ass for it though so good job making someone rich I guess? Shame about all the dead babies though[2].

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/283221/per-capita-health... [1] https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality... [2] https://www.americashealthrankings.org/learn/reports/2019-an...

> "World class" health and education brings you some of the worst maternal mortality rates in the developed world ...

Just to be clear, I was referring to the Nordic countries, Australia, better performing OECD countries, etc and not referring to the US.

Your links bear out my position, that US "free market | low taxes" approach doesn't deliver good outcomes for the masses.

Indeed! Forgive me, I misinterpreted your earlier post to be claiming that the "low cost" of US healthcare offsets the "high taxes" of comparable countries.

For comparable benefits per citizen, the US are prohibitively expensive.

The argument that other countries might be technically higher in taxes will remain moot so long as in the US, needing an ambulance could mean years of financial hardship if you're not sufficiently well off. The same goes for lodging, food safety, etc.

You haven’t accounted for health insurance, college education, and possibly retirement.

Once you add those in, the Nordics still pay a bit more, but not by the margin you might expect.

The US government provides retirement benefits, including healthcare at retirement. You are not required to pay for college, and you can go to a cheap school if you want.

When I at one point considered moving to the US, I did the numbers for UK and Norway, because I'm from Norway and live in the UK, and while Norway certainly came out higher in terms of tax than some US states, comparing with places I might be prepared to consider, like California, the difference was small enough it'd be more than eaten up by health insurance before considering the other costs of a reduced welfare system (e.g. needing a far bigger cushion in case of unemployment, far higher childcare costs etc.)

Your mileage will of course vary a lot depending on specifics, and especially which US states you compare with.

Yes, it is remarkably hard to come up with a US tax rate, because in single-payer healthcare countries your healthcare is covered. Here, how much do you pay? I couldn't even begin to guesstimate.

While you could probably find cheaper places to live in the US than California, and therefore find much more agreeable tax rates, it's not that easy. Culture varies a lot in the US. I love the South, but a some folks would rather drink poison than live there.

And you can't forget property taxes. These vary at the county or city level and can be quite significant. And, just for fun, they generally pay for the public schools, which depending on where you are may be abysmally awful, so now your "tax rate" includes stumping for private school, which could be the equivalent to a year's salary in some Nordic countries.

Health care in the US is effectively a corporate tax and should be labelled as such.

If you want to compare the real costs and benefits of starting a business you need to compare like for like, which includes all national, state, and privatised taxes and other indirect costs.

When you include those the reality-based answer is that the US fares relatively poorly.

Which is why the US has a more aggressive VC sector. Whether by accident or design start-ups are forced to look for outside funding far earlier, and bootstrapping is far harder.

The result is more of a monoculture that chases unicorns and less of a vibrant sector of independent small and medium businesses, some of which will grow into unicorns naturally.

US total government spending is officially 34% of total GDP, Germany is 43.7%. With much of that covering healthcare and collage education which more than makes up the difference for the median family. In the end, the US’s extreme defense spending and horrifically inefficient healthcare system is a massive drag on the economy.

What the US does differently from most of the EU is to hide as much spending as possible in the form of targeted tax breaks. From a cash flow perspective little changes but from a political standpoint it’s not spending.

US military spending is 4% of GDP. When a warmonger is president, that goes up to about 6% of GDP. The NATO commitment is 2% of GDP. It is not particularly extreme.

The real drag is the US healthcare system, which effectively finances most of the medical R&D for the US, India, South America, and Europe, and also provides ridiculous levels of treatment for people who are about to die (in comparison to other health systems). There is also the US social security system, which seems to be very inefficient at best...

Officially it’s $1.64 Trillion in 2022 on defense vs ~23.4 Trillion GDP or 7% GDP. https://www.usaspending.gov/agency/department-of-defense?fy=... You can see different numbers based on if you include stuff like the DoE spending on nuclear weapon ‘stewardship’ or only parts of the coast guard, national guard, VA etc.

US healthcare spending hardly subsidizes the rest of the world. Paperwork and insurance overhead don’t magically turn into R&D money. Litigation, malpractice insurance, excessive testing etc is just waste.

At best ~12% of US healthcare spending is for retail drugs, but it’s not that relevant globally when you consider how much US companies are spending on advertising vs R&D. Which is then compounded by how much more expensive US drug trials are.

That's the budget. The actual outlays are less than $1 billion. Around 3-4% for the last few years.

The only way outlays are under 1 Trillion is if you ignore a great deal of defense spending. A classic trick is to hide future obligations like pensions and other benefits from current spending numbers, but if you need to hand out a pension to get people to work for you then obviously you should include either current spending in past obligations or the amount of additional obligations your adding this year as spending.

So yes, you can get imaginary defense costs to ~4%, but I ask you where is the coast guard, national guard, DoE, or VA’s budget here? “The budget funds five branches of the U.S. military: the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_... Some might argue the national guard isn’t defense spending but we sent 250,000 guard members to Iraq and the guard is fielding F-35’s.

I will acknowledge some some outliers like the United States Border Patrol, while it’s job is literally defending the border it probably shouldn’t be included in defense spending.

PS: It gets even sillier, not that long ago we where hiding the cost of the Iraq war from defense spending numbers.

Burden? If the substrate/infrastructure you're playing in is maintained by our tax money, count your blessings and work to build trust in a system that, as others in this thread have already said, helps set everyone up to more-safely fail and grow. No one person is so important that we need to cultivate philanthropists. I'd far rather we collectively decide what to do with wealth generated from natural resources (all the way up to human resources). We can do better than the relatively few wealthy people with the means and inclination to give back.

The question is, how do we build a stronger representative government in the United States (where I live) when we're so divided and distrusting? Having a common enemy might work, but it can't be another group of people to go to war with. Might need to be the metaphorical devil(s) on our shoulders, and for that we need good mental health training from a young age, which now, given how broken and dispersed so many family groups are, requires tax money guided by science and wisdom.

You and I are here but a moment. The bleeding edge of life will quickly pass us by, and the positive impact I am most proud of is the love and care I give to future generations, human and otherwise.

He's saying the heavy tax burden drains capitol accumulation. Too generous benefits prohibits the filtering mechanism built into markets that stops a society's resources from being drained into unproductive resources. Not ideal, but advocates of near universal welfare support do not seem to have a good answer to this problem.

The taxation part is a burden no matter the outcome. It’s not optional, it’s a duty as a citizen to give a chunk of your money to the government. That is the load we are obligated to bear - a burden.

Also, you’re romanticizing what happens with tax money. When a major portion of it is going to a military I have no say in, I don’t get warm fuzzy feelings contributing my portion to the feds.

> how do we build a stronger representative government in the United States (where I live) when we're so divided and distrusting?

You’re assuming the conclusion here. Many people want a much weaker federal government and your question can be rephrased as “how do we make the anti-government people go away?”

Early stage investment is usually paying below-market salaries of entrepreneurs — that is, doing exactly what the government would, except the government doesn’t take a big cut of your startup.

Additionally, the government doesn’t require you to network with the right people, come from the right subculture, etc.

Do you want your “taxes” to go to the needy or the wealthy? Because in startups angel investors are capturing bigger percentages of the capital from your labor than the government.

In Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands, and Sweden, the income distribution ratio[0] of the total income earned by the top 20% of earners vs the bottom 20% of earners is about ~4x. Denmark has a personal income tax rate of 56% [1]

Best data I could find[2] after a quick google on USA puts income distribution ratio around 5.2x, so not much of a substantial difference in gross income disparity vs USA at the 20th/80th percentiles. Personal income tax rate is about 37%[3], so certainly USA lets you keep more of your paycheck than Denmark.

So high earners in US are making ~20% more than their peers in Denmark relative to the bottom 20% in their respective countries, and folks in the US pay ~20% less tax as well.

Certainly it's a notable difference but we're not talking orders of magnitude here, especially since the above math doesn't account for all of the benefits that higher tax rate brings, both tangible and intangible.

However, when we're talking in absolute numbers, most Danes out-earn most Americans. The median wage in the US is ~$52k [4] vs Denmark at ~$72k [5], which closes the gap even more.

I suspect there are significant differences and outliers at the extremes however, and that is likely where most of the VC money lives - whether we're talking about angel investors dropping >$100k or VCs spending millions on pre-revenue companies. I'd wager we're well into the top 1% of earners in the US doing the funding. This is the most likely explanation to account for the differences in early stage investments and growth opportunities you described above, imho.

[0] https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/income-distribution-eur...

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/denmark/personal-income-tax-rat...

[2] https://dqydj.com/average-median-top-household-income-percen...

[3] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-income-t...

[4] https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/united-states

[5] https://www.averagesalarysurvey.com/denmark

The issue is who pays for the welfare state. Finland got a lot of its wealth through off sea oil I think. Not easy to replicate in almost every part of the world. If you make the population pay for the welfare state, you are essentially robbing Peter to pay Paul. The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce.

This is one reason the energy Windfall taxes being proposed everywhere seem ludicrous to me. If you tax energy producers at a high marginal rate, they will actually be disincentivized from producing a lot of energy. This is basic economics/human nature.

Norway got rich off oil, Finland isn't especially rich afaik.

Norway, not Finland.

>The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce.

Sure, the thought of being worth only 150 billion dollars rather than 300 would stop Bezos from starting Amazon.

Bezos would not have kept Amazon in the US if it adopted Nordic welfare levels of taxation.

The fact of the matter is that the EU has a staggeringly low output when it comes to tech innovation compared to the US. Their policies and regulations shape this.

...and lots of other factors, like access to risk capital.

The US is prized because of its large market… not because it’s a tax dodge. The US dan cut off access to any company unwilling to pay local taxes just like how China forces any foreign company wanting to tap into its large market to give majority control to a local entity.

The EU is a large market too but startup founders aren't going there.

EU has a market on legislative base, however in language, culture, ... it is split. It is very hard to build a company serving larger parts of Europe.

Many American companies have done it. Instagram is very popular across the EU.

They started with an American focus, holding doors open for others and once things were running expanded more actively. Also they were acquired after 1.5 years when not even having a Android app, which is more spread in Europe than US compared to iphone

The US is absolutely a tax dodge because of low capital gains taxes and low corporate tax rates.

Marginal personal income tax rates, which is what others keep comparing here, are only relevant for wage earners.

It's all relative isn't it? Singapore is a tax dodge, but I would't characterize low corporate income taxes as a tax dodge. How does one get money out of a corporation if not via marginal personal income tax rates?

Long term capital gains.

Can you elaborate?

I looked up taxation in Norway, it looks very similar to ours. Personal marginal tax rates cap at 48% and corporate taxes are 23%. What am I missing?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Norway

It has nothing to do with taxation - or else the Arab Gulf or Cayman Islands would be entrepreneurial hubs, not California or the Toronto area. It’s all about the price of quality labour. It’s about access to long-term risk capital (aka venture funds) + high quality labour at affordable prices. As in, entrepreneurs having cash to fund projects and being able to actually hire people that will help build them. Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway: your hourly cost would probably blow up. The low-tax destinations are the place billionaires go to park their wealth, not create it (for example, outside of Tech Nordic billionaires move to Switzerland after they get rich)

> Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway: your hourly cost would probably blow up.

Depends what you’re comparing to. Total comp for great engineers in Oslo is lower than for their peers in Silicon Valley.

Total cost to the company may not be. Employees are costlier to the companies in Europe.

Also you get really great engineers in norway, something about the lack of light, cold, snowy eternal night, produces excellent devs. Lots of fantastic open source projects exist due to the vikings no longer using boats..

>" Try hiring a hundred software engineers in Norway"

They're not particularly cheap in the US either. Toronto might be better but hi-tech salaries are going up as well.

You can get 100s of SWE in Poland (or Ukraine pre-war) way cheaper than US, yet extreme cases of tech startups like FAANGs will never happen because market is too small.

You’re missing the wealth tax. 1.1% of global wealth, including unrealized gains of startup share positions.

https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/wealth-tax/

I know a lot of founders whose companies are allegedly worth a lot on paper, but cash on hand is very limited.

I wonder how the wealth tax actually works. Do I want people to invest in my company if that's just going to increase the valuation and my tax bill? Surely there must be some exceptions...

This year, quite many have actually chosen to move from Norway to Switzerland, probably due to taxes

Not a problem for a startup surely, they have debts not wealth.

You need to look at the entire spectrum of direct, indirect and near-taxes. A couple of examples: VAT of 15-25% on almost everything. With social security contributions a maximum marginal tax rate on labour of more than 50%. Norway is actually pretty efficient and by far the best of the region compared with other countries but also massively subsidized with north sea oil money.

Can confirm. Lived a very frugal early retirement lifestyle in Austria because it was practically impossible to build wealth (high taxes, comparatively very low tech salaries, little entrepreneurial support/incentives).

Moving to the US I was able to 5-6x my income (from what I could have realistically made) , while reducing my tax burden by 15 percentage points, and so I've been happily living a workaholics' lifestyle since.

Looking back, it really boggles my mind how much engineering potential is squandered in Europe. You'd have to be an idiot to want to work hard given how raw of a deal you are getting (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!) and people understand that intuitively (hence pushing for ever fewer work hours or even days because what else is there if your salary is essentially capped and you quickly hit a 50 % tax rate (when combining income tax and social security) for every additional hour worked).

</rant>

Not all of Europe runs on a 50% tax rate though. My tax rate as company director in the United Kingdom is somewhere around 25%, and I can afford higher salaries than the rest of Europe while still enjoying the basic safety net of public health care.

But I'm originally from Italy, and the tax rate is exorbitant down there as well, with ridiculously low salaries.

You do you, but there is more to life than gross income from your employer. This is why I'd rather stay in this continent.

I'll be lucky if I can afford a single family home after 20 years of software engineering in the US. halfway there now, we'll see. Moving to a senior position has helped but I feel like a lot of people forget that the compensation in SV is not normal in other places.

SV is an outlier in both income and housing costs.

Here in DC metro, a mid-career developer should be able to afford a home without much trouble. Many of the best jobs are well outside the city (Tysons to Ashburn corridor) where housing costs aren’t terrible.

> (work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!)

I really don't understand this take. Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe? If you are employed, our work is not risky, doesn't consume all your energy or your time, and so on.

I fully understand the _economics_ behind our salaries, but I am more than happy to give 45% of it to the society as a whole, so also who cannot afford the economy of scale (e.g., nurses, teachers), can still have a decent life.

I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

The average Joe in American can earn many times more than an engineer in the EU

The average Joe in the US earns $60-70k, same as an average software engineer in the EU.

The difference is not that US workers earn more on average, but that being an engineer doesn’t make you automatically rich in Europe like it does in tbe USA.

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

What if we worded this in a different way: "I have a skill which is more in demand than the skills of 95% of the population"

And this is why I say that I understand the economics behind it.

Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

So, while I am able to earn more, I am happy to share part of it with the society as a whole, and this is why I am happy about my level of taxes, compared to the services provided.

There are wastes? Of course there are! So many! But the solution to "governments waste money" is not "less money to the governments", is "more accountability".

This is of course my view of the world, but I still haven't found anybody that explains why my job deserves to be in the top 5% earner in my country, apart from being just a consequence of the fact that my job scales to billions of users due its very nature (that is completely inconsequential from the choices I have made), while other jobs have physical limits and they don't scale.

On a practical level you probably did work/study harder, do something more special, had more resources, been luckier than the vast majority of the population; that's why you're in the position you occupy.

On a more ideological level it feels like you're looking for some sort of moral or "greater truth" behind the economics, but I'm not sure it's there. You've shared your personal beliefs and motivations, and seem to have lots of conviction to guide yourself, so why ask someone else to convince you there's a deeper cause? Just use your results to act how YOU want to impact the outcomes of others.

>Still, it doesn't mean I _deserve_ a high salary: I totally get why I get it, but I don't work harder, or studied harder, or really did anything more special than 95% of the population.

I don't think any other (widely popular) work occupies so much of a one's mind as software engineering.

> I really cannot grasp the individualism about "I know how to write code, I deserve a better life than 95% of the population".

You're missing something here. You can omit the first sentence. People already believe they deserve a better life than 95% of the population, even without being able to code specifically.

That's... illuminating. Really. It's a sad take, but could completely be true.

It's not "I am a engineer, thus I deserve to have more", it's "I deserve more, what part of my life can I use to say this?".

But I don't think it's sad. The desire to have more for ourselves and our children (why else would they be talking about buying a family home?) is a large part of the reason why living standards keep rising.

If everyone desires to be above average and strives to produce more, earn more, then over time the average will rise. This is good.

Because we are the gateway to exponential free work. Program once, run on x machines, supply all 8 billions with a service, for defacto nothing. From these hands flows cornucopia..

Just because the nano machinery is invisible, doesent mean it cant spin great things from nothing. Half the giants you see today, were nothing one generation ago.

Not OP but I think if you're gonna earn an average salary then tech is a pretty bad choice due to the constant shifting base of knowledge, lack of security (dot com type bubbles) and ageism prevalent in the industry. Being something like a government worker or teacher makes much more sense then. And unsurprisingly, in Europe a huge part of GDP is created by the government. Software developer roles in Europe are dominated by immigrants for much of the same reason - locals don't see these jobs as such a lucrative career path.

> Why so many engineers feel entitled to have more than the average working Joe ?

Above average investments (time , effort & money) have a natural feeling of entitlement for above average returns.

Cost of getting an engineering degree of value is nowhere near any "average" degree.

Recent years have driven the median cost up and the median returns down. Hence the laments about "college is not worth it"

>You'd have to be an idiot to want to work hard given how raw of a deal you are getting

Yeah sorry I can't fly to another country because I'm not satisfied with -only- a family home.

I agree with your point about Europe squandering engineering talent.

Overall, it's a trade-off, though. You are right about the US opportunities, but there are downsides, too:

- crime (you get crime everywhere, but the US has a particularly and unnecessarily high level of serious crime like gun crime - e.g. school shootings happen pretty regularly);

- not everyone has good healthcare & social services (I am aware you will not personally be exposed to that, as you will have private healthcare; but it even bothers me if people around me are ill and cannot afford to get cured. I don't want to live somewhere where I can get a regular check at the Mayo clinic and my neighbor cannot afford their emergency dentist);

- low average education level (people generally don't know much of the world, history, literature).

- cultural life (theater, classical music etc.) is very uneven distributed.

Also, US taxation isn't that low in general, it dramatically depends on the state you live in (TX 0% state tax versus NY, MN etc. >40%).

There are places in Europe that have small tax rates (CH, LU), but they are not the best places to live for everybody. Everyone needs to weigh their priorities and match with the overall "package" (e.g. Canada is a good compromise: near-US salaries but Europe-like education of the general public) - and in any case, not everyone is free to leave where they currently reside.

Austria in particular has rather low salaries (but also low rents) - but places like Vienna have a magic feel to it that just doesn't exist on other continents. In comparison, in neighboring Switzerland are very high (anyone with a tech Master's degree would be on a six digits salary), but with a huge salary gap between locals and expats for doing the same job.

(I have lived in the UK, US, CH and DE.)

All the problems you listed as US-specific problems exist in my corner of Europe too, except gun violence. And on top of that we have fewer jobs, lower salaries, higher taxes and high unemployment.

I love Europe: its history, its music, its art, its architecture, its legacy - yes! the good and the bad -, its food, its cultures. But from my point of view we are killing ourselves, choked in an endless decay, metastasizing bureaucracy, and never-ending hopelessness.

I'm sure the Nordic Country are happy though, and that's the problem: American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best of our continent.

> American tend to compare the worst of their country with the best

Everyone does that. There seems to be a type of bragging that works by emphasizing how much more dangerous one's own country/state/town/village is than someone else's.

>work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!

If you're lucky. The salaries in my country are so abysmal that nobody in my generation can buy a house: the only one with houses inherited them or have rich parents.

I feel like this is somewhat misguided

> and so o I've been happily living a workaholics' lifestyle since.

That is one key aspect. I'm not a workaholic and most other people aren't either. I do somewhat enjoy my work, but I work to pay for my live, not the other way around. I make a decent salary and work 35h/week with 36 days of vacation. I do pay a lot of taxes, but I live in a city with pretty good and affordable public transit, I got my university education for free (okay, I admit, I paid a total of 600€ for my bachelors), etc.

In a well governed country, you don't only pay taxes but also receive something in return.

> work for almost 2 decades as an engineer just so you can afford the average one family home - what a joke!

This isn't necessarily a result of high taxes, its also a result of Europe being much denser populated than the US (or Australia), limiting the supply side for construction land. The kind of the construction also plays a role, the average newly built European home is substantially more solidly constructed than the reference in the US.

> hence pushing for ever fewer work hours or even days because what else is there if your salary is essentially capped

Have you ever considered that many people would much rather have more free time than more money? Beyond a certain level, increased income doesn't correlate with increased happiness/wellbeing. Where this level is certainly depends, but it is much lower than many people anticipate.

"Consumer tech" like social media. And the reason is 30+ different smaller markets, because this business makes little sense if you can't capture 100s of millions of users.

Your taxes shouldn’t be based on where your HQ is but rather where your customers are.

Please go file your taxes in 37 different countries with different regulations where your customers are.

You will bankrupt from your accountants’ bills.

Amazon doesn't make profits and thus doesn't pay taxes. Bezos doesn't sell much and thus doesn't pay taxes either. Changing rates wouldn't change anything. Tax rates only affect the middle class, and as @jliptzin has pointed out, those tax rates are quite similar.

The EU has a lower output because there are fewer investors. One successful startup creates wealth in the hand of knowledgeable people who can create the next startup. There are simply not thousands of millionaires and billionaires who can successfully pick the next round. There is also less of a network effect where venture capitalists can offer their portfolio as leads for the sales teams of their new investments.

The Nordic welfare levels can turn out to be the path to European success. It's easier to start an idea when failure doesn't end in an existential crisis.

1. Finland doesn't have oil, you're mistaking it for Norway.

2. Progressive taxation is the basis on which the best places to live were built. This is an empirical observation, make of that what you will, but it's strange to give your gut feelings of "basic economics / human nature" more weight than objective reality.

3. Why do is the word "rob" applied to taxation? Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation. Your current life is only possible because you are inserted in a society, it's only far you have a debt to pay society back.

You should visit Tokyo. Japan spends very low on welfare.

Oh yeah the salaryman life sounds fantastic /s

what is your definition of welfare?

>!Without the state to at least enforce laws, enforce property rights, and physically protect you, there wouldn't even be any wealth creation.

This is the kind of minimalist state that libertarians would agree to. People talk about robbery when the state is spending money on arbitrary things.

Arbitrary? Or just things they don't agree with?

Arbitrary in the sense of non-essential things that governments spend other people’s money on.

The fact that most people don’t agree is why tax is taken by force.

That's not what arbitrary means. The fact that someone is spending on something non-essential doesn't make that spending arbitrary. Lipstick is non-essential but that doesn't mean the spending on it is arbitrary.

I'm quite confident that a lot of thought goes into pretty much all government spending, even if a proportion is misguided, counter productive, and non-essential.

> Your current life is only possible because you are inserted in a society, it's only far you have a debt to pay society back.

Sure, but at some point it starts to sound abusive, like a narcissistic parent telling their child that they and not the little child owns their accomplishments, because without them the child would not have existed.

The state, at least in the US, is supposed to work for you, the people. The burden of proof is on the state if it wants to tax more and expand itself. It needs to justify every penny of the taxpayer's money it spends. It simply cannot take the position that everyone's output is by default a debt owed to it, and by its grace alone are the people allowed to keep some of it. That's the talk of the divine right of kings.

This comment distorts what is happening by using the word "robbing". Why not "supporting"?

Perhaps Peter has earned his cash by working really hard. But perhaps not, perhaps he just exploited other people to hustle his way up some corporate food chain.

This type of thinking is pure toxin because it essentially reinforces exactly what you don't want.

If Peter did in fact work hard and now he's stripped of the results of his labor while being told that probably he only managed to accumulate capital because he was just exploiting others, what incentive landscape does that create.

Is a lot of profit a function of factors much less commendable than creating value for others? Sure. But by lumping in the productive people with the parasites, you are undermining those people who deserve your protection the most.

Nobody, at least in the US system, gets very wealthy just by working hard.

At the very least, you have to start out with wealth or a strong support system (which is down to luck in your input conditions), or get fantastically lucky in your first(-ish) attempt at starting something.

Then, if you want to make the kind of money that, say, Bezos or Musk makes, you have to make the kinds of decisions that many of us simply would never make, because they're morally reprehensible. I wrote another comment about this [0] on an article about a week ago, but basically, in the very best case scenario, once you're past the point where more money would make no material difference in a healthy lifestyle (which is going to happen, at the very latest, somewhere in the millions), if you're using the excess to make yourself more money, rather than help improve other people's lives, you are being selfish at a level that makes you effectively indistinguishable from evil.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34013858

Nobody anywhere gets very wealthy just by working hard. Otherwise the world would be filled with millionaire janitors.

> if you're using the excess to make yourself more money, rather than help improve other people's lives, you are being selfish at a level that makes you effectively indistinguishable from evil.

If you're using your business to create value for millions of people, you are in fact improving millions of lives by the amount of value created. If you capture a little bit of that value for yourself and become fantastically rich, good for you and good for the system that enabled this whole thing. Even better for you if you decide to give some of it away, but to call you evil if you don't? I suppose your own belt could be tightened a bit more so that you could give more away?

Other than what arises from rent-seeking behavior, profit is not inherently immoral.

If you use your business to make life easier for millions of people, that's good.

If you take enough profit to make billions of dollars for yourself, that's bad.

Because no one person (or family) can ever realize anything resembling a proportionate benefit from that money, all you're doing is raising your dollar-denominated high score, at the expense of all the other people you could be helping more if you invested that money back in your business, or paid it in taxes, or invested in other local businesses, or any of a thousand other ways to make it work for the world instead of just being a selfish Number Go Up for you.

When someone becomes rich through this path, they aren't rolling around with a billion dollars in a vault Scrooge McDuck style. Almost all of their wealth that isn't taxed is already tied in their own business or in investments in other businesses, so they're already doing the things that you say will make it work for the world. Even the little bit of liquid money they keep in the bank is loaned out to other profit-seeking entrepreneurs.

Once again, profit is not immoral. It serves as an important signal for capital to be directed in the value-creation cycle that ends up producing wealth for everyone. In the words of Isabel Paterson: "Production is profit; and profit is production. They are not merely related; they are the same thing. When a man plants potatoes, if he does not get back more than he put in, he has produced nothing."

You are saying that if a man who planted potatoes harvests them and keeps some for himself above and beyond what he needs to subsist, he is evil. I'm really not sure how you justify that position.

> You are saying that if a man who planted potatoes harvests them and keeps some for himself above and beyond what he needs to subsist, he is evil. I'm really not sure how you justify that position.

I don't, because that's not what I'm saying.

If you actually read my post, I did not say that taking any profit was evil. I said taking enough profit to make you a billionaire was evil.

The scale of what it takes to become a billionaire is absolutely mind-boggling. I might, if I am lucky, make enough in my lifetime to have a million dollars saved up.

I would have to work a thousand of those lifetimes to get a billion dollars.

And yes; someone who is a billionaire keeps that money in stocks and things, and it's true that it's not just a pile of cash...but that doesn't actually mean that it's usefully "in the economy". It's still theirs. (And remember, unless you buy it as part of a direct issuance from the company, buying stock doesn't actually put more money in their pocket.)

Peter Thiel is a really good example of using a loophole in law, to make fantastic wealth using his Roth account.

Full story here: https://www.propublica.org/article/lord-of-the-roths-how-tec...

Pure toxin is a bit harsh, no?

I can tell you what kind of incentives such a system promotes: different ones!

In particularly a welfare system gives incentives to people who want to create something out of intrinsic motivation, not because of financial motivation. Many of the things the most profitable companies use are actually but on tools and mathematics that were created without any financial freedom.

So I would rather reserve the word "toxic" rather for the current system consisting of purely financial motivation to hoard money that your are so vigorously defending.

the UK (used) to have a reasonably comprehensive welfare net, and has a larger number of companies per capita compared to the USA.

One of the things that are never really discussed in these kind of things is that you are already paying for welfare, its just not even. Poverty leads to crime, which costs you, either in lost property, crap neighbourhoods, or in insurance.

whose issue is that??

unlike the US you can just leave and not pay.

it seems to me people outside countries with decent welfare have all of the issues?

something like give me private jets or let me starve by the side of the road, nothing in between must exist.

i actually enjoy paying for people playing video games all day while smoking weed and getting drunk while businesses scream how they cant find employees. Specially the combi self centered and assholes really cant find anyone anymore.

You have to pay what it costs to hire people. If the offer isn't competitive with not working you are going to have to pay more.

Long term employees are also leaving for better jobs.

ill gladly pay for the transition back to sanity.

That’s easy. The hugely successful entrepreneurs that have been able to start their business due to the welfare state contribute back by paying taxes on their success. I’m a decently successful saas-founder, and I don’t mind paying taxes on my profits. I don’t view it as being robbed. I view it as contributing back to the system that backed me.

Also, banks should chip in a lot more than they do. They’re basically printing money and should be taxed harder.

> The people you rob (the ones paying the bulk of taxes) have a lower incentive to produce.

And yet when the top tax rate was 96%, Americans still produced.

When I was 12, I was impressed by Atlas Shrugged, but by the time I was 17 I realized it was ludicrous.

Most wealthy Americans were never paying 96% in taxes, if any at all. There were many more loopholes during this time.

People are forgetting that the high tax countries are enjoying the fruits of lower-tax countries labor.

Technology and drugs are the big ones. Big, evil companies create life-saving drugs and generics are created and sold for pennies to these countries.

With no incentive to create (ie: large profits), humans will definitely not advance.

Money is also freedom. The less we are able to keep, the less free we become (and more dependent on the government/state).

They pay for it by spending the money - which induces higher production, higher sales - and higher taxes without ever changing the tax percentage.

There isn't a fixed amount of stuff, nor a fixed amount of money. Otherwise turnover, ie GDP, would never rise.

Don't get your stocks and flows mixed up.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/03/welfare...

I come from the game development world and this is one of the reasons (in my opinion) why there are so many solid independent game makers that come from the Nordics.

Unfortunately another component of the Nordic model that makes it work is that everybody trusts the government. This is what makes the Nordic model hard to translate to other settings in my opinion.

They're high trust societies in general, partially because they're small monocultures. As Robert Putnam's research shows, in multicultural societies, especially large ones, trust rapidly declines, surprisingly even within cultural groups. Trust in government falls even more rapidly as each group starts to perceive those in power as being more favorable to one group or another, even if those in power are from their own cultural group.

"High trust" seems entirely contradictory to Danish society. Universal skepticism and a universal dislike for every other human in existence are the core ideologies here.

Maybe a tendency to not interfere with tasks assigned to others to avoid having to deal with people is being misinterpreted as trust?

The data suggest that the Danes are very trusting, but they may not be measuring what you experience: https://ourworldindata.org/trust

No. My Norwegian colleagues trust that they will receive healthcare. They trust that their representatives in the government are acting more or less in good faith. They trust that money in the government is going towards protections and services and infrastructure. And if you look around in Norway, you can generally get the feeling that the government is taking care of things.

Go to America and it seems like the country is a decayed husk wrapped in gold. Roads are barely functional. Schools do not educate children. Each day there is a new story about a politician who is corrupt either through insider trading, being a pedo, or whatever. The government of America does not appear to do things for Americans.

Thus, it's easy to see why you can trust the government in Norway but not in America to me.

Exactly... it's the mono-culture and relatively small population and distances that allow this to work relatively well. If the US actually reverted closer to the original Confederation it was started as, each state could possibly do these things, but as a whole, it's really hard... and becomes ever more divisive... At this point, largely, only corporate interests feeding both sides seem to get anything done.

But don't you know that the only reason people want to have more control over their own lives and influence state politics is to be racist? That is why we must entrust the federal government with more and more power to run everything (with the help of The Experts™, who all happen to go to the same few schools).

No it's not. Norway overall is 75% ethnic Norwegian with the rest being immigrants. Oslo the capital is only 50% ethnic Norwegian. It's very strange to me to identify Norway as monoculture. Usually i think the person has never been to Norway when they say that.

How many of those immigrants are allowed to vote? The US, by contrast has a massive amount of immigrant populations, multiple generations in with varied backgrounds, over a massively larger scale of both population and land mass. My high school didn't have a majority from any single racial group.

Americans really think their schools don't provide solid education, it's so weird. Look at your PISA scores, they're reasonable. Could be a lot better, sure, but so could almost everything. Especially if you take into account how most countries with better education systems have less than a 1/3 of the population, are mostly developed monocultural nation-states, so a lot more capable of standardizing public services nationwide.

> No. My Norwegian colleagues trust that they will receive healthcare. They trust that their representatives in the government are acting more or less in good faith. They trust that money in the government is going towards protections and services and infrastructure.

This is not quite true in Denmark.

There's have been multiple cases in recent times with the government willingly taking illegal action. Trust in public health care is that it'll keep you alive, but that's getting a nurse to look at you takes half a workday and the majority of the staff is running away due to poor pay. Those needing psychological help have generally been neglected, and those with gender identity issues are borderline abused. Environmental policies are "revised" as we get close to the deadline and haven't made the progress needed.

So I would not say that there is trust in the government and its services - merely an understanding that as change is very slow, you can expect the same tomorrow as you do today. That the US is worse is somewhat of a different discussion to whether or not the Danish people is a "high trust" society.

I've distinctly noticed this in my own life, being born and raised in the western US, but having lived throughout the US, my trust in my "fellow Americans" declines the further away from the mountain west I get. My spouse is Finnish, and we've lived in Finland for years, and have independently observed that their homogeneous society definitely makes their rosy politics possible. I bring this up when people try to compare US and Finnish domestic politics. There is often a "it works in <Finno/Scandinavia>!" rhetoric when discussing health care, schools, or whatever. Comparatively, Finnish politics are boring and uneventful.

I don’t think you can describe at least Sweden and Norway as monocultural. They’ve had waves of immigration since the world wars and I think Sweden had the most immigration per capita in Europe during the Syrian refuge crisis.

That’s not to say it’s a rosy picture of multiculturalism, there has been at least a building up of angst in the minority parties over immigration (and islam).

Don't mistake trust for tacit consent. Trust is never valid in politics.

Rather, "trusting" a system which makes it so that you do not need to trust any government.

Having many large political parties and a trend of (almost) always having minority governments also help limit possible damage.

I don't really feel like there is a large number of parties in Norway when arbeiterpartiet wins 35% of the vote every time and Parliament switch between them and the conservative party. And this time around the farming party really decided to screw things up for the coalition. But I suppose this is better then the republicans and the democrats for (insert whatever reason you want here).

In Denmark, the biggest party "only" got 27% of the votes, and 12 parties ended up in parlament.

But yes, the comparison was mainly to the whacky US system with just two sides to pick from.

Don't forget the other reason: a homogenous society.

And that is why, in the USA, health care is not a given (or at least extremely affordable). As long as that is then - especially if you have a family - taking risk that might lead to failure is a no go.

Instead, the no risk route is to assimilate into the status quo, become a cog in The System's wheel. Providing foundational First World "human rights" would allow more professional / career freedom.

> taking risk that might lead to failure is a no go.

For certain personality types. Let's say with some high conviction, the typical technology / engineering personality is already highly risk adverse.

Thus - they need all the risk avoidance as possible. Entrepreneurship is a risk game. It is defined by risk; those that won't start without safety nets will probably never start at all.

I know enough family men who built startups for years with young kids - earning nothing. It's not the situation, it's the person.

Not to get off-topic but startups are risky. On the other hand - at least in my book - entrepreneurs are actual risk-adverse. That is, where others see too much risk, entrepreneurs see opportunity. They are actually risk blind to some extent.

But like I said, this another discussion for another day :)

I started my first couple of companies in Norway, and it certainly makes a difference to the feeling of risk to live in a place where the risk of failing just didn't enter my mind at all.

In fact, I'd almost certainly have gotten more a month in welfare support if I'd been unable to find a new job if we'd closed my first company down than what we paid ourselves.

There's a flip side to this argument in that more failing endeavors would be allowed to exist for longer, thus draining productive resources from more worthy endeavors.

I don't think so. It's not cheaper to run a company in Norway than the US, and cost of living is high, and the fact we could've shut the company down and get more money meant we only kept running it because we were hoping to make more money rather than out of fear of where we'd be if it failed.

The benefits if anything serves as an incentive to give up failing ventures sooner.

Interestingly, the US still ranks #1 in the world in Entrepreneurship and Switzerland is #2.

Source: https://thegedi.org/global-entrepreneurship-and-development-...

I think the reason why welfare is irrelevant here is because the people going into entrepreneurship tend to be skilled enough to find a good-paying job even if their startup fails. Suppose that you're a good product manager or a good developer that's going into the startup world and you don't get lucky with your startup, you'd still be able to find a good job as soon as you're done... in fact, you might even get a higher-paying job because of this experience you've had.

Except in years like 2022 when it seems harder than ever to get a job, even with a solid 10 year working history. I'm convinced it's a more competitive market than ever, and that means more rejections.

I'm being sort of picky, focused on quality over quantity of opportunities, but it doesn't mean your statement is true.

And you have the Federal Reserve right now with that as their stated objective to try to keep a lid on inflation. Not saying this is the right more or not, but that's the unfortunate position we are now in.

But those skills are still getting diverted from more productive means. Those pursuits are allowed to exist for longer for the dream that they will someday be massively productive. Look at the blockchain space to see all the companies that are about to go under, if they haven't already.

Absolutely, and this explains largely why most of the massively successful startups we all know comes from the Nordics and not from places with poor social security like the USA

I think it’s cultural. The US places a lot of value on striving out and doing new things. It’s a frontier culture. Older cultures tend to be more conservative.

You can see this effect inside the US. The most “business friendly” states often do not lead in entrepreneurship because they’re culturally more conservative.

I disagree. Texas has been one of the fastest growing economies in the states. With a lot of technology companies.

Texas isn't the lowest tax or lowest regulation state, though it's a bit lower than California.

I also think the cultural thing is obvious there. Texas is very pro-entrepreneurship generally.

Texas has no income tax, very little government owned land, no zoning in some places, etc. It’s laughable that you try to put it in the “bit lower than California” category. Texas is basically the opposite approach to governance than California.

Missing the /s here mate

Sarcasm noted. Seriously, though, this is somewhat easy to explain.

Much of America does have an amazing "safety net": generational wealth.

There's a reason why startups tend to spring from elite schools like Stanford, MIT, Yale, etc. Those kids have the brains, yes, but also the family connections and the parental safety nets and the connections to capital investment. These kids don't have to worry about food security or having healthcare.

If you're from that upper 10%/5%/1% or so of American society, that's GREAT!

It's an incredible primordial soup from which startups can spring. We are a big country, so we are still talking about perhaps 30,000,000+ people in this lucky category. That's more than all of Scandinavia's population combined. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many "big" startups come from the USA.

However, if you don't come from one of these blessed demographics in the USA, you have a much harder road. If you didn't go to an "elite" school and don't have a parental safety net it's very difficult... I fall into this category and simply didn't have access to healthcare for five years while I pursued my tiny indie business. It made money, but not enough to buy healthcare for a family, so I had to ditch it.

But its not just an economic safety net that is required. (Although that's part of it). It's also the network of social connections, family connections and upbringing. A stable childhood and family life, I would argue, is probably even more important. In a lot of ways, welfare support (at least how its been done in USA) has driven a wedge into the stability of the family (by decreasing marriage incentives, removing the father from the home, removing incentives, etc.) Not everybody is born with the same ambitions as those that attend MIT.

I grew up in a lower-middle class household and although my grandfather had money during his life, it wasn't passed down (swallowed by medical bills the last decades of his life). My parents were definitely working class. I'm doing okay, but that came from a lot of self-study and self-driven interests... I put my first computer together from parts scrownged up over the course of about a year... at a time where it was far more expensive to do than today (early-mid 90's), where today you can definitely find something usable for free.

Today it will largely come down to the investment of time... that doesn't mean you will succeed... I spent my time on knowledge growth, others will spend it on building a business. Most will simply waste it and complain that they spend too much time working.

I saw a lot of this when I was single in the last decade. So many people want a relationship, too few would actually take the time to make it happen. Most won't even take the time/effort to go out on a date on a work night.

No, it's not easy. There are no guarantees... but it's mostly laziness that stops people from getting things done in life.

Generational wealth doesn’t cover it. Stanford, MIT, Yale have lots of non-legacy attendees there based completely on academic performance.

> That's more than all of Scandinavia's population combined. Goes a long way toward explaining why so many "big" startups come from the USA.

Expand it to all of the European countries with free healthcare to match the populations and the outcome is the same.

There is some subset that has to bail because of healthcare, but it’s not relevant in the larger picture.

While this may be true for individual cases. Statistically the argument is worthless. Frankly, it's a comforting lie that encourages harmful inaction by instilling a false sense of the playing field being close to even.

The children of the top 1% make up 14.5% of the admissions to these schools. The chart of students by parental income[0] speaks for itself.

The children of the bottom 20% make up a mere 3.8% of the student body. I'm not sure how anyone can look at the current situation and suggest there's nothing wrong with it.

Perhaps these people are inherently inferior? Instead, I would suggest that we should do something about the talent that we're intentionally wasting.

[0] Chetty R. et al, Figure I. B, MOBILITY REPORT CARDS: THE ROLE OF COLLEGES IN INTERGENERATIONAL MOBILITY, Page 80. url: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w23618/w236..., image: https://i.redd.it/tbh2qmozodv91.png

Your point isn’t coming out like you think. What you just said was 80% of the student body is middle class.

No, what was said is that ~15% of the student body is in the top 1%. The top 5% by income make up 42% of the student body. I'm not sure about your own definition but I wouldn't qualify that as middle class.

I don't view 95% of the population making up 58% of the student body as an indicator that we're doing things particularly well. Especially when you don't ignore the fact the bottom 20% make up only 3.8% of students and the bottom 60% of the population only account for 18%.

These statistics fly in the face of any belief in meritocracy, social mobility, access to education, academic achievement etc. They imply either the children of the top 5% are genetic superhumans or that, as a society, we're failing spectacularly at living up to those goals.

> There's a reason why startups tend to spring from elite schools like Stanford, MIT, Yale, etc. Those kids have the brains, yes, but also the family connections and the parental safety nets and the connections to capital investment. These kids don't have to worry about food security or having healthcare.

Yeah, and then go on to create things like Theranos, Alameda and FTX... never mind the obscene amount of these kids who end up in banks and hedge funds because of their connections that end up destroying the global economy thorough their grift.

I'm a former boot-strapped founder and a strong believer in entrepreneurialism, but you have to be brain-dead levels of naive to not know the odds are entirely against coming in you but to then think you're on the same playing field as the children of the privileged makes it clear one really doesn't have the slightest skill-set it takes to make it in that World: if your discernment is woefully inadequate to see the reality of being wealthy, how can you ever see, build and ultimately profit from market or paradigm shifts?

> However, if you don't come from one of these blessed demographics in the USA, you have a much harder road. If you didn't go to an "elite" school and don't have a parental safety net it's very difficult... I fall into this category and simply didn't have access to healthcare for five years while I pursued my tiny indie business. It made money, but not enough to buy healthcare for a family, so I had to ditch it.

I think these are the untold stories that really should be more widely known and perhaps even celebrated: when something doesn't reach unicorn level, but still does what it sought out to do but cannot grow/scale in order to justify it's immense effort is more honest and real to the reality of how most small startups go and end up.

Personally speaking my end-goal was to ultimately challenge Federal Law to make hemp legal in order to serve as a much needed cash crop to help offset climate change via carbon sequestration and possibly aid in the decrease use of opioids for pain and provide more usecases for something I feel incredibly passionate about: Bitcoin and Farmers.

After the Farm bill was passed in 2018, nearly 4 years since launch, I realized 'we won' as I saw all the signs in front of my face I saw no point in working 90+ hour work weeks and having no Life what so ever because I dissapointed my partners and family so I just leveraged my acquired skill-set in various private Industries and continued to travel the World for new opportunities.

Ultimately the money I made, in BTC, could have made me a millionaire several times if I never spent it and just held on to it over the years, but as mentioned before I was also not of the privileged class and needed those funds to ever rising rents, food, or the rainy day funds use in between jobs.

I don't regret it, but like JB I had to exit and focus on other priorities when I realized the reality that it was never going to be much more than it was, profitable but not b much, never mind ever being a unicorn.

I've since did corpo life and to be honest, their is a reason former startup founders are preferable over most candidates, the harder part is actually getting your foot in the door to be able to prove why that is.

Is that sarcastic?

I really cannot tell.

The problem with Nordic model is that they are too successful in taking care of the people.

Very few are “hungry” and “hunger” is an important ingredient to startups

Cool, I guess less hunger for less startups is a good deal.

I don't know that I agree. As much as I lean towards a Libertarian, anti-establishment PoV for the US, I do think social systems can work in smaller communities/countries. It's much harder with a more diverse (distance and politic) country because there's much more "other" that will disagree and see favoritism and corruption. It also becomes a cycle.

I've worked in/around govt that I'm not a no government mindset, but definitely feel that more government tends to be worse than a very limited one at the scale of the US... and would favor letting states/counties have more independent creativity in solutions.

> This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

That is a false romantization. The reality is if you live in Copenhagen you need a full time job to to pay for expensive rent, food, and of course tax. That is not true in Berlin where rent, food, and taxes are cheaper. On average the price level in Berlin is half of that of Copenhagen.

Not to mention a social norm that prides work ethic.

It's also easier with a largely mono-culture in a relatively small population/area that is inclined, socially and historically, to work. Contrasted by say USSR, China or other communist societies where it's largely forced and the people are largely, effectively slaves. Although that work first culture is coming at the cost, to an extent, of a waning family unit.

It's a bit of a mixed bag that's much harder to implement at a larger scale. If the US split up into separate states, much more loosely joined like the EU or original confederate structure before the constitution, each state would stand a better chance at such a system.

As someone living in Finland, I would argue the cons balance out the pros. The welfare state also creates massive disincentives for entrepreneurs. There is no free lunch.

In addition to the psychological aspects mentioned below (why try so hard when you’ll be fine either way), there are bigger reasons.

While the safety net makes it less dangerous to fail, it also makes it harder to succeed.

The barrier you need to clear before the business can be successful is much higher, due to:

- 15-20% higher taxes than the US at every level. Cut your profit margin by 15% and you need roughly double the amount of revenue you’d need in the US to pay yourself a good salary.

- high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)

- inability to hire full time employees until you get much bigger (they literally cannot be fired and if one goes on maternity leave you can be stuck paying someone without getting their labor for a year+)

-lack of funding/financing and risk capital (Europe is starting to catch up, but nowhere near the US, especially at the small business levels). There’s nothing like the SBA loans the US has.

-more severe penalties for failure in the form of bankruptcy, you cannot walk away relatively unscathed in the same you can in the US

-impossibility of building wealth by working a job to fund the business yourself (salaries are extremely low due to the massive social benefits overhead)

I recently moved back to Finland after a couple of years in New York, and I strongly disagree with this:

> “high cost of living (like living in NYC/SF but without all the opportunities)”

My fixed monthly expenses were over 3x higher in Manhattan than in Helsinki. Housing, child care, etc.

Were the local salaries 3x higher in Manhattan?

In my experience, yes.

>less dangerous to fail [...] harder to succeed

Alternatively: Finland has a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling.

> This is one of the underappreciated benefits of the Nordic-style welfare state: everybody can afford to fail.

So then the Nordics are the startup capitals of the world, far surpassing all other countries, right? Right?

It's easy enough to get SMB loans in the US without risking anything. Banks are asking to sell $100,000 loans without people even applying! Not to mention grants, and yes, literally welfare is available in the US to pretty much everyone. What exactly are you afraid of? I think the bigger issue with entrepreneurship here is that most people aren't willing to put in the effort to solve a problem that people need solved. Instead they put in the effort to solve a problem that they feel like solving and then blame "the system" when their attempt at entrepreneurship doesn't pan out.

What I have seen from others (I have not been able to do so) knowing that you can afford to fail beforehand is one of the biggest factors to succeed:

- Objectively is not an issue to fail and you know it

- It gives you the security to take risky decisions and at the end it is a matter of expectation, bet and see if you win. To me this goes along with the mantra that failing is not bad and you have to do so few times before you succeed. Obviously, the more you try the more chances you have. If you are not a casualty.

It also allows you not to give up on the last mile, when you still don't know it's the last mile.

Sure, the rich have more advantages than the poor. Always been that way and always will.

In our culture there is an immense preoccupation with the unfairness of this but the reality is that if you don't come from wealth and privilege, you need a different playbook. Dwelling on the inequity neuters you. If you want to win you need to figure out what the playbook is and then do the right things.

I found a playbook that worked by reading all the self help and business books I could (preferably from the public library because that was free and I was poor). My playbook ended up being: move to a country with a lower cost of living, and get good enough at freelancing online that I essentially had a safety net and a long-term runway for other pursuits.

I then tried a few different business models, each failed a bit less than the last until I hit a winner which bankrolls about a dozen people on my payroll.

A rich guy wouldn't have had to go through all that but I don't care. It's totally irrelevant to the requirements for success in my reality. Which were build my own baseline from scratch and then fail until I succeeded.

People born into easier paths than mine have sneered at many many elements of what I did over the years (living in a "shithole" country, working with a "shitty" tech stack, taking "shitty" Elance gigs that didn't pay enough, etc. etc.). Other people who were able to tolerate remaining victims of the system tuned out my story and focused on other things, like bitching about politics. I'm worth more than most of the people in both categories now and I feel like this is just the beginning. I haven't had children yet but if I do they will have fewer disadvantages than I did.

There are different and easier playbooks than the one I used. If I was starting again I would probably go into a more conventionally profitable vocation and save for 15 years, studying business and coding on the side, and then start a business.

But either way the point is your playbook if you start poor needs to be different. It's not as easy as the one the rich guys have but that fact is a distraction. You should be too busy figuring out your plan to care.

Class mobility is generally regarded as a good thing for economies. It increases competition.

What you’re saying is that the only way for you to get ahead is by exporting your own lack of class mobility to another nation. This is akin to shipping trash to other shores so we don’t have to deal with the repercussions of landfills in wealthier nations.

If that’s considered a sane way to get ahead, home is not economically well.

You missed the point entirely.

Did you intend satire? Unfortunately, your post could’ve come straight from the mouth of more than one person I’ve met over the last few years.

>* move to a country …*

I understand and agree with your overall point, but the fact that this an option underpins a certain amount of privilege.

How much privilege does it take to move to Guatemala or Pakistan?

HN commenters are apparently privileged for having to move to Guatemala to get by, whereas Guatemalians are refugees when they move to the US.

This misses the point completely. One side is taking advantage of geo-arbitrage while the other is fleeing violence. It's a false equivalence.

The US has 18 large cities with a higher homicide rate than Guatemala. 50 with more than half of Guatemala's. The difference between the two countries from a violence perspective hardly constitutes "fleeing."

Edit: country level is 6.5 for the US vs 17.5 for Guatemala, which is also not a difference consistent with war vs peace. But since "refugees" end up mostly in cities, and hundreds of thousands end up in the very same cities that are more violent than Guatemala, the city data is perfectly sufficient to show they aren't all fleeing violence.

Edit 2: I would continue this discussion, but somehow my original reply to you got flagged and my commenting privileges suspended, even though I had net three upvotes at the time.

It's probably for the better, I shouldn't even be bothering with someone who complains that I "cherry pick" 50 city homicide data and then replies to me with El Paso.

It certainly shows how strong your facts are (i.e. "the data is wrong") that you get me suspended instead of engaging them.

This is the definition of cherry picking data. If you are comparing rates between countries, use the country data.

I have personal experience with refugees from Central America and Mexico. I can assure you, many are fleeing violence.

Edit: Dismissing 2.7x rate does not make for a strong point. You are jumping through hoops to not be wrong. E.g., one of the cities that receives the most refugees from Guatemala is El Paso, TX, which is consistently one of the safest cities in the U.S.

Your choice of metrics also does not paint a full picture. Many people are fleeing to avoid being conscripted by a cartel. That type of violence does not show up in homicide statistics. You're demonstrating a superficial understanding.

Edit 2: El Paso is the opposite of cherry picking; as I already pointed out, they are relevant because they take in a disproportionate amount of refugees. So, of the U.S. cities that you point to with higher per-capita homicides, can you point out if any absorb more refugees than El Paso? Because that was central to your point that refugees are jumping from the frying pan into the fire.

I did not get you "suspended". You got your own post removed because you weren't following HN guidelines. I tried to point that out to help, but you were too busy arguing to notice. Not everything is a personalized attack.

I dunno. What if they’re currently living in Bangladesh?

It's ironic you should mention Bangladesh because there's a guy on my payroll who lives in Bangladesh and I'm flying him to an international conference soon. It does indeed take more paperwork than usual, it will be a unique opportunity for him and probably not his last with me, he's a great employee.

Working remotely != moving for geo-arbitrage. If anything, it's the opposite, where the employer is taking advantage of geo-arbitrage.

In this model, people living in Bangladesh skip the “moving” part. They already live in a low cost locale.

So they have open doors to be wildly successful entrepreneurs?

My point is that the OPs “model” is a strategy for a limited population and not very generalizable. Within those caveats, I have no issue with their suggestion.

There is always someone more privileged than you and someone less privileged than you.

What you do with the cards in hand is what matters. Other paths lead to insanity.

No doubt, I’m just acknowledging the limitations of the OPs advice. It came across as a bit of a solipsistic perspective.

There's no better education than trying and failing.

This + its really dependent on location and context as you said.

If you are outside of US, your chances of liquidity event decrease even further.

I think people always divide into two camps here, its either hard work or luck but the truth is somewhere in between.

As a normal non-privileged person, I can't afford placing all-in bets. But I can go to a different table with different stakes and different strategy.

This is why societies should strive for more “inequality” (as in, more families with large fortunes). The rich have a safety net that allows them to take risks that ultimately benefit all of society. Let’s say with the best execution, a startup still only has 10% chance of success - so then the only thing to do is have more and more people “roll the dice.” And no, a strong welfare state is not a substitute - the danger is not starvation, but loss of your life savings or comfortable lifestyle provided by a decent career. Welfare does nothing to mitigate that risk (except maybe for the people with no wealth or good employment prospects, but they are probably not the primary talent pool for startup founders).

You really don't think there is already more than enough inequality?

I get the case for some capital accumulation. Capital does make for an amazing economic engine that we all benefit from. Capitalist countries are richer than non capitalist countries. Easy to understand. But there is a point where more capital accumulation and inequality just makes the rest of us become serfs to oligarchs.

I think we need more Elon Musks, yes.

Although, obviously, we don’t want more people who got rich by being politicians.

I have a suspicion that if Elon Musk types were given free reign we would end up with people working overtime for pennies.

Funny, I’d cite Elon Musk level capital accumulation and his decisions on how to allocate his capital over the last year as a perfect case study of the theory that, while capital accumulation can be a good thing, we also don’t want all our eggs in too few baskets.

Actually it’s quite good - because he spent $40bln we got to see detailed evidence of government agencies working hand-on-glove with corporations to censor information and shape political outcomes (a few years ago it was trendy to refer to this as arrangement as “fascism”).

We got to see his curated version of that. Someone who has become a firmly entrenched partisan cultural warrior.

You may be overestimating to what extent successful startups benefit everyone. And underestimating the dangers of failure for non-rich.

> It's like continuously rolling two dice, and you only need to get double sixes once, and after that it's private jets until you die.

I’m stealing this. Fantastic analogy.

When my wife started her business, we lived on my income for 5 years while she continually reinvested in growing it.

It was hard but worth it.

Congratulations (I mean it. No /s).

I understand that to mean that your income was enough to keep (at least) both of you fed, housed and clothed.

Maybe you also had some savings/family support to use as a Kickstarter for her business and possibly to help pay the bills but maybe you didn't.

If both of you had to work 40+ hours a week and there is still too much month left at the end of the money, it's really hard to afford so much as a car repair not to speak of starting a business.

Is it possible to be an entrepreneur in that case? Yes but it's an enormous gamble and needs for all the stars to align just right. The consequences of failure are immediate (there are no 5 years to get started) and dire (homelessness/ no ability to get to work).

It's a much worse bet than for someone from the middle class who might have to move in with their parents again. Not pleasant but endurable.

Someone well off suffers not even that and is, at worst, a little bit embarrassed in front of their family. They can also try again and again.

Yea. I was a programmer working for a stable telecom company at the time. We didn't have kids yet and lived in a low cost of living area where it was possible to live off of my income. It wasn't a huge sum of money by any stretch, but it was enough while we limited expenses.

There were a lot of trials. We were close to having to file for bankruptcy 6 different times during a particularly difficult 2 year stretch. Our exit plan was always that she just go back to work with the potential to have to sell our house to pay of debts or lease agreements.

Starting a business is hard with a lot of risks and that's before you actually hire staff. The moment that you have to consistently make payroll on time, your stress level goes through the roof with the combination of obligation to financial consistency and the knowledge that you are responsible for other people (and their families in many cases).

Thank you for going into detail.

I appreciate the insight.

The yard sale model encapsulates a lot of what you said above.

This interactive website does a good job of explaining the model itself: https://pudding.cool/2022/12/yard-sale/

I had a friend/colleague build a successful startup.

I didn't know him on day one of his startup, but I knew him from very early on. He had some initial customers, and was making progress, but slow.

Early on, through connections, he landed a remote contracting gig that paid a full 40 hours/week, but usually didn't consume more than 10-15 hours of his time per week, and that went down over time. It was supporting a legacy system, so there wasn't a whole lot of new dev/work, but it was seasonally important, and had to be up/maintained/etc. That was, IIRC, something like $60/hr. So, early on in his startup, he ended up having a 'side gig' that was paying $100k/year, but only taking up ~12 hrs/week most of the time.

That left plenty of time to focus on building out things the initial handful of customers wanted. It also gave him a lot of time to just... grow slow. Ended up getting to .... $30k/month in recurring revenue while employing just a couple of folks (part time, IIRC), and... then one of his larger competitors decided to close up. He had a few months of non-stop working building data migration tools to convert competitors to his platform. But that took him to another level.

Getting a remote consulting gig paying guaranteed base while not consuming much time was very... lucky. He didn't look for it, but knew it was a good deal when it arrived, and he jumped at it. This was crucial to the 'afford to fail' part referenced above (apologies for the long post here - that was the trigger phrase).

That second part was very 'luck' based as well, but he was prepared to capitalize on that luck. This was years in to the journey, and the startup was already comfortable with respect to revenue/profit/etc.

But... he built that over years, very slowly. No amount of 100 hour weeks could have landed him any of the competitors' clients early on, because he wasn't known.

During that build, he could 'afford to fail' because of that remote contract. And now... he can try new things and afford to fail for the rest of his life (assuming the gamble isn't too big!)

A lot of word of mouth, a lot of slow growth, a lot of initial luck, a lot of patience. It worked out for him over about ... 8-9 years, but any of those pieces missing early on would have resulted in much lower growth, or stalling, or he might have given up and moved to something else.

When people see "luck" they often miss "set up to capitalize on getting lucky." That is the component of skill (and background) in most entrepreneurial success stores. Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and most other mega-entrepreneurs were very good at exploiting their lucky circumstances. People who don't notice this think it's all luck because they wouldn't be where they were without the luck - they notice that the luck was necessary. They don't notice that the luck wasn't sufficient. Lottery winners are a great example of the insufficiency of luck to create wealth.

my living expenses in cancun were $700/month. How bad do you want it?

It’s like a baseball game. Most people have no at-bats. They are stuck on the bench. They have no capital and no way to build up enough capital to try a business.

Some people have one at-bat. They save some capital, take their swing, and maybe get a base hit, maybe strike out. If they are lucky, they hit a home run and end up set for life.

The rich get an infinite number of at-bats. They can just swing and swing until they hit their home run, then swing again. Then they write books about how hard work and hustling can make anyone a millionaire.

…

  If you can make one heap of all your winnings
    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
  And lose, and start again at your beginnings
     And never breathe a word about your loss:

…

If—; Kipling, Rudyard; 1910

Luck is winning the lottery.

Warren Buffet calls it "winning the ovarian lottery", yes.

https://www.businessinsider.com/warren-buffett-on-the-ovaria...

100% agree. In fact most all of the successful-in-business people I know owe a huge amount of their success to luck. They’re also the often last to acknowledge the part luck played in their story. This, coupled with survivorship bias of startups who win, leads to people thinking it’s more likely to build a successful company in tech than the reality.

Everything in life is luck, including your comment being top voted. If everything is luck, then it probably isn’t worth saying.

Everything in life has different odds of happening, and when lower odds materialize, we call that "luck".

There are a number of comments saying very similar things to the top voted one: so it was indeed luck that their comment floated to the top among the many others. Perhaps they were there right when the story was posted (luck, right?) Perhaps they used exactly the trigger words that made others appreciate the comment (luck, right?).

The fact that there is a luck element to many things does not mean that those are unworthy pursuits. And it's ok to acknowledge the luck factor when it can dominate the results (i.e. you wouldn't talk about a lottery without considering luck).

It definitely is. Just because success mostly boils down to luck, doesn’t mean that people realize or acknowledge it, which leads to unhealthy obsession with “being successful” that permeates the society.

If everything being luck-based is generally acknowledged, I wonder if that generally leads to nihilism since there isn’t anything that could be done.

Maybe, but it might also help put things in perspective. Enjoy the things you have and help the ones that are not as lucky.

Was going to say exactly this. People always discount luck in their own stories, but you can always find it there - even if you look at a societal level and it's just luck that the person in question was born here and now, rather than in Mao-era China or wherever.

There's a reason why a lot of businesses fail, and it's not that the people who start them are lazy, stupid or lacking in skills. Obviously some are, but there are a great many people with great ideas that never make it, just like there are brilliant musicians, artists, designers, and anything else you care to name that you'll never hear of but who are very good at what they do.

Luck and connections. And PR, like, tons of it.

For me I found the harder I worked the luckier I got. There are opportunities everywhere and it takes a long time of trial and error to get it right. It is not for everyone. Very few succeed in a linear or parabolic trajectory.

The OP should be proud of their efforts. This was a learning experience that will absolutely help them in the future. Think of this as finishing a super tough college course and passing. On to the next phase.

And if you are lucky you can write books and give talks about how your luck was the result of your superior dexterity, work ethics, intelligence etc.

Yes, 100%. Capitalism is like a gigantic genetic algorithm. 100 people try 100 slightly different business models, in slightly different places, with different customers, etc. and some combinations just hit that sweet spot that makes them successful.

The lucky ones also probably failed a couple, but in these lucky ones the real lucky ones are who don't fail in the beginning.

Once we gain our most desired possessions, we'll try and do everything not to lose them - and what comes fast goes fast. Keep grinding, I'm sure it won't go to waste.

Identifying the right opportunity/connections/time etc. isn't just luck, like something that dropped out of the sky. It draws on skills, past experience, and calculated risk taking to know who, what, and when to seize on something and ignore what isn't important.

As I see it, you're both right, as in: all that you mention finds its relevance through shaping luck / increasing luck surface area.

Luck is an excuse.

One can choose to try a lot of different things, and another will choose to have a single few shots. One can choose to accept the “truth”, and the other will refuse to do so.

We get feedback from the world, and we choose how to analyze it and interact with it.

It’s easy to be fooled by the fact that we have only one choice. Or that the feedback reflects the absolute truth.

I think you’re right there is a lot of luck, but as they say, luck is effort plus opportunity. You need to put in the effort and position yourself for unique opportunities.

OP: My personal advice is to stick with a part/full-time job and continuing to explore your business ideas on the side until they are generating enough revenue to cover your expenses. Focus on businesses that sell something practical and don’t need lots of marketing or engagement (at first).

so true. and luck can be a big factor in any aspect of life..

What’s unique about entrepreneurship is that, once you earn enough from it, it can fully replace your work.

“Hobbies”, relationships, family, etc don’t do that. If you can’t find fulfillment in your 9-5 you’re still stuck grinding through it everyday looking forward to get back to those things. 8 hours every weekday. A HUGE chunk of your life.

For all the talk of being "data driven", a somewhat solid but underappreciated data point is the super low success rates of startups.

some luck is involved but just paying attention to trends will give you better odds of success and even if you fail you can still benefit. For example, learning to code is a much better time investment for success than learning blacksmithing. Even if your startup fails, you can make 6 figures as a software engineer and live a good life.

if you consider anything other than becoming a billionaire "failure" I guess that's a different matter.

Fortune plays a role, for sure. But you don't even get to petition fortune until you have some significant ability to identify and execute on a business.

Too many people focus so much on the luck they neglect the required positive talents and labors to even try.

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect."

You got a lot of good advice here. So I'll keep it short. I'm 32 now. I spent my last 12 years building companies. They all failed; I didn't earn a penny, and I didn't even get venture capital, and it made me feel like a failure. And I'm talking serious attempts. 6 years, 2 years, 1 year and in between a lot of research & freelancing to evaluate other ideas.

I'm leading a 40 people team, and it's going well. How did I get there? By chance. Another hackathon resulted in the right industry at the right time.

But also 12 years of exercise in pitching, structuring information, data, setting up on organization, addressing all kinds of different technologies and all of that.

You are learning so much and you feel treated unfairly by not being able to show it off. Keep on going. Maybe go back to work for 10-12 months for some stability and to take a break, but then try again.

How did you sustain yourself during periods of failure?

Freelancing and I had a co-founder (also technical) all along with whom I worked very closely in terms of survival. E.g. sometimes he was freelancing for the both of us while I was networking, researching, and evaluating opportunities.

Having a co-founder that is complementary to your personality and skill-set is highly valuable. We've been working together for 10 years now.

Another tip here: Upwork can help kickstarting this.

Thanks for sharing your story. Your experience is key—there may be a strong luck component to success, but with enough attempts, it seems that your luck increases. Often, hidden behind "overnight successes" is a trail of failures.

Yes, exactly. You'll be surrounded by succeeding and failing people, and you'll see patterns in decision making, execution and (in)valiations. It helps tremendously. Also, I'm feeling very confident in my position and execution because I've suffered enough over the past years. So current challenges feel much easier.

Thanks for sharing. Always encouraging to hear stories of someone grinding for years and finally making it.

Is your 40 person team for a venture of your own, or are you working with a larger org now?

No, my own company, started last year in April during a Hackathon and then got a first seed round started in July, closed in October. Currently even able to do a massive Series A, despite market conditions. From the 40 people, >50% are developers.

Same here. My first "startup" was dropshipping textbooks to fellow college students when I was a freshman 14 years ago. Learned a ton at a series B "startup" straight out of college in customer support and within 7 months, was fired. Spent 5 years as a founder at remarkhq where we couldn't figure out the business model to get paid while frame.io raised a massive amount of money to copy us and eventually led them to $1B acquisition with Adobe. Then went and joined a friend's stock market for real estate startup dynasty.com that pivoted and was subsequently acquired for $75M. Realized at said real estate startup that there was a massive industry wide problem that property managers suck so just started solo consulting to finally make real money for myself and future family I was told by my wife. I was 28 when I started my current startup (apmhelp.com) and never thought it would actually be something beyond a consulting business. Here I am 5 years later $5M ARR having just closed a $50M facility. It's still not all roses however as this year has been a rollercoaster. Literally today we layoff another 10% so that we can live to see another year. Startups are fucking hard and it takes everything to go at it again and again but I don't work a single day of my life. I wouldn't swap it for anything (long term). Best of luck! Don't give up either!!

Congrats, man!

We're also facing hard issues every now and then and then you face things like strong competition that can make you nervous at times (depending of the scale of your industry), but having suffered more personally in the past in this context, just helps to face these things today much easier.

Having done several options -- entrepreneurship, job, internal entrepreneurship, and consulting, my advice:

- Entrepreneurship isn't a lifestyle. Stay in a job unless you have a good idea and are ready to execute.

- Try your idea internally. Starting a new product in a company is easier than outside. It doesn't have a $1B upside, but it has enough upside, in all respects (not just financial -- learning, credibility, etc.).

- If that doesn't pan out, go external only once you're pretty confident of success.

My experience is that entrepreneurship isn't so much hard or take luck, as it takes a lot of groundwork:

- You want a diverse set of skills. Management. Finance. Sales. Technical. Legal. Market research. Etc. It's not a place for specialists, and it takes time to develop those skills. You also ought to enjoy (or at least not hate) most of them.

- You want good market timing, which comes with experience.

- You want a good idea with traction. That's where nights / weekends fit in. Nights / weekends don't give enough time for a successful startup, but they give enough to do early prototyping.

Doing a (failed) startup as a student is a good learning experience. I wish I had done it. I don't wish I had done it three times, or as an adult.

Oh, and selling false dreams is part of being a successful entrepreneur. You'll get zero customers if people think you're on the verge of going broke. Every business I've seen takes a "fake it until you make it approach." If you rely on blogs for what entrepreneurship ought to look like, you're in for a nasty surprise. A better option to learn how to do a startup is a job at a startup; you'll see the process from the inside.

This is excellent advice.

I followed roughly this path until I was in my late 30s. Now have a startup that is growing because we put in essentially 5 years of groundwork, while working full time day jobs, building product in an industry that isn’t sexy, being “lucky” (patient/observant) enough to ride a new federal regulation, having go throw away an entire product after 2 years and starting a new product in the same space/customers, showing customers we were in it for the long haul FOR THEM, with a well rounded seasoned founding team, business model first, taking the right amount of investment from the right investors at the right time.

In that way I think entrepreneurship IS actually a lifestyle, but the behaviors are not what OP alludes to. The lifestyle is falling in love with a problem or a type of customer or both and just seeing what you can do to help while building a business along the way…SUSTAINABLY. If your version of lifestyle is somehow BEING caught up in acting a certain way based on influence (I have no idea what an indie hacker is), that seems destined for failure.

TLDR. Go live your life, get a normal job to build security, don’t try and start a company at all, wait for a problem/opportunity to find you.

This is the right model. The vast majority of successful startups I've seen in my extended circle of friends didn't target other programmers or programmer-like consumers.

Most startups try to build another database, web framework, or data service, or whatnot, because that's the problem programmers are familiar with. The next ones are consumer products, assuming consumers look like SFO. The competition is fierce, and very few succeed.

My experience is that in virtually any other industry -- I don't care if you're in construction, shipbuilding, or farming -- there will be many low-hanging fruit which people in that industry won't be competent to solve. If you:

- go into some (nearly random) industry;

- keep your head up enough to gain an understanding how it works; and

- build out a network of connections you trust and who trust you

entrepreneurship is easy.

I guess the other piece is keeping your toe deep enough in tech that you can pull together a good team and solve problems a typical IT department can't solve. But that should be the easy part for readers here.

You can even start consulting. In the same way as a tech company doesn't want to outsource its core competency but is happy to outsource legal, payroll, and similar, the opposite is true in most industry. I've seen industries on HN where you (the typical HN reader) could outperform a whole 20-person team because the tech they hire is so incompetent. That's not a tough sell.

I think one issue (for those of us who are the kind of people that read this site) is that "entrepreneurship" and "startup" are overloaded terms. Most of the discussion here is about "startups" with huge growth ambitions. But what you're describing here is just "starting a business". Both things are "entrepreneurship", but they are extremely different beasts, with different paths to and likelihoods of success.

The billion dollar "startup" narrative is so seductive, but most hard-working ambitious people who want to be their own boss should just be starting businesses in the more traditional sense, taking on smaller investment or debt more wisely, paying attention to costs and revenues, and growing organically. This is no different than business starts in any other era, it just happens that a lot of viable businesses now happen to benefit from focusing on software.

Perhaps. I have several friends who have started ventures in the multi-hundred-million to low single-digital-billion-dollar range in various industries. All of them brought technology into traditionally low-tech industries. Some took on a lot of VC, but some grew organically:

- In some contexts, consulting is an easy way to get started building a product, to avoid needing much external investment. In others, it's a trap and a distraction which will prevent you from focusing on building a product.

- An initial product can stagnate into a lifestyle business / living dead (a business which pays the bills, but never grows beyond a few $M), or it can have a pathway into a larger market.

Technology (and not just software) is eating the world, and those pathways do exist. A lot of industries are being disrupted by technology plays. The connection is strategy. You want a good beachhead which has a nice growth path to a larger market, and ideally one no one is targeting.

There are risks from point A to point B to point C, of course, with strategy, execution, timing, luck, etc., and plenty companies cap out at much less, but plenty of them make it too.

What I'm a bit surprised at, thinking through this, is the number of times I've seen this sort of play work. I know at least a half-dozen companies in the >>$100M range where I know the CEO pretty well as a friend. All of those did take external investment at some point, but a few, much less than you'd expect.

Totally disagree. We started a business in a market with huge TAM, venture backed, and have had meaningfully scaled customer and revenue growth…

But that market is seafood supply chain compliance, and I guarantee you no influencer gives a flying fuck about it or even knows it exists. It’s gross, it’s not sexy, the people working in it are absolutely not on this website.

If you get out of the echo chamber, there are loads of places that need help from software, can pay for it, but have no idea how to create it themselves.

How do you suggest getting out of the echo chamber without leaving my job? I need to continue in my current role because I don't have a big safety net, but I want to get exposure to non-tech industries and find out inefficiencies.

As an aside, how did you zero in on seafood supply chain compliance? Were you in that industry previously?

I don't think this is a disagreement...

How did your friends go about finding non-programmer markets? I can't leave my current role in tech because I don't have a big safety net, but I want to understand other markets and figure out inefficiencies. I've seen this advice about exploring non-tech industries pop up a lot and am interested in following through.

Easiest: Find a random industry. You'll see job openings for programmers. You'll probably be wildly overqualified. Get a job there. Make sure it's a job where you can keep your head up and learn to industry (and not be isolated in a cubicle).

Harder: Nerd out on something not computer science. Take classes in oddball topics. Go to industry conferences. Network and hang out in online forums.

I once hopped on a plane and went to a conference in a 90% unrelated industry that I had taken an interest in. Even gave a workshop there -- as an outsider looking in, around a relevant idea. Expensive, but I learned a ton and came out with a powerful network.

Have fun with it!

Well yes and no. Innovating as an employee sucks because somebody else gets all the benefits.

You can only get the benefits as a founder if you have the same lever as the company (which you usually don't).

Well yes and no. Most of the value created goes back to the shareholders, but it's just about the fastest and easiest way to move into management (or upper management). If you do internal entrepreneurship, and land leading a division with a VP title, a few things happens:

1) You learn a comprehensive set of skills needed to run a business end-to-end, and you have the benefit of corporate resources to teach you

2) You gain the credibility needed to be a successful entrepreneur

3) Your salary does go up (quite a bit). You're not making $1B, but you are unlikely to be below $300k, and $1M is within reach. That's a fraction of an exit, but it's enough.

4) You build a network which carries over past the current job.

.... and so on.

One of the upsides is that if you can manage internal risks, your odds of success go way up, and if you mess up, the downside is rather small compared to entrepreneurship. Adjusted for risk, expected returns can be greater (to me, $10M is worth only a little bit less than $10B, but $10M is worth a lot more than $100k).

At this point in my career, I'm in an organization that has supported my internal entrepreneurial efforts, and I much prefer that to being out there on my own. I'm also primarily motivated by impact, and I can have much greater impact from where I sit. That's motivating too. If and when the organization changes, I might jump back into independent entrepreneurship, but I'm very happy where I sit.

Somebody else also takes the loss when things go sideways. No free meal.

This is the best advice I've seen on this website in years!

I'm afraid the author has a very wrong attitude for entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is not about following someone's advice mechanically or a guaranteed get rich schema. It's about building competence and understanding something about the target market better than anyone else. The author didn't mention what kind of competence s/he has got from all those attempts, so I suppose it has never been the goal. The competence may or may not lead to a commercially successful enterprise. But even in the case of failure, the explanation should still be based on competence, e.g. "I understood that the product didn't provide much value to the target audience because of X, and also the audience turned out to be Y, and the competition was Z. So while I learned about the market a lot, I couldn't offer anything that would provide so much value that the target audience would be ready to pay for with amounts sufficient to maintain developing the product".

If the postmortem is "I tried to follow what influencers said, but it didn't work, so I'm tired, I give up" then, well, no surprise here.

And yes, startups are hard. Very hard.

This might sound a bit assholish, but I'm writing this to hopefully help others spot a crucial mistake:

Did you have anyone on your team with actual skill in sales or marketing?

Because from your post it seems you tried the same channels that everyone else does (writing blog, engaging on Twitter, setting up ProductHunt launch) without any specific strategy for how to succeed.

And this stuff is hard! There's a reason why good salespeople and marketers are paid so well!

You definitely can learn that, it's a skillset like any other. But treating it like a secondary concern is a death trap for your business.

If you are a tech founder, it's absolutely crucial you figure out a strategy for customer acquisition – find a sales co-founder, hire some good salespeople, get someone who can teach you how to do it – just do not treat it as something less important than tech, because then you are just counting on being lucky. And if you decide to sell yourself, expect that to be a difficult, time consuming job – don't be surprised if you spend more time chasing business rather than coding.

I 100% agree. I've been hacking away at my project for about 5 years, and it went absolutely nowhere until I found my co-founder. In a span of 4 months, she quadrupled the eyes on our product in comparison to what I was able to before our meeting.

Sales & Marketing is just as complex as the tech stack. Yes, we techs can learn that side of the fence, but it takes a bit of humility to recognize that it'll come at a cost.

What levers did she implement?

This is the realization that turned me off of very early stage entrepreneurship. That stuff is so boring, and also pretty much the only thing that matters in the very early stage of a startup.

Maybe a dumb question, but where do you find people who are skilled in sales/marketing like this? I'm learning this lesson the hard way right now.

Someone skilled at selling your product for a commission, would be stellar at selling their most valuable product - themselves.

Sales and marketing is about reach and incentives. Outright lying works against you. Choosing to only tell the truth keeps you right where you are, on the slippery slope of sunk cost.

Folks in the sales and marketing domain come across real crafty; its a side-effect. Cz you deal with people (i.e. emotions, psychology and incentives). People who get played, know somethings up. Once you figure out how the sales game works, then its about trial and error to find a suitable market, using well known techniques and experimenting with new tools, growing that network. It is an art, learned slowly, with expensive mistakes.

There's also that steep cost attached to even play around with serious tools, effective strategies are not scalable, consume labor and time, require frequent pivots without much evidence, effects are only visible at a high macro level without much granularity. A lot of it works against an engineering mindset. And for a malicious actor, sales is a good breeding ground.

I recall the exact moment where the doors to this rabbit hole opened up for me - a comment from a friend of mine, "Its amazing how Gordon Ramsey has people lining up at his restaurant on opening day"

I think it's hard way before that. YC phrases it as "Build something people want" but all the words in that sentence are way harder to understand than it first seems.

In retrospect, I also feel that lack of experience in sales was a major issue wrt my skillset. How would you recommend someone like me (with a mostly technical and academia-oriented background) to approach learning sales from scratch?

Partner with someone who already has a leg or very obvious affinity in it. Don’t do everything by yourself.

That’s rule number 1 in life, in general, for everything: invite guests to bring something they like/manage to the table.

Dude at least tell us what you were working on? I mean there is zero context to this post. How am I to process the fact your product got zero sign ups when you haven't even mentioned what it is. "Don't make the same mistakes I did", what mistakes have you even highlighted here (and I mean mistakes related to your product and not the fact that you fell for the honey trap posts' of social media influencers)????

257 comments to this post submitted by user whose account was only created 2-3 hours ago!! I feel this is a post that someone may have generated using ChatGPT.

Exactly how I felt after reading the post lol.

> Dude at least tell us what you were working on?

Why doe sit matter? Jesus, he was just institutionalized, you people are cruel.

And who cares about how long ago the account was created?

OP is not a delicate butterfly. Get off your high horse.

What does having psychiatric issues have to do with being a "delicate butterfly"? I have schizoaffective bipolar disorder, nothing delicate about me.

I believe its because the person wants to gain a benefit from the post instead of being empathetic or giving his/her take on it.

Well, not everything is about you. Be kind and empathetic.

Merry Xmass everyone!

Ye. This story would have been way more interesting with examples of the products. Otherwise there is not much to discuss of the posters specific situation or why he failed.

What an incredibly bad response. Plus it seems like your own account was created today? Please be kind.

It's not defeat, it is the expected outcome. Out of 20 or so of my projects two have been break-out successes and the rest (commercially) complete failures, and I'm very lucky to have two out of those 20, with very small variations in timing it would have been a big fat zero. So don't beat yourself up about it, some people win the lottery and the majority don't. There is absolutely no recipe that will work every time, not even one that will work most of the time or a significant fraction of the times you try to apply it. Luck, luck, luck and timing.

One problem is not just the influencers peddling their books and their bullshit, it's also the eco-system that sells the dream itself. This site is part of that and you should take the success stories with a large grain of salt, usually things are not as easy as they are made out to be and for every success there are 100 failures. And those are rarely talked about.

Best of luck with the recovery, I can see it weighs heavily on you.

What rate is the cutoff at which people give up entrepreneurship altogether? I wonder how big has the opportunity cost of monopolies been in the past decade

That depends on the person, really. When you are younger or have rich parents you can afford yourself larger risks and that in turn has a positive effect on your chances of success. When you get older and have more responsibilities unless you have a prior success you tend to become more risk averse and so less willing to start new companies and/or make the kind of decisions that would lead to either success or complete failure. Playing it safe is an excellent way to lose against a crowd of others that can afford to take risks: some of them will get lucky and beat you, even if most of them fail.

There are older, successful entrepreneurs, one guy I knew started his first company in his mid-50's and had a massive success but he's definitely the outlier. But most successful entrepreneurs I know started their first successful company in their 20's or 30's, rarely 40's. And most unsuccessful entrepreneurs have the exact same demographic...

A couple of things that I've seen really do help, but they still require a substantial investment in time and have an opportunity cost as well: work for one of the large, well paying companies for a while, save up a nest egg and use that as a jump off point if you weren't born into capital (though the risk of becoming addicted to that income stream is real and letting go of it will not be easy). Another is to first start a regular career in order to identify pain points in some industry or other and then later use that knowledge to create a product that addresses those pain points.

But that's not the kind of thing that you can spin out far enough for a book or a TED talk. I do believe that those two will increase your chances.

+1 on the nest egg. That's how I "bootstrapped", unsuccessfully, during Covid. And I got that close, some better timing and I might be running my own fleet of two leased feeder container vessels by now (seriously so, I already had offers for those). Bad timing kicked in, my prospective launch clients project fell through, and being bootstrapped meant I didn't have anything else in the pipeline. Which brought me to the single pivot I had budget for, and that resulted in, at most, a single person consulting business. I didn't want that, realized I like running operations much more than running a company running operations, burned the allocated nest egg and went back to employment. I am almost happy ever since!

Close call. And one other thing that nobody seems to mention either: success always comes at a price. Health, family & friendships, attitude, ethics. All of those can suffer when you're successful.

> But most successful entrepreneurs I know started their first successful company in their 20's or 30's, rarely 40's.

“Research: The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45”

https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

Discussion on HN here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212409

Yes, I saw that when it first hit.

I'm sure they did a great job at researching that but it really does not match my experience at all. And I see a lot of start-ups (up to 50 / year) from the inside, at least a few hundred founders if not a 1000+ by now over the last 15 years. The bulk of the successful ones is late 20's to mid 30's.

This might be an illusion or a strong bias.

The younger ones are not alone ( the successful 45/50+ parents/mentors/etc are supporting them financially and more ).

Otherwise, without the experience of your 20s and 30s you cannot understand the world, you haven't build the network you need to succeed ( I am my own example), basically you cannot manufacture you "luck".

There might be something interesting here.

- people in the VC entrepreneur world are seeing mostly 20s and 30s be successful

- VC world is, as one previous commenter put it, swing for the bleachers

- researchers are saying average age of success is 45, so more than half are 40+

This seems to perhaps indicate (though needs research) that

- those 40+ prefer bootstrapped businesses

- bootstrapped businesses are over half the successful entrepreneurs, so tend to be more successful

Many things could be wrong with this:

- different definitions of successful

- research bias

- geographical bias

However, it's something that seems to bear investigation.

And if true, what is it that is driving the budding entrepreneur to think that to be more successful they need to seek VC funding, when it may actually be the opposite. Would you rather take a 1 in 1m shot at 1m/yr, or a 1 in 10k shot at 300k/yr? Numbers made up in the question of course, research needed to figure out what they are.

> But most successful entrepreneurs I know started their first successful company in their 20's or 30's, rarely 40's.

Jeff Bezos?

This is a myth. It is purported because most of the 30+ entrepreneurs are not vocal about their successes.

Bezos was 30.

Bezos was born in 64, he's a year older than I am and Amazon was started in 1993.

You can do the math for yourself.

Bezos once said in an interview that he was 38 when he started Amazon, after leaving DEShaw as a manager.

You really don't know when to give up do you? You're wrong, end of story.

> Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

> Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

> Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

> Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

-madaxe_again, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

it's really not. There are all kinds of entrepreneurs and most are not making weird iphone apps, but more conventional businesses that do somewhat work or fail. Rich kids don't necessarily do many throws, as they have the money to push even an unsuccessful idea for a long time. VCs may be the ones throwing darts. And poor kids do go to the carnival, you don't often see rich people going there.

I was an engineer at a successful startup.

We grew, we went bankrupt, we laid off most the company, the founders kicked in enough to keep us going and we restructured to give the remaining people larger shares. We became profitable and finally sold to another company.

My payday was about $70k, which was a nice bonus, I was happy to get it. I moved on to big tech. The company withered away, the company that bought it withered away too. I think the company that bought that company might also have disappeared. The domain keeps getting renewed, but has been broken for a couple of years, and for half a decade before that was just a WordPress site hosting a scrape of some of the content that used to be on the website.

And we were one of the lucky ones.

That sucks. I know quite a few stories like that. I'm more active as an investor these days than as an entrepreneur, the projects I still run are more for fun than for income (or even potential income) and I can't tell you how happy I am that that pressure has abated somewhat.

It's annoying that even the successes tend to screw over the employees and more often than not the founders as well. Typical dilution by the time you reach series 'A' (assuming that that's all that you need to take off) is terrible and if you need more capital you end up working for banks and VCs.

If I were to start another company (which I am trying very hard to avoid) I would try extremely hard to do it without outside capital and I would do it in some boring b2b field where nobody else wants to go because it isn't sexy enough to be able to attract capital. That way you avoid several of the risks of starting a new company at once: you have a relatively safe niche, no outsider is going to jump in giving away their product just to grow market share and the people that will receive your product are going to be super happy simply because there is no alternative.

Do opportunities like these still exist?

Yes, absolutely. Looking at one right now actually (NDA, so I can't tell you about it but it's a gem).

Thanks. Reading a thread like this is sobering on the one hand, but also gives the feeling of "it's all pointless and crowded" :)

Private equity is buying up as many as they can* but that proves they still exist!

* https://www.wsj.com/podcasts/the-journal/why-private-equity-...

The corporate world is littered with them (esp. at medium-scale), but you can't magically discover them by reading on the internet.

Feels like most of the problems in that class I’ve stumbled upon were not viable. Not because there wasn’t a need but rather because the people suffering from the problem aren’t the ones signing the cheques, and the ones signing the cheques don’t really care about making the grunts’ work easier/more efficient since that’s what they’re being paid for: to toil.

What advice could you share for discovering this kind of problems that also can also be monetized?

> That sucks.

Don't get me wrong; it was a good experience, as well as being good experience. I got paid a decent salary throughout, the work was frequently interesting, and my coworkers were great, not that I've done a good job of keeping in touch.

But it wasn't a life-changing payday, and even the investors mostly broke even. It was a success in that it became profitable with a couple mil in revenue, not in the VC sense.

Besides the whole period where we ran out of money, laid off half the company, and were months away from going under, the only real downside was that, as a small company, I was basically on call 24/7 to deal with problems with my part of the world. It didn't come up often but when it did it sucked.

That’s exactly what I started: https://gitlab.com/logotype/fixparser

It’s a quite boring project, but it is niche - and there is no alternative, at least not in the JS/TS ecosystem. Many startups/crypto/financial institutions (including YC startups) uses and are paying customers of my product.

I’ve tried finding an investor (including YC) to grow the project but no-one is interested. It doesn’t matter, I’ll keep going anyway. But if someone is interested reach me at info@fixparser.io

Hey, way to try to profit of another persons failure. Really sociopathic of you!

May I ask how you monetize this?

> no outsider is going to jump in giving away their product just to grow market share

I wonder how much innovation is being stifled by this practice. I know I have at least one very viable idea (I've shopped it around) that could result in substantial improvement to the overall Internet experience, and I'm doing nothing with it because the minute I make it available, a Big Tech company will either steal it, try to buy me out (and I don't like them so my answer will be no) and then copy/reverse engineer what I've done. So I've opted to spend my time/energy on something else.

Basically what's the opportunity cost of these uncompetitive practices for the industry and field of study as a whole?

I hear you, and still:

How many Einsteins perished in the fields or trenches? How much innovation and genius is stifled through lack of access to food, water or education?

I think that would be an area where improvements would be more impactful than trying to prevent copycats.

Ironically, that's what I decided to spend my time on instead. I was trying to decide whether to do a PhD with said technical project/idea or to do one focusing on non-programming technical skills + history for early education precisely because I think improving the education level of the general public is also a good way to improve things.

I did have a similar concerns. My answer to this situation is to embrace it, make the idea open source with copyleft licence from the start. This gives opportunity to galvanize a community find early adopters and contributors.

If BigTech gets into it, that will be a positive signal which will make idea known and make a market of customers for it. I have no need to be the first, but just be in the game.

Unfortunately investors are now all over B2B startups because they're now keenly aware of just how stacked the odds are against you in consumer products. Even YC nowadays calls consumer facing ideas "tar pits". It's also way easier for investors to pump up B2B valuations through cross pollination between portfolio companies

You listed the less-important parts of that story. The important part was what your start-up offered, how it helps the world, and whether the product(s) and the technology went on to be used by many people/organizations or not...

Comparison shopping in the aughts.

There was interesting work on crawling and search, we went bankrupt trying to provide useful tools for people to find different products and the different places to buy them, then became profitable farming our content out for SEO.

We were then bought out by a domain parker who wanted to marry our monetization with his traffic; as far as I know it didn't work, but that was when I left.

> The domain keeps getting renewed

This is a funny thing with companies that get taken over.

My dad used to run an ISP, one of the first ones in my home country. I'm talking 28.8kbit modems. The company was sold and shut down more than 20 years ago. The company that bought them out got bought out, that company then got bought and, and this repeated a few times.

The domain still keeps getting renewed, and for a while redirected to the main page of the largest IT firm in the country. I assume that, along the way of all those acquisitions, domains just kept getting transferred, and nobody knows what those domains are, but it's cheaper to just renew than to find out.

Anyway, it's a fun little reminder of the impact my dad made in this world :)

https://web.archive.org/web/19970409101251/http://www.est.is...

Thanks for the archive link. I was pumping myself up since you didn't seem to name-drop the company. I love these sort of anecdote stories.

Or it may be that the only asset of the company left is a brand and giving out the domain to the world would might make that brand unsellable in the future.

It seems insane to me that the happy path involves you getting $70k. Working in finance, I would expect that amount as a bonus in any year where I perform well and the business isn't unprofitable.

When I've spoken to people about the finance/big tech/startup trade-offs, we've often talked about the upside from startup success (outside of the Google or Instagram case) being around an order of magnitude bigger than that - in the 'pay off your mortgage' ballpark. Is this unrealistic?

I've only got an N of one under my belt, but I'd also note I wasn't a founder or even a pre-series-A employee. I believe the former got more like what you're thinking, and the latter 2x or so what I did. Also I honestly can't recall if that was a pretax or post number at this point.

But on the other end of things... it was still a nice cap on my time there. And even if it's not quit-your-job money, it was still an Everest.

(An Everest being the amount of money it takes to climb Everest, buy a luxury car or a small cabin on a lake, or any other number of reasonably achievable dreams.)

>One problem is not just the influencers peddling their books and their bullshit, it's also the eco-system that sells the dream itself.

The word 'influencer' is already a red flag. Personally wouldn't touch anything with that word in it with long pole. It won't be too long before that word is morphed into another buzz word.

I'm not sure defeat needs to be "expected" anymore...

I have friends with a string of successes under their belts. My own track record is ~half the companies I advise get from garage to series A, and I've had three IPOs and numerous acquisitions.

My rules of thumb:

- do something with big impact. "Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized." - Daniel Burnham: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham

- answer this question honestly: "why now?" i.e. why couldn't this have been done last year or last decade.

- answer this question honestly: "why me?" i.e. am I really the best person in the world to do this?

- check that your competitive position or margins are strong enough you won't have a zillion competitors causing margins to compress. For example, 15 minute food delivery is tough. For example, don't launch a CPG product on Amazon without a strategy to deal with knockoffs!

- check that your regulatory position isn't so crazy that you'll get shutdown before demonstrating outrageous value.

- create an elevator pitch of one or two sentences and see if a majority of legit prospective buyers get excited.

hope this helps!

A few of my friends have done startups, and I have noticed something really important about the "why me" question: it seems to be THE determiner of how much you can actually capture from starting up a company. The questions of product/market fit and timing determine whether a company in the space ought to exist. The "why me" question tells you how much your startup can capture independent of the money and work of other people, and how much of that reward you will get.

Since then, I started up a company that I think I am uniquely qualified to run, but we'll see if we get there.

Yeah, some of this just feels like advice some folks are going to have to learn first-hand, the hard, raw way. "Don't fall for parasocial bs touted on social media" is the new "make backups, seriously!111".

I tried 10 years building numerous projects since 17 until i reached the $1mil one. I did it because I loved building stuff, it wasn't a burden for me like i see it's for so many people that want to become entrepreneurs because they see on Tiktok how good others have it.

If it becomes a burden, then it's a problem.

Also, luck may play a big role, but there's something you learn failing over and over again. You start to see what it's actually working and what path is closer to success. Patterns will emerge. You know that saying that sometimes you do your own luck.

The easiest path to success for a SaaS is getting a feature of a big product into a standalone specialized product and going after that niche. This simple thing so many indie hackers fail to realize, many try to build the next unicorn, the unique idea. If you keep trying like this, you'll likely fail 50 more times.

What you see on Tiktok rarely reflects reality.

^^ +10000

I think a lot of us have been there.

There's a big difference whether your service:

- is B2B/B2C;

- uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth;

- targets a broad market or a niche (the more niche it is, the better it speaks to your target market, f.e. coaching vs developer coaching vs coaching Java developers VS coaching Java developers in machine learning vs coaching Java developers that use machine learning in the agricultural world...)

- uses different pricing models;

- ...

I've been on this route for 8 years with some consulting stints in between to pay the bills, and it wasn't until this year that my sales pitch finally started to land. Refining my target audience has been a big part of this...

There's a lot of nuance in how to present your offer, and you need to get everything exactly right to convert someone. You have to make someone an offer so good it would feel stupid for them to refuse.

In my opinion a lot of the "snake oil sellers" try to pitch the universal product-led growth approach to a very broad market that works for everything and that you can do from your computer.

In reality, they are most likely optimized to sell as much courses as possible, coming with very generic advice, and don't really care about the results for their target audience.

Another point: unless your target audience is on indie hackers, you should not be spending your time there at all.

I feel for you, so if you want to have a short chat, I might be able to give you some pointers. Feel free to reach out.

In the end, there is a lot of survivorship bias going on, and as the world is in constant flux, what works today will probably not work tomorrow, so you have to find your own path...

And, there's no shame in having tried and failed; by trying you're already within the minority that took action.

By the way, in my experience, people pay way more for an IT consultant that has lived and experienced the bigger picture of running a business, so even if you failed, you should be better off that someone that didn't try...

Update: formatting

> uses product-led/marketing-led/sales-led growth

What exactly do you mean here? because I'd argue depending on the product, each of the 3 could be the way to go over the others. Are you trying to say one is the best way of growing? Curious to hear your thoughts.

Disclaimer: solo bootstrapper, currently growing reasonably, but still way below 1M ARR. I did start with a pilot / first customer and then started doing cold outreach, while trying SEO/ads/social without much success for a few years.

I tried combining both product-led and sales-led, and addressing a lot of different kinds of businesses, but this ended up making my go-to-market more complicated and resulted in almost zero sales.

Second half of this year I finally switched it to sales led targeting a very specific niche, and ended up with a very clear and simple offering for a very specific kind of customer.

This feels counterintuitive because you exclude a huge part of your TAM, but it allows you to be the perfect match for a very specific profile.

Instead of getting a lot of leads with a gazillion questions because they don't trust you, they now start thinking about if/how they can afford it after the first online session.

To get the path of the least resistance, you need to address the exact problems of a certain kind of prospect, conveying your value as easy as possible, and making it a no-brainer for them to commit.

But, don't take my word for it, just ask me again by the end of 2023 whether this all worked out of not.

(I did get some very positive feedback from somebody who bootstrapped, scaled up and sold his company, so I do have high hopes/expectations.)

Thanks for this. It seems to be clear enough: if you get in touch with your specific niche customer that matches your product the best, your conversion is sure to increase.

Perhaps since many broader (less niche) bases are covered by the innumerable products out there today, maybe this is a good way to go for solo people.

Looking to pivot to a similar approach, any chance I can reach out to you or follow you on Twitter?

Ditto

Like above, send an email to tom at the domain mentioned in my profile.

Sure, just send an email to tom at the domain name mentioned in my profile.

The thing is you are not the minority. Those who are successful are a very small minority who just had the stars aligned at the right moment at the right moment with some luck. When you consider it, those promoters are selling you picks and shovels so that you can find your gold. But similar to the gold rush, we know that very small amount of people actually found gold and from those who found it, a smaller amount was able to sustain that.

I'm sorry that your enterprises have failed but this doesn't surprise me. I'm happy that you changed your direction (imho, it's not giving up) to something different. It's very hard to find the point where you let it go while success seems such a very short distance away like you can reach your hand and grab it. But it's so frustrating that even if you are approaching your goal, you can't just close the distance and it's still far away.

There will be people who will label you as a "loser" as you "gave up on your dreams", but you are not actually. You are just one of millions of people who were trying to make it but didn't. I doesn't matter if your idea was great or not, if your execution was perfect or not, if your audience was willing to pay or not, if the time was right or not, sometimes it just doesn't work. And it's still OK.

Best of luck to you.

Succeeding in the startup world reminds me of the funfair analogy:

The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon.

The middle class kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and also miss. Then they will walk away, saying that was fun, and go hang out with their mates. But maybe the 10th or the 100th middle class kid will hit the balloon.

And the working class kids? They work at the funfair. They never get to throw darts.

Here's the kicker: those kids who hit the balloons? One or two of them might go off and start a blog/podcast, or write a book titled

- Zero To Plushy

- The Dart Thing About Dart Things: Plushy Hunting When There Are No Easy Answers

- Dart Throwers at Work: Stories of Plushy Hunters' Early Days

- You Are a Badass at Hunting Plushies: Master the Mindset of Throwing Darts

- The Lean Plushy Hunter

- &c

Hell, if it's the middle class kid writing the book, they might even throw a couple of anecdotes in there about how they didn't have an easy start (compared to the rich kid), and it might even be true for them.

That book is the catnip that folks like you and me base our life decisions on.

I had a go at 3 startups, only one of them quasi-full-time, as I self-funded with freelancing. (I spent years building a "turn PDFs into data" product, had a few paying customers, and then one day got made totally redundant by Google Vision.)

Needless to say, I got completely burned out on startup number 3.

I shuttered the business just as Covid hit. I spend more time with the family (wife, two daughters, 9 and 6), and we moved to the countryside to be closer to ageing parents and siblings with kids.

It's healing time, baby

I wish you all the best

So…you’re a rich kid?

Heh, it's been a tumultuous ride for my family.

Paternal grandad was a civil servant, and they were comfortable, but grandad died when dad was 6. Granny married a drunk and lost everything. Step-grandad beat them. My dad grew up a rebel. His saving grace was a teacher who said: I don't care if you don't come back to school, but promise me one thing: you'll read a book a week.

Mum and dad meet quite young, and have me when mum was still a teen. We're dirt poor, and they borrow a lot of money from maternal grandad, who is a gold miner with 7 kids. He gets my dad a job at the mine. The 80s in South Africa were boom years for gold, and everyone does well. My dad pays maternal grandad back all their debts, and I distinctly remember how our lives changed as a young chap. Not rich by any stretch, but we're not hungry or shoddily dressed. My dad is smart enough to spend money on important things, like getting us a home PC, and paying for skills, like my Karate and scuba diving.

However, in my late teens, things start changing again. Jobs dry up for dad, mum leaves him, he falls into depression. Finances rise and fall as dad gets back into work, and makes a bit of money day trading. I drop out of uni, as we can't pay for it anymore.

He meets a nice new lady, who inherited a piece of land, and they scrape just about enough money and know-how together to start developing the first phase of a four-phase development. But, he gets fucked by the bank.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absa_Group_Limited#Mortgage_lo...

Three weeks after my wedding in 2014, he commits suicide. Either severely depressed, or so that the bank can't come after him. He leaves whatever they have left in a secure estate to the grandchildren, and stepmum can live in the house until she dies. The kids (me and sis, and 3 step sisters) inherit nothing.

Me? I was privileged enough to learn programming in school. The gold mines funded the schools well, and in 1990 already (when I was 11/12), our classroom had 20 Commodores in it. That was my saving grace: coding. I could earn good money, and self-fund most of my bad decisions.

(My first startup: we won Startup weekend, then got a £50K grant from Telefonica - all pure luck, and a little bit of tapping into the zeitgeist at the time: polling apps)

I don't think this way of looking at it is helpful either.

Sometimes the rich kid was abused by his dad and it ate him up inside and he turned to drugs and died of an overdose at 25 years old.

Sometimes the middle class kid came from a father that survived as a child in WW2 with undiagnosed metal scars to prove it.

Sometimes the poor kid learns plumbing from his dad then starts and scales a business up to millions in sales.

We don't live in North Korea. A great deal of your future in a country in the west is based on how hard you try and, yes, some intangibles that are beyond your control, but it's no where close to "the rich kid kept buying darts until he won while one in fifty middle class kids actually made it."

Furthermore, entrepreneurship is just one of many hard games. And yes, the rich have an advantage at this specific game and less so because of their access to money and more so their access to their parents that are often successful at navigating society for capital formation. But the rewards of being a successful founder are pretty limited. Slightly better tasting wine. Larger hotel rooms. Softer sheets.

When you actually add up all the real benefits of winning at forming a company, you'll find that they pale in comparison to other games, many of which are easier, but some of which are harder or MUCH harder.

People today barely remember who Rockefeller is. He's the name a fancy building near the middle of the city to most people. That will be Bill Gates. That will be Steve Jobs. That will be so many of our supposed HN heros. If humanity makes it a couple hundred years, more people will remember Putin and Biden. Their games are harder. They ultimately matter more. And if legacy is more important than threadcounts then their rewards are much larger.

I think it is more important to find out what is true and what is false and to embrace the truth and help others than it is to win at business. And if it matters at all to you, I've founded a couple of failed companies and one that was acquired and I still think tech entrepreneurship can be a good thing, but only to a point.

“Sometimes the rich kid was abused by his dad and it ate him up inside and he turned to drugs and died of an overdose at 25 years old. Sometimes the middle class kid came from a father that survived as a child in WW2 with undiagnosed metal scars to prove it. Sometimes the poor kid learns plumbing from his dad then starts and scales a business up to millions in sales.“

That is adorable, and plumbers aren’t poor.

Nobody said plumbers are poor.

"the poor kid learns plumbing from his dad." ..........

That doesn't mean his dad's a plumber, it means his dad showed him some basic plumbing and he took an interest in it that later turned into a career. That's fairly basic reading comprehension so the "........." like I'm an idiot isn't necessary when you're the one adding a bunch of additional context that isn't there.

And let's not forget it's a made up example.

Yeah if we want to speculate on what was left unsaid the only limit is our imagination. Maybe the dad is a wizard or a ninja or something.

It is not just a made up example, it is an outlier, which is why it is so adorable.

undiagnosed metal scars

What are undiagnosed metal scars ?

Judging by your website, you're very much the rich kid who simply resents the label.

> The rich kid will have a go at throwing the dart at the balloon, and miss. But, because they're a rich kid, they just take out their wallet (or parents' wallet), get more stubs, and try again (and again) until they hit the balloon

I get contacted for a lot of “rich kid” startups for consulting work. This notion that rich kids are succeeding at startups due to their perseverance and fallback options is almost the opposite of what I see in the real world. A lot of the “rich kid” startup founders I’ve followed or tried to work with have been only half committed to actual working on their startups. They often want to be the idea guy or the money/fundraiser person or the iconic CEO role holder, but when it comes time to do the work they’re not interested in grinding.

Those fallback options also become a liability when things get difficult or stop being fun. A lot of them dip out at the first signs of struggle and fall back to easy jobs in their parents’ network.

In theory they should have more runway to persevere at a startup. In practice, they often have too many easy options to fall back on to actually persevere at the execution required.

> I get contacted for a lot of “rich kid” startups for consulting work.

Aren't you proving the OP's point? The point was, precisely, that they have options, not that they "persevere". Contracting consulting work is one such option.

Poor people cannot contract anyone to help them.

I think he’s kind of making a case that the rich kids aren’t always the ones that succeed ultimately in startups because they leave at first sight of trouble.

This makes intuitive sense to me. Startups are so hard that I know I wouldn’t persevere if I was sufficiently wealthy already. I’ve been failing at this game for twenty years straight. Like the OP, I quit last year and got a full time job again. But it always beckons me back somehow. It’s the failed startup attempts, the failed investments, the fraudsters who conned me out of my money, the career that could have been spectacular, but only ended up so-so because I’m not in the US. Somehow every knockdown from life makes me a little grittier, a little more determined when I get back up. How does a rich kid develop that?

Anon for the obvious reasons... I was involved in such a start-up. Two of the founders were smart, Ivy-educated, surprisingly well-connected for their youth, and lazy. Once there was funding and a professional team around them to grind out all the details and versions of the product and get it marketed and sold, you know, the hard stuff after the investor demos, they didn't want it anymore. One fucked off to party and couch-surf in warm vacation spots, the other meandered in and out before being shown the door by the board. I ran into one of them years later and they're both still kind of bouncing around doing influencer-things, writing, and being hustle advisors.

I fully agree with your message but some of the joke examples are misguided in my opinion :) Some of those you're making puns with (like Coders at Work) are not about startups or recipes for success, but interviews with early practitioners, and have historical value, much like interviewing scientists.

I also think that software engineering and methodology/best practices book fall in another category. What you want to mock is the startup success stories, "X successful habits of Y people", "How I built X in my kitchen and you can do it too" sort of stuff.

There is also a Founders at work. The funny at work title may have been a riff on that.

Yes, money maters.

Rich kids can conjure tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars from "friends and family" in a mater of days. Hours even, if they're really connected.

They can then pump all that money straight into advertisement, barely even need a working demo - just something that looks like a product. They can do this many times over.

If you're gonna bootstrap something with $0, then you need to win the algorithmic lottery, simple as that. And even if you have some life savings laying around, you only have one go at burning those - though most working class folks in their early 20s rarely have the substantial funds needed to promote a product.

The pyramid of loserdom goes all the way down, unless you're Elon Musk there is someone richer, and there's always someone poorer. Winners figure out how to make it with what they have. Losers always blame lack of resources, look at people who win the lottery, most return to the same standard of living within a few years.

Almost anyone can afford $5 a day in ads to test market.

This is the "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" myth that the whole illusion is based on. Thanks for nothing for propagating it one more time.

would you be able to get meaningful tests for $5 though? i think most ad providers need more as a minimum

I was curious what books you were making a play on words for (since it wasn't immediately obvious), so asking ChatGPT:

    What are the real names of the books? For instance, "Zero To Plushy" is play on "Zero To One". List out the names for the other books.


    "The Dart Thing About Dart Things: Plushy Hunting When There Are No Easy Answers" is a play on "The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers"
    "Dart Throwers at Work: Stories of Plushy Hunters' Early Days" is a play on "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance"
    "You Are a Badass at Hunting Plushies: Master the Mindset of Throwing Darts" is a play on "You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life"
    "The Lean Plushy Hunter" is a play on "The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses"

> "Dart Throwers at Work: Stories of Plushy Hunters' Early Days" is a play on "Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance"

It missed this one, it's likely Founders at Work.

> "The Lean Plushy Hunter" is a play on "The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses"

Might be The Lean CEO instead.

I had to Google to get the right answers, I wasn't familiar with either book.

How about I'm Go - You're Go. Has any startup founder ever written a book about the mental health aspects of a startup?

> That book is the catnip that folks like you and me base our life decisions on.

For sure, this was me in college and grad school. Little in the way of real-life experience, so I borrowed liberally from these business books, the details of which are often simplified or omitted for the sake of the narrative. Unfortunately in life, it is those omitted details that make up the pain of taking risks.

This seems objectively false given that the majority of extremely successful startups are founded by first or second generation immigrants, who are often not well off.

https://nfap.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2022-BILLION-DOL...

Public charge rules mean immigration to the US takes privilege.

It's always hard to figure out what exactly to look at...

I find both things plausible, both that the most successful startups are not started by the "rich kids" and that the "rich kids" start most successful startups.

The paper you linked is talking only about the first thing, by limiting its analysis to startups that surpass a $1B valuation. But you could choose some much more modest definition of "successful startup", like "all startups that reach series C or have an exit that returns at least 1.5x", and see totally different results.

That’s a great analogy. It feels to me like we’re consuming so much “zero to plushy” content these days, and in very parasocial ways. Podcasts, talk shows, documentaries, YouTubers. We’re told over and over implicitly or explicitly that we can be successful like them.

The reality is, statistically most people will die in obscurity, and at some point we need to come to terms with that.

I know I’m just describing survivorship bias and we all know this already, but it feels especially prevalent in the last few years.

While it is true that entrepreneurship is indeed an upper middle class game, you tell only half the story. I've met guys who went from poor to cushy big tech jobs and even then they are deathly afraid of risk. Probably some form of PTSD from their poor days makes them never want to risk going back

Irrespective of what you think of Levels, he's shown me that it's a case of keep trying. He has 215k followers, has tried 70 different things, and only done well with 4 of them [1].

I'm in the same boat - I've tried many things, and most have failed. I currently have a side project with 1k users making no money, and I'm going to try monetise it - but I expect it to most likely fail. And I'm okay with it.

There's joy in being creative, making, growing, marketing, trying, learning. I can't remember where I read it, but once a founder makes their money, they often get lost in life. The common advice is then: "now do it again but this time enjoy the journey".

> They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy [...] [but] It's fucking hard and it takes more than just a positive attitude to make it.

Welcome to startups! Another great quote I read was "Bam! Overnight success story! It only took 7.5 years" [2].

[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817 [2] https://siliconvict.com/articles/5-lessons-starting-a-500m-a...

KEEP GOING.

You can bump that up with avatarai.me and interiorai.com added to the list[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1605391667959316481

Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"? As a group they seem the people with the least amount of money to spend on products, and are some of the most cheapskate people on the planet.

Here's some advice: if you want to make money selling a software product, sell to people who are able and willing to spend money on it.

That's what I asked myself reading the post. Business wise nobody cares about your product blog.

> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"?

Two things come to my mind:

1) "indie hackers" are way easier to get a relation started with than companies or even start-ups. And forget about big enterprise if you don't have an angel investor or some other experienced and well-connected guidance.

2) With smaller users, you're more likely to get better testing and feedback. In companies of all sizes, it's rare to have a "we have an issue with vendor X's software" pipeline that goes straight from the affected user to the vendor, in most cases every report or feedback question will take six to seven steps in between.

While these things are true, I can't help but think the advantages are outweighed by the fact that tech savvy people are some of the cheapest people around when it comes to paying for software. How many of us expect to build an MVP entirely on the free tier of something?

that's because people that usually become indie hacker don't have much expertise outside of development and a few very saturated markets. Everything related to indie hackers, statups, etc are super crowded because it's easier for a newcomer to enter the market and build something familiar to them.

Most people that have expertise on agriculture, oil drilling, saw-milling etc where there are real opportunities don't know much about startups or know how to build an app.

> Why do "indiehackers" want attention from and create products for other "indiehackers"?

They’re influencers. That’s why people want their attention.

I think it kinda has the look of a cool lifestyle from the outside (to some). They’re digital nomads and they travel to cool places and meeting cool people and tweeting big graphs that go up and to the right. They disavow lots of possessions (again a nomad) while professing being all tech all the time. Once upon a time tech-entrepreneurs might have rented a shack in Palo Alto, but now they tweet while couch surfing in Lisbon. Silicon Valley is too crowded when you’re solo.

I would take a house in Palo Alto over an airport lounge and an AirBnB du jour but the nomadic life is honestly cheaper and seems attainable, if only I can build that indie business.

I thought digital nomads were mostly remote workers who just wanted to travel.

What is an indie business?

Something where you make a business that takes minimal commitment so you can spend your time on the beach.

The actual business seems to be taking photos of yourself on the beach and making money as an influencer, while telling people you made money from your startup though.

At least that’s my impression. Maybe there are counter examples.

This is mostly incorrect. Indie business are what the name says, independent bootstrapped businesses that does not take venture capital. They are usually SaaS but not always. Lots of examples on the IndieHackers podcast, including a guy who makes money doing cookie delivery.

You're more likely thinking of Instagram, Twitter or YouTube influencers.

An “indie hacker” is a solo entrepreneur who (may be a digital nomad and) builds small revenue generating projects. Typically building them in series and letting them grow passively while working on a new one. Often active on twitter sharing work in progress and success/failure stories.

A key theme for many is building lifestyle businesses that collectively provide “passive income” and financial independence. But unlike “FIRE” it’s “financial independence, casually work while enjoying life”

A common and well known person is Pieter Levels:

https://levels.io/projects/

> What is an indie business?

Mostly video courses, job board websites, affiliate link hustles.

> they travel to cool places and meeting cool people

I was looking at some forums and it seems that the first question after someone arrives in a new place is "where do i meet you guys (digital nomads)". It seems to me that it's a closed group of people selling things to each other.

Tbc, I don't have anything against this kind of living, and in fact i d like it to be easier to work in other countries. Unfortunately, even within the EU you can't work in another country.

Something worth thinking about in this context, is that businesses simply must exist in a community of some kind. When you start a small business in your local community, you have a pretty good idea of the appetite, and space for, the product you are selling, you just have to win the popularity contest and then make the financials work.

For digital nomads, that community has to be online, which is a difficult landscape. You are competing with every online business across the globe, and it's difficult to gauge the desire for what you're selling. Just being online won't do it, and even if you find some customers, have you found all of them? Maybe you missed a connection to a broader community that needs what you sell. You'd never know.

But from my thrown made of failed SaaS products, the biggest mistake I see solo-entrepreneurs make, often they don't know what they're selling. They know what they're building, and they conflate their solo-SaaS business with venture capitalist powered startup. VC startups aren't businesses yet, they're proto-businesses, they can afford to be a lofty idea and the money can happen later. Solo-entrepreneurs, you don't have that luxury. You have to have the "business" part, the money flow, figured out already.

My advice for someone who is trying to bootstrap a solo-business on the net: have a product that someone can buy as soon as you quit your paying job. If no one can give you money, you're just counting down the days until you can even begin being a business.

Great advice, thanks!

Because they probably don't know another community. A lot of people are also inspired and copying what Nomadlist did, but that is a project aimed at precisely this type of wandering wannabee entrepreneurs.

This is great point. Every idie hacker wants to scratch his own itch but doesn't realize nobody else will want to buy even if they have similar problems.

This. It's the "developers trying to sell products to other developers" conundrum. You know the development workflow. You came up with a great tool to increase productivity for developers. You set a low price of $50. And yet no one is going to buy it because "lol I could do this in a weekend".

Developers are cheap bastards (I'm still fighting over whether I should shell our $99 for Panic's Nova editor or not - even though it would be the perfect fit for my editing needs. But I'm a cheap bastard and VIM is good enough so...)

I guess "indiehackers" aren't much different. Only maybe they have less disposable income that old fart developers?

I actually totally disagree with this. Developer tools are probably one of the easier segments to tackle because technical people 1) like trying new things and 2) often have company credit cards that don’t have to justify expenses.

Having worked in a successful developer tool (Firebase) this is utter nonsense. Developers are super cheap. People are ringing their hands over the 10 dollar per month copilot price for the world beat ai to help you code for Christ' sake.

yeah, and i plan on cancling my co-pilot subscription after the free trial

I'm not gonna do it! Someone else, please!8-))

... wringing their hands...

Uh......

Dev tools is one of the hardest segments to tackle.

Developers are notoriously cheap and every one of your developer-customers (falsely) assumes they could build a better version of your product over the weekend.

Developers will always compare your fully-featured, supported product to a shitbag OSS "free" alternative they found on GitHub (abandoned by some dude who tried to build a clone to a real product over the weekend and then discovered that is actually not possible...)

Developers will take great pains to overstate the case for building internal tools as it gives them more control and embededness in an organization.

Selling to developers is not for the faint of heart -- and ironically, takes MORE* sales skill than, say, selling marketing automation tools to marketers. No sales/marketer will say to you on a sales call:

"You know, I could build that if I wanted to...."

First-time entrepreneurs who happen to be developers often attack devtools because that is all they know.

*This is a weird self-esteem insecurity tic.

> Developers are cheap bastards

Am a developer and can confirm. I am a cheap bastard.

This made me chuckle.

Nova is fantastic, btw

I know. But their "$99 then $49/year" price is somehow off putting to me. Now I know this is stupid. Because before this model was en vogue I bought a lot of software (Omnifocus for example, or 1Password) and I bought paid upgrades every time there were some available. But this "you just pay $49/year to get upgrades" is somehow psychologically completely different for me. I know it's pretty much the same - but the subscription-feeling of it is off putting. Can't really explain it - just a dumb me thing I guess.

Honestly, I think Agenda [1] had a brilliant take on this - a free version with baseline features, and a continual improvement of "Pro" features. Pay for it once, get all the current pro features plus whatever they release as pro in the next year. Then your feature set freezes at that level, and whenever you feel like they've added something worth the pro price point, you pay for the catch-up and another year.

They get to maintain one version of the app, with a reasonable number of feature flags, and users get to pay when something adds value.

[1] https://agenda.com/

Developers are also the kind of people who will refuse to pay money for or use proprietary software on principle - regardless of price! I constantly see people on HN suggesting (often highly immature) open-source alternatives to free or reasonably-priced proprietary software for no other reason than the fact that it's open-source.

Just like being an author, it's hard to make a living writing (books : software) unless you're either very skilled+lucky (Brandon Sanderson : Jetbrains) or sell to companies (HR/marketing position at a company : either making B2B software or working for a software company yourself).

Proprietary software risks lock in. Most developers experience the pain of that eventually.

You can use that stuff safely if you can survive losing it and continue reasonably (e.g., switch to Emacs or Jenkins). If you can't, it's a huge risk.

Furthermore, getting new software approved at a big corp can already be a hassle. But at all the places I've worked, seeking approvals for and opening up a funding line to pay for a license increases the hassle 10x.

This has nothing to do with selling to individual developer-users.

> Proprietary software risks lock in.

This has nothing to do with proprietary software. Sublime Text, for instance, is proprietary software, but there is zero lock-in because it operates on plain text files. This argument is invalid.

Developers underestimate how much work it takes to build things. For large stuff like IDEs, developers buy them and pay good money.

But yeah many developers look at prices badly. Will it save you more time/effort than the price? That's the threshold. Not some abstract idea of "worth the money."

ya.. a lot of these things are no brainers when you do the math. let's say i believe myself to be worth $100/hr and the software costs $50. can i build this in 30 minutes? hmm, i might be able to set up an empty project in 30 minutes.

> Here's some advice:

I strongly doubt OP wants advice.

Well one of the indiehacker mottos is to solve problems you are familiar with. So...

I think programmers are often dismissive of business people. Most of us could probably do marketing or managerial jobs if we were interested since we're the ones who really build the product. How hard can the business side be right?

People who are serious about business study MBAs for several years, because there's a lot to learn. You're not just going to learn it by reading some influencer blog posts.

When you're preinvestment, the best skills for entrepreneurs aren't technical, they're strategic. If you can assess a business idea like an investor you'll stop wasting time on things that are hopeless prospects to begin with. You also won't need to listen to influencers.

Steve Jobs said he was as proud of the things Apple didn't do as the things they did. They only took forward 20% of ideas IIRC, and probably canned a load of those too.

I'm working on a rapid innovation pipeline. I want to be able to brainstorm ideas, filter out the strategically weak ones, run quick tests on more promising ones, dig deeper into the target market/problem/technology that enables the idea, and move quickly. I want to do as much as possible without writing a line of code. That's the only way to keep things fast and low cost so I can carry on working in my cushy job and do this on the side. If one takes off, I'll then decide to focus on it, but by then the business model will be well validated and I'll be more certain about the potential.

> strategic. If you can assess a business idea like an investor you'll stop wasting time on things that are hopeless prospects to begin with

Can you define this?

The main things are a huge (ideally uncontested) potential market and a sustainable competitive advantage (i.e. moat). This means it's VRINE - valuable, rare, inimitable (can't be copied), non-substitutable (nothing else will do), exploitable (people will pay for it).

What is VRINE may be proprietary technology (ideally patented), key strategic partners (e.g. suppliers, distributors, collaborators), or perhaps brand if you're first to market. You also need the relevant resources and capabilities (i.e. skills) to be able to make it happen or attract people who can help you.

You should be at the leading edge of a new trend before other people are aware of it so you can become the dominant product ("blue ocean") and become associated with the product category itself. However, this is easier said than done since innovation is often messy, with no clear end point, so agility and learning is key. Also, Apple were consistently second movers, in which case you need a clear differentiator (think Stripe focussing on ease of use, Apple on design, etc.).

You may also want to research value chain reconfiguration. This explains how you can avoid competing head-on in established industries in ways the incumbents just can't respond to rapidly because it cuts against the core of their business model. The classic example is low cost airlines.

These aren't hard and fast rules. But check out the Innovator's Dilemma to see why entrepreneurs will always be needed.

I don't know what an indie entrepreneur is but this startup scam really look off in 2011 when Eric Reis released the book Lean Startup. Within 4 months there were already Lean Startup Consultants on LinkedIn. Within 8 months people like Ash Maurya were releasing hardcovers on product market fit when all he had ever done was sell a rails app for 4 figures. The scene has obviously evolved since then but just as goldrushy as ever. At least we got uber and airbnb out of it.

sir, not everything is a scam or a conspiracy. There have been hucksters since the beginning of time.

If you're the type of person who can't stand working in an authoritarian environment as an employee, starting your own business is worth it.

I always knew there was something fishy about Eric Reis. An academia person who's never started a business all of a sudden is a business guru. The entire "startup" industry is basically an MLM scheme perpetuated by VC firms. The same goes for the "Indie" industry - a scheme initiated by Tim Ferriss, Eric Reis, IndieHackers, etc. I'm getting completely red-pilled over here. Fascinating thread

One thing that stood out for me is how much emphasis you put on having an online presence in a certain community as a driver of your business. I have next to zero information on how you actually spent your time, but it seems much of it was on chasing the social clout, hoping it would give you momentum. Online presence and social clout are not goals, they're side effects of successful directed effort - but of course you can also build a low-agency audience with startup porn.

In the long run, there aren't hacks in this business. You really do have to identify a real demand which meeting is both technically feasible and economically viable given the current interest curve and technological frontier. Making sure your product actually solves a problem and getting paid customers is non-negotiable, not something you can just try and see if it works. You make it sound like you put these requirements in the same relevance bracket as building an audience or getting noted on product hunt.

Anyway, hope you go through this moment in your life with lessons learned and experience you can put to good use wherever you see fit.

Congrats! You have found out that influencers are gaining money through promising impossible stuff to people who believe that the million comes easy. ;)

I am working in a startup's marketing team and we are constantly struggling to get some attention and customers.

In comparison, big corporations have big sales, marketing, product development teams and etc... And these are constant efforts of hundreds of people so that the company has a good position in the market.

So don't beat yourself up. It is not easy.

Entrepreneurship can often be a very ungrateful job to do. You sacrifice too much. But what do you actually get in the end?

As dumb as it sounds, good for you. There is this great podcast with Annie Duke about how quitting is a difficult skill and how easily we get trapped chained to not functioning approaches due to not looking at it rationally. Maybe the analogy of all the corpses on Mount Everest who ignored the turnaround time will make you feel a bit better about your decision.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jMLqcfX9dU

edit: For anyone not listening to it, the practical take away is the importance of setting kill criteria (to recognize something isnt working) upfront to combat cognitive biases and your emotions in the moment.

>3 x failed attempts => spending time institutionalized

>anyone can do it with the right mindset

Those are contradictory, I would guess the right mindset is one where failure doesn't destroy you to the point you get institutionalized.

Here is my stupid advice (won't work, it's a case of someone who knows less giving advice to someone who knows more, I have never started a company or anything, but as Gandalf said "Why Bilbo Baggins? Perhaps it is because I am afraid... and he gives me courage."): Buy a copy of a souls game (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, Elden Ring), play it with no summons and no over leveling, you'll eventually get to a difficult boss that will kill you many times, now the first Souls game I played was Bloodborne and I just gave up after a week, came back then gave up, came back again and it clicked and now they're my favorite series of games, I died like 50 times against some bosses, it would drive anyone crazy, the stupid mistakes I keep repeating, the unfairness of some of their moves, etc. doesn't matter, I chose to play the game and it's just a game so why get affected?

This will obviously not help you in anything related to startups, but it's a light way to learn to accept failure, is it the same kind of acceptance? I don't know...

Also you failed, maybe you're just 5 feet 6 and can never ever become a professional basketball player no matter how hard you try, does it mean you're less of a human being to the point you get institutionalized for it? of course not, you tried, you failed, maybe the 4th time's a charm, maybe not, if you become comfortable enough to try again without affecting your mental health sure, if not don't try again, a decent job, a family, a couple friends, couple hobbies, and you can live a meaningful life and maybe even be happier than many people who succeeded at what you tried.

  Also you failed, maybe
  you're just 5 feet 6 and can
  never ever become a
  professional basketball
  player no matter how hard
  you try

Muggsy Bogues is 5'3" and played 14 seasons in the NBA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues

There was once a time when I would have written a comment like this one, but now I'm down-voting it. There are two ways to read this message, and both of them are not something I would encourage, of different reasons, and being ambiguous between them is not in it's favor either.

A. You are trying to highlight that the poster is technically incorrect, so that they learn a new fact. That is mostly fine, but it doesn't add a lot to the conversation, and distracts from the point that they are trying to make.

B. You are making a point that some people succeed despite handicaps, essentially that there are often exceptions and hard work can make up for lack of talent. This is true, but it's a mindset that I think should not be encouraged in the OP. They are clearly having problems with how hard they work, which had lead to them being institutionalized. Telling them that they could have succeeded if they tried harder is not what we should do here.

There are people like this everywhere I just learned to not answer them, you will say something that's true for 99% of the population, instead of reading between the lines and understanding that I was trying to say "people are different and the difficulty isn't the same for everyone", they'll instantly jump on the 1% for who the thing you said doesn't apply and reply telling you how you're wrong, there people argue to argue, to get a dopamine hit (they'll reply to tell me it's some other neurotransmitter at work here) and satisfy their ego, radio has static noise and the internet has these people, just ignore them.

As tempting as it may be to think this way and attempt to critique my personality based on a short textual response to a comment on HN, you may want to consider the following:

You may say something that hits 99% of the people in the way that you intend, but there will be people who fall within the 1% corner cases and take your discouragement to heart. It is important for those people to understand that naysayers are often wrong -- and they don't like having it pointed out. Some of those people may not even leave a comment, but what they read will linger in their minds.

The system lets you downvote my comment and it also lets me reply to your points A and B.

A. Stating the truth is a contribution to the conversation. The boundaries between success and failure are fuzzy and it is a disservice to suggest that you have to meet certain criteria to accomplish difficult goals. Every great success is unique and those who try to convince people that lofty goals are structurally unreachable are generally not the good guys.

B. You are conflating two very different arguments. One is, "OP needs to hit the brakes and re-evaluate because clearly something is leading him down a harmful path." The other is, "Those who set out to do something difficult are going to encounter disappointment, mistakes, and failure, and they should find hope in the knowledge that unique and unlikely success stories can be found in abundance." Your point is the former, mine is the latter.

In both cases, you are attempting to extrapolate my reasoning from my comment and that's an error on your part because you lack enough specific information about my thought process to infer my reasoning. I would appreciate it if you could respond to the best version of my comment rather than casting a harsh light upon it.

> but it's a light way to learn to accept failure

Everyone should do sales at some point to learn about failure, and build a thicker skin. Sales is about getting told no over and over, not taking it personally, and continuing to keep trying. Sounds very familiar to entrepreneurship, which at the end of the day is about selling customers, investors, and yourself on an idea.

As a business owner myself I understand how hard it can be first hand. But if there’s one thing I can tell you is that very rarely is someone’s startup successful the first or even first couple times they try. If that was the case everyone would have a business. It’s all about learning from the mistakes and reasons your business/idea failed. My father has been an entrepreneur his whole life and he had a couple successful businesses throughout his career but his first truly successful business wasn’t until his 6 or 7th business (I lost count on how many he has made) over the course of 20 years. In order to be a successful entrepreneur you have to accept failure and even be ok with failing if it means you are learning something and use it as a tool to improve your future businesses. A quick note about digital influencers, learning from mentors and people who have done what you want to do is very important you just want to make sure they have actually accomplished what they say and walk the talk they are speaking. Lastly, sure it is not for everyone but if you are truly passionate about being an entrepreneur than all I can say is don’t give up and keep trying, all it takes is one success.

Since the late 90s, the fastest way to make money by doing very little is selling 'internet marketing' strategies. These strategies do work if you have a large following. They mostly do not work, at all, if you do not. So if you have a mailing list with engaged users (not bought), 100k+ twitter followers etc.

The tips / books these people sell are usually actually from their own experience and they usually indeed made 100k overnight, however, these strategies were usually just luck/chance in their case and now they can do anything because they have the following and the fanbase.

The worst thing you can do is believe them as some magic shortcut.

But indeed, after all this time (search for 'warriorforum' to see a community that's entirely made out of this type of thing), the thing that can make you $100k+/year from the beach is still writing a book about you got $100k+/year by writing+selling that book.

You probably read a few or followed a few of these internet marketers; they can make you feel very bad as they just send out something and make money immediately; that's because their followers are dreamers, not doers and they'll do anything for a quick fix.

Sounds like a 0-sum-game.

Just remember: There are only so many people willing to be suckered by the same pitch; so if you're selling a dream, your dream needs to be different enough so you can find new suckers.

Props for getting that laid out here and you are in the right now by focusing on what matters, i.e. your health. FWIW, granted it's worth anything, I feel like everything you describe here (a.k.a. ProductHunt, Substack, etc) are byproducts of success but not a good ramp to success itself. Granted that you genuinely enjoy building stuff from scratch (which, without saying, is totally fine if not), those are the least of your concern when roaming the road to PMF. And you'll have better luck at finding it by becoming an authentic expert in a specific niche and building a shitty MVP along the way, which is a much more enjoyable journey.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, all these parts of entrepreneurship that you didn't like, they were actually just distractions posturing themselves as Entrepreneurship™ and their shilling was probably the product of other entrepreneurs. Take care and remember that failure is a byproduct of trying and there's absolutely no shame in that.

What you're giving up on is an unhealthy and unrealistic idea of what "entrepreneurship" means. And that's good. Sounds like you've been following someone else's dream, not your own. I've seen it often, in the music and games industries for example. We've all been there. Failure after failure. But one doesn't give up because the trick is to find the definition of "entrepreneur" that fits you, for which you are suited, and successful, and by definition that is what entrepreneurship is. Don't buy into the pop culture. That said, always take a healthy break between projects, as you say, for the sake of your mental health. Good luck.

Stop trying so hard and just do your own thing at your own pace. It might work it might not work and then you're back to a regular job with regular income, like most of the world. That's not a failure, that's how life usually goes. There are far worse things in life than failing as an entrepreneur. Or maybe instead of chasing business on Twitter, go about your local community, looking if there's anything you can offer to it.

Ignore all the hyped up advice givers, book sellers and influencers. They aren't there to help you. They are there to promote themselves and sell their bs to their followers. You should've recognized this by now. Building anything is hard work. There aren't any shortcuts to get you a quick success... and if it seems there is one, you'll pay the full price for it sometimes later anyway.

It is sometimes hard to stay sane in this world of "tech bros", likes, retweets, shares, sigups, etc... there's a lot of noise, but little signal.

Some similarities exist in many other businesses like music, games or sports. The distribution is varying degrees of L-shaped. The few successful ones are very successful while most are making a loss.

Another key concept is asymmetric risk to the individual. The way it would make sense to an individual to be an enterpreneur is if they can reduce the downside, ie that failing will not result in a personal catastrophe. For example if they had a lot of money to start with. If you have enough savings to live (and feed your family) for a few years without money, then it makes a lot more sense. There are other methods like incubators or collectives.

And the third one is survivorship bias. A lottery winner telling everyone what kind of pen to use to fill their ticket. People might not know very well why they were successful.

Fourth one is "selling picks to gold miners". There's this business and buzz around enterpreneur culture, someone can make money right out of that without actually being an enterpreneur. No matter what it is, somebody will turn it into a meta business. Fishing is a big business. In the sixteenhundreds, Izaak Walton wrote a successful book on angling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Compleat_Angler

For what it’s worth, your next venture will be more successful (and your mental health much better) if you turned off all social media and stopped comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. It seems like what you’re seeking is acceptance and recognition more than business success. That’s fine and entirely human, but as you’ve discovered it’s an incredibly precarious pursuit. It’s not just business, you might start a family and see all the happy, positive posts by other parents which are also often lies. You have to find a way to be enough for yourself.

The good news is, while it’s very hard to settle on the magic formula that gets you lots of followers and subscribers to your brand as an entrepreneur, actual entrepreneurship is quite straightforward if you are able to separate it from your identity. It does take perseverance because it’s a stochastic thing. But customers will tell you what pains them far more directly than someone could explain how to become a public figure. Forget about getting into the club. Concentrate on customers. Expect failure but don’t compare it to other people’s heavily curated success.

I heard one of the founders of YCombinator say on a podcast that you have to be brought up upper middle class to succeed. He said he didn't like saying it, and I guess I believe him. I also believe he's right, and that it sucks. You didn't say anything about class in your post, but connections and confidence are something that the upper middle class (and higher) life brings. Quite possible that it also awards mental health advantages.

I would have been a good founder, had I been born later and richer. Sometimes life just gives you what you get.

I wish you luck. There's no shame in being an IC or a manager rather than a founder.

Sorry to hear that. How long were you trying for? A lot of these guys were at it for years and years before they found success. It can be brutal in the beginning.

I think it's unfair to characterise the "digital nomad influencers" on Twitter as making it seem easy. I know a few of them personally and they work incredibly hard. You can tell by the speed at which they ship new products. They work a lot.

That said, building a Twitter audience of indie hacker types is massively overrated. It's a huge amount of work and the space is utterly saturated. These people generally don't buy stuff and if you try a lot of different ideas then the chances are that many of them are not in your target market.

Exactly. I started building stuff at 17 and found "the one" (doing over 1 mil/year) at 27. I can't count how many failed projects I had.

How did you identify your ultimately successful niche, and what do you feel was different about it than your previous attempts?

When you know you know. It's like the difference between pushing a boulder uphill and downhill. Very hard to predict ahead of time - you just have to keep shipping stuff.

It must be the time of the year that makes people reflect and change the trajectory of their efforts in the year to come. I'm there with you. Most people say don't call it a failure, you didn't fail, despite it feeling like that. Everything you have done has gotten you to this point in your life, for some of that you have to be grateful, you have to look at the good things in your life and say, if it were not for this journey I would not have these things in my life. The experiences matter, the journey matters and the outcomes along the way are not as binary as you'd think. In your eyes you've failed to build a successful company, but if you reframe that by changing your expectations then you'll see how much you've grown, how much you've changed and that without trying to build these things you may have lived a life of regret, a lesser life.

Head up, chin up. Take some time to breathe and reflect, but don't let it consume you. The best years of your life are still ahead of you. The journey isn't over. Maybe it's not the entrepreneurial journey you want, but it could be something else that lets you embody that other ideas, people and places.

Here's an unpopular opinion: (i tweeted this a long time ago)

All the solopreneurs on #buildinpublic Twitter seem to be so successful and hard-working, but the reality is most of them are not making anything sustainable or good.

It feels like this community leans toward a shady and awkward Q&A show about how to grow your new venture. This show is the main engine of growth for some shady "bUsInESs" models on #buildinpublic. It's now a hype train for everything: truth, lie, scam, happiness, sadness, etc. And everyone is trying to use it:

Engage with broken founders, ask them about their opinion, tell them how good their ideas are, show off some fake numbers, feed them with productivity hacks, add more emojis , promote your "SaaS", and you'll "succeed".

I feel sad comparing what's happening rn with the way it was in the beginning, N years ago. It went from "sharing my journey" to "growth hacking my shady scheme" on twtr.

Twitter's self made entrepreneurs are the worst, the endless threads how they make $50kPCM FROM THESE FEW TIPS. It's just modern day self-help gurus cashing in from a bit of influencing and self brand.

As many people on this thread have said, this stuff is hard, and mainly about luck and of course all the stories that we hear are about success.

I wouldn't discourage people to try though, if enough of us try one of us will make it. Just know that you'll probably fail, and as the op says, protect your mental health.

Hate to say it, but you sound like you're victimizing yourself. You're not a victim. And victimhood mentality likely played a large role in your failure. Try to change your mindset and try again when you feel you're ready.

OP needs to accept responsibility for his choices. Blaming it on other people for his choices doesn’t seem right.

I don't thinks this reply is helpful. Its basically saying "its your fault you failed, moreover you are going to fail again because of your attitude"

turning this question around to you:

have you ever managed to "change your mindset"?

assuming you have changed your mindset, did it materially change your circumstances?

Because if you're still in a hole, "being mindful" isn't going to affect that.

> have you ever managed to "change your mindset"? did it materially change your circumstances?

Not GP, but yes and yes. Personal growth is indeed possible!

Do you even know how to read? Did I say "being mindful"?

The entitled OP claims they deserve millions of dollars (via a successful startup) - all they had to do was try.

They then blamed everyone else for their failure except themselves. You will NEVER succeed in a startup if you cannot accept fault and be a leader. Actually, my reply is the ONLY reply they need. They don't need to be babied.

Reread their post:

"I tried everything [I was supposed to]" "But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get anywhere." "It was as if the world was against me" "no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any progress" "It was like I didn't even exist in the world of entrepreneurship." "please don't be fooled by the false promises"

(2/2)

All of the advice in the other comments do NOT matter at all if the OP cannot look in the mirror and self-reflect on what THEY did wrong --- NOT what others did wrong.

This is fundamental. They clearly don't do this currently. Before doing this, nothing else matters, none of the other advice will work, and they CERTAINLY will fail again if they do not fix this first.

>victimhood mentality

Does this kind of pseudo-self-help-tough-love help anyone? Whenever I read something like that I do not feel motivated but enraged. Sometimes people are really victims. Mainly of chance.

> Does this kind of pseudo-self-help-tough-love help anyone?

Yes, there is a lot of research in this area: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindset#Fixed_and_growth_minds...

I interpret is as being able to ask yourself "what did I learn" when you fail; and realizing that most success comes from trying over and over. ("Most" because some people are lucky and succeed the first time.)

In general, people who adopt the growth mindset, (see the link,) are more successful.

Do you mean the research paper that's linked first in the part you linked (on praising children, measuring motivation of those children, not any results in tests not to even mention effect (or lack of it) long term on life) or the author that's mentioned there (with a large 'Criticism' section in their page that comes down to 'doesn't replicate' - and even that detail aside, this 'research', too, was about school performance with no clear ecological relevancy to the topic at hand)?

I did see the link. Nothing about success, tiny bit about school performance. Have you seen the link?

I don’t think it’s tough love per se. I think it’s just true that many people let a victim mentality get in there way. Not derail the thread but I think it is more problematic now as victimhood is lionized today. It can be very helpful yo show people that letting go of this is a way yo change your circumstance. It doesn’t mean the person is not a victim of something or yo downplay it but it is a recognition of how to actual affect change in one’s life. I do actually some people take this advice abs internalize it and get on a more successful path because of it.

They're free to let go. That's fine. Not a big deal. Good for them for trying. It's the entire presentation of their dilemma that prompted by comment. Did you even read their post?

Blaming everyone but themselves. They sound very entitled and they claim that they deserve it. Sorry. That's not how you win and that's not how any of this works.

"Whenever I read something like that I do not feel motivated but enraged. Sometimes people are really victims. Mainly of chance."

Did I make a generalization? I am specifically talking about the OP.

This person is not a victim of chance, obviously. They tried hard [hopefully] and it didn't work, and then blamed everyone else.

What did they try to do? Get rich via a startup.

No one on the planet is entitled to millions of dollars. Very likely they can get a job for $100k+ - better than most Americans.

Yet even then - they blamed everyone else. You don't win by blaming others. If you can't admit your own faults, you're doomed as a startup founder.

It doesn't matter if this was chance or not, but I assure you this circumstance had nothing to do with luck.

After building a few startups and working at a few, I spent a lot of years advising people who wanted to start a startup, and 99% of the time I told them not to waste their time and money. They massively underestimate how hard and expensive it will be, how many skills are needed... and how much LUCK has to do with it.

With my million dollar startup, it was years of research and stupidly hard work, and I had a tech and marketing background to build off of... and I had the luck of meeting the assistant to an Internet marketing "guru" in a bar and giving them a ride home. That assistant got the marketer to promote my product, which got others to promote. Without that bit of luck, it wouldn't have been nearly as successful. In truth, I probably would have gone bankrupt.

Another example... the year that YC startup school accidentally let everyone in, they had a speaker who was talking about what market fit looks like. They failed over and over again, building stuff nobody cared about. They had wasted nearly $500k of investment and were down to the last few dollars, and one of the founders had an idea. The guy speaking implemented it just to prove his cofounder wrong! That idea went viral and they grew into a unicorn.

In my opinion the talk wasn't about market fit. It was a cautionary tale about how lucky you need to get. Last I checked, I read that 82% of venture funded startups fail, even with all that money, talent, and connections. We rarely hear about them. We hear about the success stories, which expound upon the hard work and great idea and seem to overlook how much luck was a factor - and it always is a giant factor.

Having said that, I do think success can be engineered for some startups, if you have the time, money, patience, and constitution to go through lots of small quick failures to find that market fit, and then build your product with the support of a community. And, I think luck can be engineered for some people, like by going to conferences, being nice and providing value... and by befriending the assistants of influential people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pl5GG8RQ4 This one?

My current advice, which seems to be working well so far, is to do small tasks for huge government corporations and organizations for FREE, no questions asked. Don't know how well this could work in the American context, but this has worked for 3 places I've lived in (UK, UAE, India). You don't earn cash but you will earn an INSANE amount of goodwill and connections. The next time, they need a tech solution, they'll get in touch with you, or you could sell to them much easier. Oh yeah, when shooting, shoot for the top of the pecking order.

Selling to wantepreneurs, indie hackers and SMB owners is the worst. The market is super fragmented, and you'll have to do a ton of marketing to a bunch of people who won't even pay, what I like to call the Firebase problem.

I am interested in why it is the Firebase problem, or what that means?

Firebase has a ton of users, but most of the users seem to be independent devs and hobbyists, with a small number of large clients. It's possible Firebase tends to attract non-hardcore users because of its superb UI/UX, which makes it extremely accessible for beginner devs and hobbyist programmers. But apart from a few features (which don't generate revenue, like Auth and Cloud Functions), Firebase has a hard time getting established companies to use them because at the end of the day, they're built on GCP, which has the lowest trust factor among the Big 3 - no serious company is going to trust the longevity of Google Products.

I see. Probably thr main hope is stickyness in a startup that used them that gets growth in such a way that switching clouds is not worth it (client switching from Firebase to Google proper is probably acceptable as long as goodharts law is honoured so it doesn’t appear as a fail to Google)

There are lots of operators in the “Vercel” club, providing good UX tools for hosting, CICD, databases etc. witch attract indie hackers. Makes me wonder if they will have the same issue.

It grates on me because I would enjoy creating another JAMstack tool for indies, but making a boring thing for some other industry is probably more profitable. I guess that is the main issue at play. Business is work. Except occasionally when someone is lucky and the passion project does well.

Edit:- I meant Cloud Messaging, not cloud functions. Brainfart moment.

Any outreach examples?

Just an instance, I built a small feature module for the local transport authority, which could be easily integrated into their existing app. Through that tiny bit of weekend work, I was appreciated by the CEO of the public transport department of the transport authority. I could use him as a reference to get many further connections.

Ive said it before, I'll say it again. The thing that is harder than starting a startup is quitting it.

You are brave, my friend, to even have attempted at building a startup. All people talk, very few have the conviction to give it a shot.

The experience you gained while trying to build a business will pay dividends in the future. If you are a software engg, a lot of companies would love to hire you. And you can make great money, and you know what - You can mentally checkout at 6pm - salary will fall into your account on time everytime - You can enjoy your weekends

PS: I am also a failed entrepreneur (sort of). The biggest thing my startup journey taught was how easy 9-5 is. And be grateful in life for having a job that pays well.

All the best brother!

One of the most important things I've learned on the entrepreneur / solopreneur journey is that realistic expectation of failure is an important part of eventual success. That is launching ideas not because you are convinced that it will succeed or fearful that they will fail but with the mindset that no matter how great the idea, failure is a possible and even likely outcome. If you can cultivate a mindset of failure / feedback / iterate, you will increase your chances of eventual chances at something, not always the original idea.

Agree on the insta-influencers tho, we need to see beyond this and understand that for these folks the brand / lifestyle is actually the product.

Entrepreneurship is a rich man's game. Notice that almost all of the guys who made it big come from wealth, and had the money and the contacts to lean on to make their product a success.

I'm sorry you got caught out by the charlatans who hype up entrepreneurship and sell people lies about success.

Please don't blame yourself, this isn't your fault, you were hoodwinked by false prophets.

>Entrepreneurship is a rich man's game. Notice that almost all of the guys who made it big come from wealth, and had the money and the contacts to lean on to make their product a success.

That IMO puts you into a position where failure is all but impossible. As others have pointed out luck also has a part to play. But if you've got family financially supporting you (or at least able to bail you out) you will succeed eventually.

How exactly do you do it when you're smart enough to be on here but don't come from that kind of background? Are you just supposed to accept it?

This seems to be the toxic end result of “hustle porn”.

The promise that you “Yes even you!” Can start the next unicorn, or even just bootstrap to ramen profitable & gain the attention of some VC money, maybe find a lucrative graceful exit if your runway runs out.

It’s a subtle lie, because it directly or indirectly says “everyone could be…” when in reality it’s “anyone might be…” in the sense of “anyone might be the next lottery winner!”

Anyone might, but not everyone can, and a significant amount of the outcome (sure, much more on the lottery) is determined by luck.

Only with hustle porn the themes pervading it all, unlike the lottery, is that if you fail, it’s because you did something wrong. You didn’t work hard enough. You didn’t network in the right places, that fundamental something is wrong with you

Most who have studied the progression of Christian religion throughout the history of colonizing the North American continent may recognize here the trappings of the Prosperity Gospel, itself a pernicious offshoot & watered down version of Predestination as found in some Protestant sects, that boils down to the belief that the unsuccessful, the sick, the poor, are all that way because it’s their own fault, because they have failed to achieve some vague notion of god’s grace.

Predestination is a complex topic with multiple interpretations, but the strong Calvinist version basically says that god not only knows who is predestined to heaven and hell, but that we might see that destiny here on earth in the trappings of a person’s life. The successful and healthy must surely have god’s blessing while the sick and the poor are clearly among the damned. As you might imagine, theological explanations and biblical references supporting this are complex, but that’s the nutshell.

You can see it’s roots in the concept of the American Dream among other attitudes that seem have been popular in the US— a sometimes, among some people, disdain for the poor who surely are there by some form of choice.

That is hustle porn. Modern repackaging of and stitching together of bits & pieces of the worst pieces of theology found in early (and some recent) groups of protestants. (See Joel Osteen for recent incarnations)

I have always been curious on the mindset christians have regarding sick and poor. Can you recommend any books which supports your take?

“Christians” is too wide a net to ask for a single mindset on any topic. Relevant here is that the US was settled initially in some areas by Puritanical Calvinists, which is a large twig off the branch of Protestant Christianity.

As for my take, a few quick searches about what Puritans thought of the poor will give ample sources for reading.

I don’t have a (remembered) source directly for my own knowledge— it was just part of what I learned throughout a rigorous high school and college curriculum, various sources etc.

I do remember having to read a sermon by a famous Puritanical Protestant: Sinner In the Hands of an Angry God.

It was somewhat of a trend setter in terms of 1700’s fire & brimstone preaching.

I agree with almost everything, except one thing. "It's okay to admit defeat".

Why would it be defeat? I understand you would like to have taken this path, but it not meant to be for you, so what?

I'm guessing you are under 30 and did not figure out everything life has to offer (as nobody ever can), but in the grand scheme of your life, you should be proud you tried and moved on, you probably won't regret it later. The things we always regret in life are the "what would have happened if"s, not the trying hards, so I consider this a win, not a failure.

My experience shows that in order to succeed you need: 1) someone who knows marketing in the area you are targeting (medical equipment marketing is not the same as, say, cat hairdresser marketing or dev tools marketing); 2) someone who will sell - yes, a salesman, a person who likes to talk to customers, call people and knows how to sell stuff in your target group.

I am not talking here about building all those famed sturtups created by 3 "scratch your own itch" techies in the cellar and that succeeded by pure chance or thanks to connections founders had or other factors that average indie founder cannot control.

If you are indie dev, you should not make yourself dependent on luck or accident.

Start with this: marketing guy, who knows the market, such person in two hours can invalidate your idea and give you 5 better ones.

Learn some marketing stuff by yourself (books like Start Small, Stay Small will not make you rich in a day, but will open your eyes to the way things are working, most of this is obvious once you read it, but this is psychological "I knew that all along" phenomena - although you somehow knew this, you were not using this.

Same with sales, stuff will not magically sell by itself. You can count that your product will become "viral" or something, but, again, you make yourself dependent on chance. Just have someone who will help you do the stuff, you are not that great at.

I'm sorry to hear about the struggles and setbacks you've experienced in your entrepreneurial journey. Building a successful startup can be a challenging and unpredictable process, and it's not uncommon for people to face setbacks and failures along the way. It's understandable that you may be feeling defeated and ready to give up, but I want to encourage you to consider taking a break and taking care of yourself before making any final decisions.

Starting a business can be an all-consuming pursuit, and it's important to make sure you're taking care of your mental health and well-being. It's not uncommon for entrepreneurs to experience feelings of burnout, anxiety, and depression, and it's essential to prioritize your own self-care. This could mean seeking support from friends, family, or a mental health professional, taking breaks to rest and recharge, or finding ways to manage stress and maintain a healthy work-life balance.

It's also important to remember that building a successful startup is a marathon, not a sprint. It can take time to find a product-market fit, build an audience, and gain traction. It's natural to have ups and downs and to face challenges along the way, but the key is to learn from your failures and keep moving forward.

I understand that it may not be easy, but please don't give up on your entrepreneurial dreams just yet. Remember that you are not alone and there are resources and support available to help you through this difficult time. If you ever need to talk or just need someone to listen, don't hesitate to reach out.

Don't start a business unless it's a pain point you are personally invested in. Lifestyle-wise, it's a grind with mental health challenges along the way, as you pointed out. Salary-wise, it's unlikely that your own business will ever match a regular developer job. It took me 4 years of bootstrapping before I had a decent baseline salary, and it's still lower than my ML engineer salary 10 years ago.

I don't get the current culture of starting a business for the sake of starting a business. The lifestyle can be great after a few years when everything is running smoothly. But the marketing ignores the fact that it takes multiple years of grinding to get there, with no guarantees.

Specific to your situation, it sounds like you were reaching the wrong audience. You need to reach the audience interested in your product, not an audience of other entrepreneurs. This takes a lot of time and energy. Marketing needs to be more than 50% of your effort these days. Content marketing on social, blogs, and Youtube tends to do well, but takes a couple of years to ramp up.

Thanks for sharing, and I'm glad you made the right decision for you. Mental health is the most important asset you have - you're wise to protect it.

I had my own company for a while. We were doing pretty well given my founder and I were in our 20s, it was our first company, and neither of us worked anywhere else before. We started it right out of college. We ended up having half a dozen employees and a nice office in the downtown of our city. We worked on some cool projects and had a good reputation.

But the stress was insane. Being that young and not having the experience or support around us was incredibly difficult. Having the thought in the back of your mind each month that you might have to let an employee go, lose a project/employee, or have a client bail on you, was overwhelming.

I ended up quitting after about 3 years. I now work for other companies and let them worry about all these things. I am much happier now and my work is much better. I also have a better work/life balance.

Consider the "having my own company" phase over if you feel that way. It isn't for everyone. A lot of society applauds entrepreneurs and glorifies them. Makes it seem like it's a great option for everyone and if you aren't running some company you must be a loser in the cog of the machine... That is not the case.

I actually make more money now than I did running my own company. I used to say I had more freedom but given I work from home now too, it is actually almost the same. I take more vacations now too. I couldn't afford to be away for a week when I had my own business.

I know once you pass a certain point you work "on the business, not in the business" but that is, like others have mentioned, the minority of companies that actually get that far and succeed.

For some reason you are talking about making a start up and not solving a problem and helping people. As I got it — you want the success and not just to help people. Looks like your ideas didn’t drive you really and it was just about being successful entrepreneur. If you love what you do, then it doesn’t matter how many times you fall, it’s just fun. I believe this is the mindset, but please don’t listen to me like I am one of this in the influencers on business making money out of nothing. I’m just a software engineer, I haven’t helped people a lot myself by creating a product that would be making me happy by just creating it and improving. So anyway, I believe that if things don’t drive you — then don’t do them and if you do something that makes you happy — then it’s fun to fail and you don’t feel like giving up if you don’t have upvotes on product hunt, you do this for yourself. Sure, if you don’t have feedback on what you are doing or the feedback is negative it’s less fun and the point to think again, if it really drives you and worth spending more time or or putting this game on pause and go playing another game that is more fun.

Sorry if it might look subjective or raw, but I think the problem here is, as you greatly highlighted, the entrepreneurial porn bullshit existing on the Internet.

The thing is almost everyone wants to get the saint Graal, financial freedom blah blah... and thus, the same people overthink the life to find problems to solve where in reality, the problem is not worth solving. Nevertheless, I like your point since it is rare to see *real* posts of someone giving up and realising their errors.

Your second paragraph is important and I hope more people could realise that Product Hunt is mainly full of junk, from raw copies of existing and successful products to fake comments. Every time I open Product Hunt and click on some random product, I can clearly see comments that are unrealistic, and it contributes to this idea of "everything is. problem to solve".

At the end of the day, the real freedom for someone is finding who they really are, and thus what they have to do to be happy, because once you do something you like, you will feel free.

Once again, I am glad you realised your mistakes and hope you can find your way in this world. However, don't give up forever, you never know the future /shrugh.

First, note that 9 out of 10 startups fail.

I'm sorry you tried three times unsuccessfully - I'm sure you have learned a lot. Perhaps you would agree with me that the first attempt wasn't based on a lot of knowledge compared with the last; so maybe we discount that early one. Then trying for another 8 time would put you in a position where you can say "it doesn't work, I've done it all by the book".

Now it is your right to stop. I would rather you stopped than have you get sick (again). But analysis your post suggests that you may potentially confuse "start up" and "indy developer", at least you use the terms rather interchangeably. That's not at all the same thing! For a startup, you need a team. An indy developer (freelancer) is a solo play, where you would be very unlikely to be impactful in comparison, even if you tried 30 times.

Watching influencers is a waste of time. What I have observed is that people driven by their hunger for success more quickly burn out. You need to best pursue something that intrinsically passionate about, then you may never get tired. Anyone coding, writing a story or even sleeping uses their time better than watching influencers, IMHO.

>But please don't give up. Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you. There's always a chance for success, no matter how small it may seem.

This advice is the exact opposite of the wisdom in the rest of the post.

I’d say it’s okay to give up. If someone has a long term miserable life thanks to building their startup, then perhaps consider doing something that makes you more happy. There’s nothing wrong with that.

> This advice is the exact opposite of the wisdom in the rest of the post.

Very much this

I'm sorry you didn't find the success you were looking for as an entrepreneur. I've been there, burned out and desperate, and it's a horrible way to feel. But at least you did try and if you take the time you need to heal, you'll have energy to do sonagain in the future.

Maybe it won't be entrepreneurship, however. The world is huge and there's an unlimited number of ways to define success besides creating a successful business.

Mental and physical health and good social connections are one such way. If you can find your way back to those and recognize that as the success you need, at this time, then I for one will be applauding you.

Once you've climbed that mountain another purpose will find it's way to you.

On a personal note, I think the world would be a better place if less people defined success as personal wealth and power, and more defined it as improving the society around them. When you have energy to be active in the world again, maybe you could try looking at it that way instead?

What kind of service can you, and your skills, best give to this world and its people, animals, and environment?

I don't mean to sound glib but I thought that was the way our society was supposed to work: tell everyone to try really hard knowing only a few will make it. But with everyone busy trying that pushes things forward. Sure, the game is kinda rigged and the rewards aren't spread around evenly (not even close). But hey, it got us this far.

First of all, you are not alone. Most people who try to become entrepreneurs do not succeed. Thankfully, you are self aware and willing to face the facts of your reality.

A lot of people will say that success in entrepreneurship is primarily driven by luck. But what they leave out is that it’s input luck, not output luck. Inputs like a “small” $10k gift from a family member. Clean water and high nutrition during childhood that lead to above average intelligence. Literacy, citizenship, family wealth, and more. Not to mention having no mental or physical illnesses and a high capacity to endure stress.

I completely agree with your last sentence, “It’s ok to admit defeat and move on.” In life, you got to play with the hand you were dealt and not the hand someone else’s. It’s unfortunate that some social circles encourage self damaging behavior in pursuit of some idealized lifestyle that can never be accessed by everyone, and it wouldn’t even be good if it was.

> But what they leave out is that it’s input luck, not output luck. Inputs like a “small” $10k gift from a family member. Clean water and high nutrition during childhood that lead to above average intelligence. Literacy, citizenship, family wealth, and more.

Hm, no, even if all of those things are equal the expected outcome is still failure. Your comparison works on the world stage but say within the population of a wealthy country and even just one wealthy city if 100 people were to go down this path only one or two will have a success that offsets their opportunity cost.

The kind of luck that entrepreneurs are talking about in this context is more related to markets being ripe just as your product hits them, technologies going mainstream, meeting the right business contact or partners early on and so on. Those little things can make - or break - a business depending on if they happen or not.

I will add that it's only about luck if your entering a certain kind of industry, where your succes is dependent on popularity.

If for example you start lumber company selling timber wood, the only thing you need to have an edge is to undercut the market with 5% on price. Of cause you won't get rich quick or maybe even slow, but it's a tried and tested strategy. Before starting a business you should ask yourself is my business luck depend, or is my success guaranteed as long as I undercut the competition on price or quality.

If you have the right input luck, there’s a huge number of small $1-10m annual revenue businesses that can be built. Personally, I can’t do all of them for time constraints so have to focus. I would agree with output luck to some degree with some of the biggest outliers (Facebook, Google) but for some entrepreneurs they have made giant wins not once but repeatedly. Bezos, Buffet, and Musk come to mind - and the fact that in all three of those cases you have abnormally healthy people able to handle stress and work load levels that most of us (including me) can’t take.

  I'm writing this post because I'm done.
  [...]
  But for me, I can't take it anymore. I've hit rock bottom and I have nothing left to give. [...] Don't let your dreams consume you like they did for me,

I find this really alarming and hope that OP is OK'ish now, and that this is not a suicide note.

Sounds like you need to think about working with other people, to learn from them but also to lean on their skills that you may be missing (marketing, community-building, and so on). From your post, it seems that you tried to do everything by yourself which requires you to be incredibly on-point in many different types of work.

Finding the right people has made entrepreneurship bearable for me. And I didn't find those right people on my first attempt either.

Staying disciplined for years is so much easier when you have competent and compassionate cofounders with you. You might even get away with a few vacations.

Survivor bias. Plus the mere act of "making it" is a great marketing tool on its own.

People love to hear success stories, and in turn they might spend money on hearing those stories in order to learn the secrets of the survivor as it were. This is why there are so many such stories, yet one may wonder how many simply live off selling stories like that, instead of actually reaping the rewards of their purported success...

IMHO if a guy can give out good advice for free, because he's already making enough on his success, then it's more authentic than a guy who sells his success stories. OTOH I get that successful people might be pressed for time, and that time taken away to tell the story might get in the way of following up on his actual success. In this way I guess success breeds success. And that's why you see a lot of people pushing their success stories due to survivor bias.

We're actually talking pedagogy here. The perspective of a survivor is quite different than a guy still struggling. So the question really being asked is, how can the survivor better explain to the struggler how to succeed? It's difficult to answer, and it may entail such things as silent knowledge, or details that are hard to convey. The path to success is different for people, and some do indeed have it far easier than others.

So how do you learn from that? Is the lessons from one-who-had-it-easy valuable? Well, sure, if those lessons lead to finding an easier route. But it could equally be a dead end. There is little to learn from one who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, for instance, if your own spoon is made of lead.

On the flipside, there might not be as much to learn from someone who struggled a lot, because what if that person simply made a lot of mistakes? Perhaps he is cognizant of those mistakes; well, then you may learn from them. But if not, then perhaps it isn't as valuable. Though in general, when you reflect over mistakes—your own, or others—there is perhaps a lot to learn from that, as you'll at least learn what to avoid.

You aren't alone. These influencers sell an unachievable dream that they themselves do not even live.

I wish you all the best in whatever it is that you choose to do.

It is true. influencers show the highlights of their journeys mostly. while at the same time if they were doing so well, they wouldn't be needing to sell a course teaching you how.

don't be so hard on yourself. sadly the market is rational when mature, and a lot of social media driven ideas have already hit that stage of low alpha.

I used to spend time on indiehackers and it's lousy with those types. Anyone selling 1) a course 2) a newsletter or 3) a community is a charlatan in my eyes.

Maybe an unfair view but those are the "get rich quick with no effort" ideas that these people are into.

Which influencers?

I won't name names but I'd generalise it to people very obviously trying to sell a dream more than a product.

I'm going to say something to you that you might not have thought of. Perhaps the meaning of what you went through, the enormous success you have achieved, is this post. Because it is important! This post is one of the best "products" I have ever seen "shipped". You've "Dented the Universe" as Steve Jobs liked to say.

Please know that all you went through had meaning, purpose. You just didn't recognize your final pivot was going to take this form. You didn't see it coming that it would be so successful. But it's incredible!

Someday I hope to achieve the great success I'm witnessing right before my very eyes. You're an icon!

I've given up on being that 10x developer that has a laundry list of accomplishments in tech everyone would be proud of about 5 years ago. Unlike most people, I did know what it would take as my dad had done it (and his dad before him as a nuclear physicist). I've seen the insane amount of hours and dedication it takes to run a successful company, I've seen the tradeoffs in life you have to make, and I've seen it really run my dad down.

I became a lot happier in life when I decided I was not going to follow in their footsteps. Neither of them have been great at being happy, and that's something I'm more focused on now.

Yeah you are absolutely not alone. I was lucky enough to have a startup make it about seven years ago. I do not think I could do it in today's environment AT ALL and also don't know how to use any of my past 'success' to repeat something. Starting from 'not that' would be infinitely harder, that's not fair for anyone, and that sucks.

I completely agree with the whole problem of how social media and tech 'influencers' have ruined the ability to get ideas out there. I also think that the zeitgeist of what is possible and popular today is very limited, and made worse by many end-users being burnout and uncurious.

This website glamorizes startups and should not. It's not a golden path for most anyone. It makes people think it's remotely easy, and it's 99.999% chance for most good people that are well rounded enough with a great idea and 99.999% rich people connections for everyone else.

It requires (potentially) a ton of life force energy expenditure - if you're an honest person - that can potentially, quite literally, kill you. If you aren't honest you might make it in whatever grift, and wouldn't have as hard of time being around people that you aren't ethically compatible with.

I can see without a platform to launch exactly the right idea without the absolute perfect timing how much harder or nearly impossible this would be. Those platforms are not really available to people who don't know "the right people" and act appropriately greasy and self-important these days, IMHO, so there's even more of a luck coefficient than there was 10 years ago.

I want to say "happy thoughts" but we really need smaller communication paths, more diversity of tech approaches and alternative methods, and more funding that attempts to create stable profitable businesses and not unicorns. We need twitter to die so tech influencing stops being a thing that gets followers, and instead projects and ideas get that attention (and participation) instead. Even then, I'm not sure it's going to be "fixed".

Right now, surely though, it does create some terribly bloated technology.

Indie hackers had a great post a couple of years ago looking at how many projects posted there were actually successfully. I don't remember the details now, but I remember it being a depressingly small number that made me realise how statistically stupid it was to attempt to create a tech startup.

I think the conclusion was that you probably had something like a low single digit percentage chance of building something that's profitable but makes < $1,000 / month. And the chance of building something that would replace your income was something like 1 in thousands.

If you're building something you love then by all means do it, but as someone who's been in your position and who has seen several of my colleagues and friends in your position at this point I tend to recommend people against trying to create a tech startup. It's almost always a waste of time, money and more stress than it's worth. Plus it's not like we get paid bad for working a regular job in tech.

Imo there's just way better ways to make money. Tech is weird in that you're competing against a lot of very smart people, the barriers to building a tech product are very low, and the competition is global. In contrast if you open a used car lot you'll typically be competing with few average business men in the area who had the capital to start the company. Your chances of success are astronomically higher even if it's capped.

If you really want to start a company at least leverage the high income you make as a tech worker to start something with some barrier to entry. It might not make you a multimillionaire, but I've seen way more people successfully go from a tech job into opening a restaurant or into real estate.

Anyway, sending you love man. I hope you're doing okay. I know how hard it can be accepting that your dreams will never materialise. I wanted to be an a tech entrepreneur since I was young teen. I wasted most of my best years behind a keyboard and monitor building stuff when I should have been having fun with friends. When I realised in my mid twenties that I wasted a decade of my life aspiring to something that would never happen it took something like 2-3 years for me to get over that feeling of being lost in life.

> If you really want to start a company at least leverage the high income you make as a tech worker to start something with some barrier to entry. It might not make you a multimillionaire, but I've seen way more people successfully go from a tech job into opening a restaurant or into real estate.

Can you expand on this? Like commercial property? Restaurants are notoriously unprofitable

> Tech is weird in that you're competing against a lot of very smart people, the barriers to building a tech product are very low, and the competition is global. In contrast if you open a used car lot you'll typically be competing with few average business men in the area who had the capital to start the company. Your chances of success are astronomically higher even if it's capped.

This is exactly what I tell some of my non-techie friends who are interested in entrepreneurship. Problem is, it turns out most people care just as much about the journey as they do about the destination and turn their noses up at the prospect of being another guy/gal running a drab retail store down the street.

All things end. The trick is knowing when to move on to the next thing -- quitting when things are bad, but also cashing out when things are good. Don't get stuck in the well.

I know it's frowned upon these days (perversely, in my view), but wow what resilience. @wakana should realize the value of that and how powerful that can be in the next endeavor. Maybe battered and bruised, but survived! In this case, maybe it was the wrong matchup - entrepreneurship isn't for everyone, or [bad] luck. Biggest mistake made was maybe hanging on too long -- resilience can be double-edged, too.

Great for you to have that experience. Isn't that what's life is for? Many people are burnt-out and hit rock bottom without doing anything exciting. Life is boring, just enjoy whatever you do, and do whatever you enjoy. You didn't choose to do it because you totally did not like it. There is nothing wrong with not succeed. Many of us do not succeed in our boring departments. Congrats on the journey you had, wish you have come out stronger and better. Look at the bright side, you probably missed many funny YouTube hours while doing your startup, so what :)

I have been down a similar path as you, and I too have given up on several products. One thing I have learned is that in many cases you do not have to work 100% on your product for it to become a success. First and foremost you have to generate income for your life. Without it you will never succeed. There is, in my opinion, a misconception that this has to come from an investor. From the years I have been doing this, most kinds of investment is only complicating the process. Now there are stakeholders requiring stuff, and you lose some degree of control.

Disclaimer; The next section is my personal opinion with statements I cannot back up with anything other than my own experience.

What most startups need is cash flow. The most reliable way to achieve this us to sell hours. It does require you to spend time building someone else’s stuff, but the team will gain experience and you can build up a cash reserve. Then spend your own money buildings your own product. This approach will drastically increase yours chances for success, but possibly reduce the probability of creating “the next Facebook” or whatever. From my experience, you go from 1/20 to 3/4 probably of being able to live off of the company. It’s a grind, but it is much more reliable.

With all this said, you do not need to “give up”, but to change mode. If you are able, let the product live. The more time it gets to exist the more chances it has to meet new customers. Of course, there are costs involved, and it might not be possible to do this.

You are not alone, Google and Meta are in that same desolate box. You say your startup filled a valid need? Usually items like that get at least a look. That look has to make the user take the next step = +feedback to proceed. If he/she likes it they promulgate it. Ever see the old hair shampoo commercial, I told my friend, and she told to friends, and they told......screen full of faces. The fact that you could not progress beyond ~~20 tells me that your App had no 'gain'. Your gunpowder is wet and you will have no explosions. As to why? this is down to function/feel. If you had instructions that offended people on social/religious/gender grounds - any one of those are killers. Condescension in phrasing - a killer. Apps need good ideas/coders/manual writers, often these are not embodied in one person. You write good code, but the manual is so badly written people toss it away and walk - same for a number of other aspects. A good app can need a team of several people, each filling a niche. So analyse your app(s) and see if you can isolate the flaws. It may have a fatal flaw that killed it, or it could be you trying to be a one man band and doing a bad job in one or more aspects. Now you look down on 'influencers' - AKA advertising or promotion. Their job is eyeballs, once you get eyeballs, you still need gain or traction among users that the influencer attracted to your App, or once the dancing stops, your users will trickle away..

Why am I reading this instead of reading why your product is so great? It's sad that this ycombinator news about you failing reached me, and your product didn't.

The world is against you. It's agains me too.

And building something people actually want is really hard. And it's probably not what you want. You're probably different than your customers.

Try again. You can do it.

Don't be a customer. Be a provider. Do something for me. Do what I want done... something I am not willing to do myself.

Don't build what you want. Build what people want.

Ask what people want.

I want to eat bread and drink orange juice but I don't want to bake bread or squeeze oranges.

I am willing to pay probably up to $10 for orange juice every few weeks.

Ask me (prospects/customers) what we want.

You can't buy the answer. You have to ask for it many, many times and listen to what people say and then think really hard how you can deliver that to them and turn a profit.

Three tries is not that many.

Try again.

Try smarter.

Put in less work and less money but try again.

Getting no success is hard. But getting some initial success can be a trap. I spent 15 years of my life scraping by in various attempts to make something that sticks, and (too) slowly failed to find it.

Finally I sold out to the dark side (consulting). The money is decent and the job is something I can forget when I clock out. Not being able to retire early will be my own fault for chasing the dream for too long, had I switched sooner it would still have been a possibility.

Failing can be a good thing, it forces you out from something that's not working.

I feel you brother. The gut wrenching feeling of having waited far too long.

How hard it is to come up with good ideas is greatly underestimated.

Here is a paper on A/B testing that the Bing search team conducted under Microsoft.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3171224

Hidden in there in a distribution graph is that 2% of the ideas that were A/B tested resulted in 74.8% of the improvements.

Now you can ask yourself what are they considering improvements which is a valid answer but that really struck me.

Section 4.3 Figure 3a.

Been in your shoes, man. But according to smartest marketers (like Garry Halbert), we programmers are doing it backwards. Because when all you have is a hammer (or programming skills), then everything looks like a nail. According to Gary Halbert, you first have to find a starving market. And there are three things people are starving for -- health, wealth and relationships. It's what they crave. It's what keeps them up at night. Notice, I did not say that they are starving for software of any kind. Unless this software helps them make money. For example, there's some software that generates $750/month per month per user. It's called Overflow. Why? because it generates more revenue for each of those clients. CBSplit is another one. It helps generate wealth to it's clients. Health supplements market is exploding. Golf buyers are so passionate, they'll spend thousands just to get an edge. So in short -- we programmers suck as marketers. And until we unsuck ourselves, we will feel like giving up. Now I'm going to give you the legends you can learn from - Gary Halbert, Gary Bencivenga, Michael Masterson, Dan Kennedy. They wrote books they've learned from even bigger masters. The sad fact is - your software or your product doesn't matter. Only your marketing does.

"and don't let the failures define you. There's always a chance for success, no matter how small it may seem."

These small successes is what one needs, to propel them back into the entrepreneurship journey. I don't know about these influencers and not sure what they sell. You just have to get lucky. I have been through so many startup failures that I have stopped counting, but I attribute my failures to my own laziness and not being in the right market.

So back to successes, what I found super helpful is a micro dosing of success like winning a point in a game of tennis, or getting 10 consecutive shots above the net , something like this, totally unrelated to the world of startups can bring in tremendous confidence and morale boost. Why I say tennis is because getting some of these shots right consistently involves some luck in the beginning. While you may not get all the 10 shots correct, that one lucky shot can bring in a high dose of morale boost. It could be shooting balls as well. I personally find that small successful acts like this, which involve your skill and some luck really help in overcoming failures, failures like what you state, which are truly a result of not just your effort but a lot of outside factors/luck.

EDIT - Changed you to one. I didn't imply this message directly to OP, was more of a generic reply.

> These small successes is what you need. To propel you back into the entrepreneurship journey.

Jesus, leave the dude alone, will you? Didn't you read he was institutionalized? Your one of the influencers that make people's lives worse.

My apologies. I didn't mean you to him, i meant it as a generic response to everyone. I will reword the reply to say one.

It's hard to bring something new into the world. If it were easy, it would have already happened.

Nearly all startups fail. They're trying to do something new, and the status quo is one hell of a competitor. Doing nothing is easy and most people's default choice.

Don't jump into entrepreneurship because you're lured in by the potential results; start a company if the process, regardless of the result, is something you enjoy or need.

Back in the early 2000s, after my first failed startup, I tried doing the math.

If only 10% of VC-backed startups succeed (the numbers for bootstrapped startups are even worse) and assuming that I could manage to get VC backing for my idea, and further assuming that each failed attempt to start a company could consume five years of time (you have to account for the time you likely need to spend working for established companies between startups to rebuild your finances after years of below-market pay), and finally assuming that at age 30, I would get four more attempts before I'd be 50 and face increasing ageism that would prevent me from raising money, then the math was simple:

There was a 0.9 X 0.9 x 0.9 x 0.9, or 0.66 chance that I'd spend my entire career chasing this dream and never succeed.

I had to get comfortable with this as a default outcome if I wanted to keep going down the entrepreneurship path.

It's a little better if you're starting out at age 20, but even then, 0.9 to the 6th power is still 0.53. In other words, the majority outcome for entrepreneurship, even if you persevere for 30 years, is that you never succeed.

Yet it may still be worth doing because A) I'm sure you think your odds are better than average and B) It's what you really want to do.

I honestly feel for you and understand how frustrated you must be feeling. I also think you put too much pressure on yourself and that you went after a lifestyle instead of working on a product that solves a problem and with that achieve your goals.

Two things that come to my mind: - The majority of the startups operate in new/unproven markets. Three startups is far from being a lot in this scenario. Ask how many failed startups the best entrepreneurs have worked on and on some cases you'll see 30+. - If you don't have access to venture capital, it's wise to work on your startup as a side gig and see how it goes from there. You would have much likely had more runaway ($$$) and be confronted with other business opportunities that would result in other (sometimes better) ideas.

The last point I want to add is related with the type of startups I see being founded. I view the Product Hunt feed on my Telegram and if I do a scroll over the next month or so, +80% are startups about tools for other entrepreneurs or slight variations of already existing companies (with the majority being note taking apps). I'm really not feeling a lot of innovation there.

PS - I run a side-gig Cybersecurity newsletter (cyb3rsecurity.tips) with decent results and the traction is definitely there while having 0 followers on Twitter.

It's a Darwinian world out there. Success is not up to you to produce. Telling people that it's all up to them and their free will is the most destructive lie you can tell, because it's not and the end result is that people start harming themselves with guilt because it's "their fault".

It's not "your fault" and it's not because of your "free will". Guilt is an extremely destructive and evil emotion. Excise it from your heart.

This is too far the other way. Hard work and good ideas are necessary but not sufficient. That's all.

Yeah. I was in a bad state of mind when I wrote this. I'm sorry.

Hope you're feeling better

Thank you!

> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself.

I touched on this in an essay I wrote years ago

https://austingwalters.com/an-essay-on-wealth-and-freedom/

While I think trying to build a startup is fine, it’s probably not the best way to build wealth. To put it bluntly, you are most likely to build a successful startup when you have domain expertise and nothing to lose. That’s why funding a kid who has no family and a few years experience is probably a decent bet. They are cheap, passionate (work hard for the money) and think a bit differently than the entrenched businesses (the YC model).

If you want to build wealth, you probably take a different path. Find a good job in tech, work for 4-5 years playing politics a bit. Then cash out and find a mid-tier position at a remote job in rural USA, 30-60 min from a major city. Find a wife / husband from the area and buy 20 acres and have a farm. You’ll be wealthier and happier than anyone in the city and still be able to access most amenities within a short drive.

This hits very close to home, so I'll provide as much advice I can give.

First: don't focus solely on the huge product launch / startup mentality. As a solo dev this is a recipe for a depressive disaster. Instead, I recommend you do a mix of things, like creating youtube videos, software courses, software consulting, and so on. This way you cast a wide net and if any one of those areas doesn't do well or hits a rough patch, you can put more effort into the others. Yeah, it's a grind, but that's kind of the social contract we sign when we go indy / soloprenuer.

I have a modest following and I very often repeat your warnings about these so called digital nomad gurus and entrepeneuers, at least those you see all the time on socials. I hate that whole scene - the crap those people push out is mind bogglingly useless banter. It even drove me to delete my Twitter completely a few months back because I kept seeing like 6 of the same software accounts upvoted to the moon just by repeating stupid trope without any hands on advice, implementations, or anything of any real actionable value. Those people either got lucky or were first to market, but the overwhelming majority of them don't know a damn thing about software, let alone building full stack products or apps used by real customers.

However, as you've said yourself: building any successful startup is extremely hard, time consuming, and can be extremely frustrating at times.

If it helps further, I was exactly where you were only a few weeks ago and I posted nearly the same thing here on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33835532. This industry is unforgiving and we all have weeks or even months of dark times. I had just felt cheated by a few people I had otherwise trusted (so a slightly difference sense than your post I guess, but same discouraged theme). Fast forward two weeks later and I'm working for myself again and loving it.

and usually, once you're an entrepeneuer, it likely won't go away ;) just don't force it, who knows, you may return with a badass product weeks, months, or years from today!

Hope this helps and that you can enjoy the holiday season with whomever you may have in your life. Take a break! Best of luck, happy holidays, and best wishes.

You're not an Indie Entrepreneur, that is complete nonsense. Indie just means independent, and given that all entrepreneurs are by definition independent, you're kind of giving me insight into why you failed. Indie only applies to 2 industries, game development and music, both of these industries are mainly dominated by major studios which people work for even if they are well known publicly.

Don't get me wrong, starting a business is extremely hard work, and I'm sure you did everything you could, but when every 5th word you say or write is essentially a buzz word, people don't respond to that. Also, if all of your advertising was digital, then you need a minimum startup capital that can pay influences to make people aware of you and your product. It sucks, but unless you have a sizable following or are yourself a really good salesman, you're more likely to fail.

This is something I've studied extensively, and it's painful every time I have to tell a friend they would suck at running their own business.

9/10 small businesses and startups fail. Most don’t make money in the first 5 years.

It’s a slog. It’s exhausting. Once you do it, your perspective about a lot of things changes. A full time job with a steady paycheck seems like vacation.

https://www.brightball.com/articles/what-exactly-happened-to...

>> I tried everything - building an audience

How many years have you spent every day doing it? If you haven't done it for multiple years with pushing content every single day - then this is not audience building and not worth even starting.

>> making sure my product actually solved a problem

If you are not sure if solves a problem - you never start building it. To create a startup (and make sure it solves a problem) you need a spreadsheet and stripe checkout page or landing page. If this is not enough - then your idea doesn't solve any real problem.

Another criteria is if you show anyone a product that costs $100/month and clearly saves them $1000/month - everyone will give you $100 right on the spot. And if it doesn't clearly bring a ton of value - again, solving not a real problem.

The reality is that many (especially engineers) love engineering way more than building startup (building startup involves literally zero engineering on founder part, except from a very very basic MPV)

Also, indie hackers are not startup founders. They are mostly engineers trying to monetize their hobby. In this case you can do literally whatever for 5 years and you can get to 3-5k/month with it.

I can only tell you what's working for me. I'm telling you my story because while you cite mental health as the problem, I think its reasonable to have mental health problems when your company and life collapses. Instead I think it's sensible to build a safety net so that you never hit "rock bottom."

I've started 3 SAAS buisnesses that failed.

I'm also almost FI because I saved (and invested) my salary as an employee and then later as a contractor. Now I split my time between contracting gigs, personal family time, holidays and working on new startup ideas.

It's a long term sustainable lifestyle that gives a good standard of living, lots of free time, and the opportunity of a longshot where one of my bootstrapped start-ups takes off.

The contracting gigs and investments give me that safety net so that it's ok if my startups fail.

I know three people who took this approach, then had million dollar exits from their successful Startups, and another who pivoted into a successful million dollar buisness that they will never sell. The more common outcome is what im getting: a long career of short contracts, paid off house, family and upper middle class lifestyle.

I went through a similar realization. Check my history of Show HN. I also have another HN account with even more failed Show HN. Keep in mind that there is luck involved. It is not the world that’s against you, it’s the chances. Also, the world of high interest rates is very different from the current world where money is not that cheap and people antecipate recession. That matters for indie hackers also, not just VC.

From your post, I feel I handled the mental health better. When I realized it was not working for me, I was ok with it. I got a job. Actually, during my indie hacking tenure, I decided to learn to code and got a better and better paying job than before as a software developer.

Also, I was never under any illusion that my chances of earning millions working a few hours a week were any better than very tiny. Expectations matter.

Finally, with a well paid job, I can keep a side project that I care about that’s not only about the money. In my case, being a fiction writer, with an accompanying digital product to pair with.

Any, try to relax for sometime. Then go back and rethink what you want with your life. What you learned will make your life better going forward.

> I couldn't seem to get anywhere.... My efforts were fruitless

I don't quite understand. You wrote that you offered a product which solves a problem for an audience. That's an achievement! Maybe even a great achievement, depending on what the product is and how many people use it and for what. I don't mean to belittle the sting of not enough people caring, following, upvoting etc. - but if people are using your product, then you've bettered their lives, and that is commendable and admirable.

Building a successful startup is not just not-easy, it is nearly impossible, in the sense that the vast majority of start-ups fail. Indeed, some people might be in a social echo-chamber where they get a distorted sense of what's feasible and what's easy. I would say the point is not just "pushing forward", but thinking about both the future of success and the future of - quite probable - failure of a start-up initiative. Also, considering whether what you want to produce will better help humanity if you promote it via a commercial enterprise or a free/public-benefit initiative instead.

There's a short part in Ed Catmull's book Creativity Inc. about how Steve Jobs timed the Pixar IPO after the Toy Story premiere to ride the hype wave and told Catmull to wear a dorky suit for the IPO investor tour that Catmull would never wear because it made him look like a scientist. It was important to present Catmull as a brilliant genius from the lab.

Why I am saying this? I think selling something is a lot less rational then you'd think. And some people are frankly better than others at it. It's not enough to build something, even good, if people don't connect the dots on why it's good for them, or present it in a desirable way. And a lot of things these days people don't really need at all, so it gets even more difficult selling something.

Another point that I think is important when I wear my amateur psychologist hat is, why are you doing that? Do you want to be recognized as a brilliant entrepreneur? Success? Money? Do you enjoy it for the ride? If it's that, is it really important what the outcome is?

But your advice is also good - it's important to take care of yourself. Take care!

I feel you. I'm gonna be honest, I've lost count of my attempts(solo or with others) for a course of 12 years. 2 years ago I completely gave up. This isn't an endeavor that anyone can take. Some of us are not built for it. As strange as it may sound, this is something best suited for people who are average at most related fields (marketing, sales and development) with slightly above average skills in one area. If your skills in any of those areas excel all others, you are doomed to fail. In my case I can easily devote a ton of effort to the tech side of things at near 0 mental cost and I'll go to insane lengths to make something perfect. The moment I step out of this field and have to face any of the other two, I can stare at a blank page for days not knowing what to do and feel mentally drained afterwards. When I came to realize this, I was kinda bummed, not gonna lie. My advice: don't sweat it and move on. Not worth spending effort thinking what it might have been: it isn't and it won't be so you shouldn't care. Simply move on.

If your startups kept failing for 12 years, where did you get money for food and rent?

Daily job: apart from it I have plenty of time on my hands: wfh, no family or kids, my diet strictly utilitarian(the most complicated meal I make is an omelette which takes less than 3 minutes), I am incapable of sleeping for over 6 hours/day. I've always had at least 6-7 hours a day to dedicate to whatever I want to do(usually more).

Truth is, trying hard is a necessary, not sufficient, condition to make it. So many products are good in theory, but derivative. Built with the express aim of becoming a startup zillionaire.

This does not work.

So called "rich kids" don't win because they have some kind of magic "safety net" (there are tons of rich kids who bounce around those safety nets their entire lives with nothing to show for it).

No, startup founders from every class, color and creed win because getting or growing wealth and status has very little to do with their reasons for founding.

In other words, they don't set out to "become a founder/entrepreneur". They set out to create something the world really truly needs. Something they couldn't find anywhere else.

Sounds like you started with a certain end in mind – become a founder. In a perverse way, this ruled you out from the get go. Your compass was calibrated to false north.

I'm saddened to hear about your struggles, and support your choice to devote time to healing. However, if/when you do decide to jump back in the game, I hope you bear this advice in mind.

I feel you. I’ve been trying to carve out my entrepreneurial dreams out for years too. I’ve got my main job, and trying different things on the side. At the end of the day, do what makes you happy. If you’re happy grinding away 18 hours a day to make that sale. Good on you. Me, I’m in my 40’s. I’m tired of trying to impress and grind. My current plan is to keep on doing my main job, but still look for opportunities. There’s this saying by mark Cuban I think. You only need to be right once. My recommendation is take some time off from entrepreneurship. Get a job or do consulting or contracting or something and make connections and just have fun doing it. The bug will bite again, but every failure makes you stronger and gives you insight on what not to focus on. Tweeting and social network stuff is nice to have but money pays the bills. Focus on the sale. Find out what problem there is and create an mvp and let people pay for it. Don’t spend 1000’s of hours building a solution when no one has even committed to it. Money pays the bills, not likes.

I hope you find some peace. I don’t know what generation but if you are a zoomer, maybe this really is a shocking thing. Influencer culture is very alluring and I think for newer generations that didn’t have people explaining basic things about the world, it is very easy to believe social media influencers have discovered a new reality. Many of these influencers are what we used to call frauds and what they are selling is the appearance of a lifestyle, which they ultimately fulfill, many times, by influencers and not whatever method they are claiming. People that presented themselves as rich and sold get-rich-quick schemes, actually got rich selling courses.

Not all “digital nomads” are exactly like this but many of these self-proclaimed nomads are really doing consulting work. The word “startup” is just a hip way of saying “new business” and they have all the same problems that businesses have had since time immemorial. Most businesses fail. If it was really this easy to get rich in a startup, everyone would do it; it’s not like everyone is just totally stuck in the Matrix, as far startups go. The typical advice is to learn from your failures. I don’t know you or your startup abs don’t want to presume too much but it seems like you spent too much time buying into social media hype. Many people fail several times before they are successful or just give up. A lot of startups are risks; several big startups were just people that looked at existing industries and laws around them and asked “what would happen if we just break all those laws and regulations?” like AirBnB, Uber, FTX, etc. Some times it works out and sone times it doesn’t.

Maybe rather than looking at social media influencers, you should look at entrepreneurs that were successful in the past; not looking at vanity self-aggrandizing social media but look at biographies and post-mortems and try to understand real business.

This may seem a bit off base but have you tried marketing? Sounds like it's an area that may be a weakness for you. Have you looked at partnering or hiring a PR/marketing firm to do some of that for you?

The old saying is "Work Smart, Not Hard". It sounds like you were working harder and harder to try to make it happen without looking at whether those efforts are actually being successful. You can tweet and engage and support the community but unless you're marketing a product or executing a plan, you're just working hard, not smart.

Luck has a lot to do with it. Being at the right place, at the right time, with the right product. Network has to do with it as well. Who you know can get you farther than what you know. Finally, marketing, are you selling a service? a product? How are you attracting new users? What's your growth? Conversion rate? etc. Building something is just one part of the jigsaw. Making people aware you built something is the other. Convincing them it's a good thing, well, that's sales.

I have met a few wanna be startup people in SV. I'm so often reminded of the 'ingenue in hollywood' trope. They really have some so much hope and so little experience. It can be brutal.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheIngenue

Looking back at my career, there have always been points where I felt I hit rock bottom and anything I did wasn't helping.

When I quit my job to start a new career in software engineering, I hoped to find a job after a couple of months of preparation. Even after 8 months and close to 200 applications, I still couldn't find a job.

I felt like I made the wrong decision by quitting my previous job and whether I actually had any skills to work in tech. I almost decided to stop and take a different job when I received a life-changing opportunity as a software engineer.

The good thing about hitting rock bottom is that the only place you have left to go is high. It will be hard, but slow progress will surely help you reach your goal. If things aren't working out as you expected, it might be time to switch your goals and try something different.

Anyway, this is undoubtedly not the end. You were clearly determined to pursue what you wanted, but maybe it wasn't aligned. I genuinely wish you all the best for your future, and I hope to see you reach your goals.

> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself.

I believe that all sales are about selling into peoples dreams. I am sure that the false dreams you refer are an extremely good business and a willing market, because - who doesn't want to buy the dream of being a successful entrepreneur?

Ironically, assuming these people are creating products primarily based on their own experiences, there might not be anything false about it - it's just that you've trying to sell into less desirable dreams!

Fundamentally I believe that for me it is impossible to passionately pursue stuff I am not really interested in. This limits the desirability of the dreams I can sell into, and I have come to terms with that. You might even think of this as bad luck.

I've also come to terms with the fact that I have to create for myself first, and any interest I get from other people is purely a bonus. Obviously that doesn't pay the bills :-)

I a have a feeling that most influencers live off the story, not off the actual product they built. They sell coaching for how to live the great life. this works well, but in the end is nothing more than a Ponzi scheme or MLM scam.

> I believe that all sales are about selling into peoples dreams.

Nah, there's selling the dream of quitting the 9-to-5, financial independence, control over one's own time. That is what this is all about. It's on a totally different level than selling the dream of, I don't know, running a marathon (by selling you a running shoe) or stopping the flow of your period with a tampon. These are actual useful products.

IMHO, selling the dream of quitting the rat race is financially extremely lucrative – and a somewhat cheap shot.

I could probably copy OPs thoughts, to describe trying to learn to play the guitar.

Comparing to entrepreneurship, which feels natural and is something I am reasonably good at, I just could never manage to get past the very minimal abilty to play the guitar. For the past several years I took private lessons, watched YouTube videos, practised and still I sucked. The fact that I enjoy doing it and am ready to invest time into it still didn't help.

Same can be said for my chess skills. Chess is probably the game I play the most and have probably put thousands of hours into it. Still, my elo rating is around 1,500 and has been stuck there for years. One would imagine that I would get better at it with so much time and energy invested, but not.

It feels like it was not meant to be. And the reason it does in both these cases is that there are other things I enjoy more, like being an entrepreneur and being a dad. One can't do everything, and natural affinity and other circumstances will lead everyone down different paths.

I don’t think “learning to play the guitar” and “becoming a successful entrepreneur” are equivalent.

Statistically, entrepreneurship has a high failure rate because it’s incredibly demanding, and the path to success isn’t linear.

Interestingly in mind they are. I believe that becoming a successful guitar player is just as hard as becoming a successful entrepreneur, swimmer or a chess player. Does it appear to be that the number of successful people in the world in each of these 4 is roughly the same?

Before I jump in, I hope this opening up has helped you. You're not alone. You took the road less travelled. That isn't easy. God bless you.

---

> "But it's not just the lack of success that's getting me down. It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips. But the reality is that it's not that simple. It's fucking hard and it takes more than just a positive attitude to make it."

I know you said you're done. But for anyone else still looking, there's a market right there. Well, the opposite actually. That is, be a no BS social media "influencer." Tell it like it really is. Call out the snake oil sellers and the liars. Be honest. Be transparent. Share to help, not to deceive.

Because: "I know I'm not alone in feeling this way."

I failed different time, it is not about giving up, it is about just trying. If you have passion and time you can try again. You can take time off, work in 9-5 job, and after try again. many twitter indee "startupers" are just fakers, or hyperbooled. I invested lot of time my time, working late nights, and still failed, I sold some software, made some money for a period of time, then died, and that is fine. I kept working in 9-5 job as I do today, and still trying new stuff. Keep trying and do not mind.

It is super hard to succeed and it is not like easy like the twitter bulls claim. I have seen friend succeed but literally not having a life. Getting the right idea in the right moment sometimes is just luck. Not 99% but 99.9999% percent of influencers are full of shit, I can guarantee you that a real startuper does not have 1 minute free to piss, meanwhile the successful "influencers" stay 10 hours on social praising about their achievements.

> I never had a paid customer

Getting at least one paid customer shouldn't be all that hard, I feel like you've been spending too much time interacting with and marketing to "indiehackers" who are essentially influencers. Take a step back and a break from this world and maybe come at it from a different angle, go to the places your actual customers would be.

I had a couple of projects that failed. I still think I could have increased my odds of succeeding by putting in more effort but at that point I was too drained to even try. I remember showing research paper to one of decision makers and them saying 'I do not believe this' without even looking at it. I knew then that I was done. That did not have enough energy to try to enter a new market and build a new business model.

> It's also the constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself.

Good lord, why on earth would you pay any attention to these people? I can barely type "digital nomad influencer" without laughing. Have you never heard of survivorship bias?

Sorry the three times "at bat" doing startups was such an arduous journey, and more sorry your mental health suffered so greatly. Influencers, mentors, coaches and the ilk are usually all just selling unreal outcomes in a package they try to show as something only they know, "the secrets". I've been fortunate in building things over the years, some small success and some failure and one massive failure. It is hard. Mental health, mindset and balance is so very important. My 02 worth, and you'll likely want change back. Find some early stage startup founders in your town (or online, I guess). If you can afford to take the time to do this. Buy them coffee & ask them if you can work on pure straight commission selling their product/service for 90 days. Maybe do it for a couple startups at the same time? Just a thought and wish you nothing but the best of luck in 2023 and beyond. Be well.

Digital nomads and internet hustlefluencers have definitely skewed the perception of what entrepreneurship is like.

You mentioned Product Hunt, Indie Hackers (the website I'm guessing), Twitter, Substack.....these are all marketing channels, and marketing is a lot of work. But are you taking your message to the customer, or to other entrepreneurs on the same grind?

In 2022 I started a paper magazine on a niche topic (URL is on my profile). I have a full time job, so I don't worry financially about how the magazine will do. I also definitely do not compare my thing to what someone else is making. I have around ~100 customers, probably acquired at a loss.

I couldn't care less about the absolute numbers. For me, the minimum number I was trying to reach is 1. I've exceeded that and can talk to customers about what they'd like to see in the future. I wouldn't have been able to do that had I been focusing on acquiring thousands of subscribers first.

I cannot say that I'm a clear Indie Startup entrepreneur. Because I'm not. But I work in the area of engagement and finding new customers for the product that don't really exist yet. I've started to raise my language skill, so I even didn't know English well, and it seemed impossible to me like learn foreign language for 3 months. But I'm still here. I have already spent 7 months trying to find first customers (our early adopters). It's almost impossible, hard, it takes everything and more from your healthy life. But I stopped trying to give up because it's not an opportunity, rather a block - it's only in your mind. Of course, I want result, and success. My key is to diversify my life activities. Never forget about hobby and my personal time. It helps not to be frustrated. But work is work, make money is not the only target - more energy are eaten when you haven't any results..

May I ask what your strategies are? What do you find works best?

I posted this ages ago, but stats are against you: https://twitter.com/kirso_/status/1314138323951050753?s=20

In the end, you just need to place enough bets without going all-in. If you go all in, you always have an extreme event of losing it all and starting from scratch.

90% of the people should not go into startups but just build an SMB. Who cares about $1B outcomes? Get freedom first, then swing for the fences.

EDIT: After reading several comments on bad mental health and going into debt. There is nothing glorifying in poverty and mental illness. Take care of yourself. Knowing when to quit is as important as when to persevere. But I wish everyone a good, calm and balanced life rather than being on both ends of the extreme. Perhaps its time to celebrate mediocrity?

I was lurking for a while on indiehackers and i noticed it being a closed off, somewhat “toxic”, self reinforcing bubble where the main goal seems to be to sell stuff to other “hackers”, or maybe it just evolved this way…

Many of the products target other indiehackers, like courses how to grow a saas, “masterminds” to speak to each other, resources for being a digital nomad, etc.

Most of the actual business ideas presented there are micro saas, like basic online tools to send notifications or some form generator.

Most of the people talk about being on twitter in the indiehacker scene, as if retweeting and liking each others posts would make their business grow.

But in the end its a bubble where theres a lot of talk and “nothing gets done”

Instead of concentrating on being looked up on in the “community” these people should go out and talk to actual customers and solve real problems, thats where the money is.

But of course this doesnt sound cool like being a “digital nomad indie hacker” sitting on a beach in bali and coding away.

> It's okay to admit defeat and move on to something else.

It is not defeat to not succeed at starting a business.

I don't just mean in a semantic sense. It will hurt your ability to make good business decisions if you consider folding to be a personal failure.

It is what it is. It didn't work this time and that still sucks, but you're absolutely on the right path here. Do something else for a while. Just being employed, doing something productive is a good antidote to all the soul-eroding things a business owner has to do.

Oh and fuck social media. Seriously, if you choose to follow gigachads who risk money they can afford to risk and somehow make a profit every time, they're just not showing you the ventures that fail. Many are personality confidence tricks to begin with.

The rest of us —that aren't Elon Stans anyway— are just slogging away. Do what makes you happiest. If you can afford the sentiment, money isn't everything.

Spending time on social media platforms like Twitter, ProductHunt, and IndieHacker can often have negative effects on mental health, as seeing others' successes and high earnings can cause feelings of toxic jealousy and comparison.

To improve mental health, it may be beneficial for the author to reduce their time on these platforms and focus on practical tasks such as talking to customers, finding new customers, and developing their product. These actions can lead to a more fulfilling and balanced life.

If the author feels that quitting these social media platforms entirely is the best decision for their mental health, that is a valid choice. Alternatively, the author may find it more mentally healthy to transition from being a solo entrepreneur to an employee with a stable monthly paycheck. Ultimately, the goal is to find a path that leads to greater happiness and well-being.

I grew up in a family of successful small entrepreneurs and surrounded by their contacts and friends. I myself chose to get employed in IT and I've been like that for 20 years. A couple of years back I was starting to get the feeling that I'm not all I could be, that maybe I should start my own business and make "real" money. I presented this idea to my father during a lunch with a few of his business partners. The overall sentiment was "Fuck no! The money you're making working 9 to 5? You'd be crazy to give that up for all the trouble a business brings." I was quite surprised, not even one of them supported the idea and most envied my life style.

I could go into how success in business is a lot about who you know and it's quite far from a fair playing field but I don't think it necessary nor do I want to write a book here.

I don't know you, and I don't have startup advice to give. But take care of yourself. There are people in your life that will care about you outside of your success or failure with startups. Try something else for a while and forget that this echo chamber exists. Hope you are able to put this behind you.

The simple fact that you understand the rough road to success tells me you have a lot to offer to entrepreneurs that follow you. Regardless of whether your product achieved monetary success, everything you've learned and the wisdom you've gained makes you a success in my book.

I couldn't agree more about people peddling quick solutions to everything. Any time I see a "learn X in 24-hours" or whatever, I just shake my head. Anything worth learning / pursuing takes time, dedication, and hard work. Nobody builds a company, learns to play guitar, or masters baking in a day, a week, or even a year. People peddling such false promises are just selling snake oil. You, however, have the scars to prove you've been there, lived the journey, and could offer a lot of support to other struggling entrepreneurs.

I find it interesting that you have called out "digital nomad influencers". You make it sound like at some point you believed them, which I would say is an alarm bell for a potential business leader, except you have then run some businesses.

Running a business is looking at what is happening and amplifying what works and fixing what doesn't. There is also an enormous amount of luck involved.

I suspect if you look at all companies, most people running them will have most of the skills needed, most will have had some kind of luck/lead/timing that made things work and all of them will think they know how to do business because of survivorship bias.

Even the most famous business leaders have had more companies fail than succeed but it is unbelieveably tiring unless you enjoy the journey, in which case, learn to stress less and keep working away.

Have you considered stopping trying to be successful, and instead figuring out what would really make you happy? Just a thought. The most successful products in the world have come from people following their heart, trying to share something with the world, not people trying to get something FROM the world.

At one point, about 15 years ago, I realized that if I dedicated myself to my career rather than dividing my attention with startup dabbling in the evenings and weekends, I'd probably be better off. At least for me, focus helped, I landed a job in big tech, and have done well. One thing at a time.

Good job for trying. What are you giving up on, ever selling something? Ever building something. The communal urgency and necessity around the terms "startup" and "entrepreneur" shouldn't be framed like this. How "hard" any action is and whether it is good to do and if it produces positive outcomes is knowable but only after completion and iteration. People will say if your 0/3 you might get to 1/10 or 1/100. People don't pay for ideas, provide a solution, a benefit, make your life objectively better and analyze that. Most of us are disappointed if we don't have a large monetary outcome, however if you did have that you would just think about money less. Find success in any small thing, keep building, get your morning sun.

I always like this comment:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076

"Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something.

Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on.

Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work.

Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it."

That's a fantastic comment.

You got to know yourself better. Honest self discovery is not defeat, now you know for sure what you want and you can pursue it without regrets. Many of us needed to go this path down to realize many dreams are not worth pursing, sometimes minor intensity dreams are the actual call and the actual happiness is in them, we just need to discover that first, and it is not a free journey.

And all that said, you are also right about digital nomad lifestyle sellers. At least we are not in the 70s-90s when the popular call was "stay safe". We got the chance to try which lifestyle we want, desire, can live with.

Take some time to pull yourself together, all things you did made you a better person, and this set of skills will be available for you in all sorts of situations.

You got to know yourself better: honest self discovery is not defeat.

In general don't take the advise of ANY influencer. They are paid to dump a paid message into your brain.

There's no shame in giving up especially if you've tried before. Many people go their entire careers without having the courage to do what you did. Think of this as a tactical retreat so you live to fight another day. You tried and I've got immense respect for you for doing that.

This stuff is hard whether it's crickets for what you're working on to there's people knocking but you can never seal the deal. That has happened to me with various technologies (some require lots of capital from our pockets we aren't willing to put up) I've created with technical co-founders a few times. When it does it's time to take a mental health break. After a 3 to 6 months to over a year break I'll come back and start working on one of those technologies yet now it's only for fun.

Never do I now give it much thought of it ever making much to any money rather it's all for personal enjoyment.

I have gained something awesome through from my startups I've help build and that is tech skills I learned/now use to make a decent living in tech.

> I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. There are so many other indie entrepreneurs out there who are struggling and feeling like they'll never make it. If you're one of them, I want you to know that you're not alone. It's okay to feel defeated and to want to give up. But please don't give up. Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you. There's always a chance for success, no matter how small it may seem.

It’s interesting how one can say something to others and do the exact opposite a second later. It seems like you’re ok with others doing the hard work, but not yourself.

IMO its hard, but possible. If others could do it, so can I. I have learnt that by being consistent and working hard, things eventually work out someway.

That's why you need to build something that is at least an order of magnitude better, so people can't ignore you.

Otherwise, yes, this was my experience too: in our noisy world dominated by huge corporations, indie hackers stand little chance to get their message out and pick some interest.

Another way to look at it - from here on out, you have the experience to start and maneuver from a better place. That's pretty valuable.

All the hustling in the world won't fix a bad idea, a bad or non existent problem-solution. A lot of ideas just aren't viable businesses, no matter how good one or two people might think it is. On the other hand, you don't really know what can get traction unless you're willing to kill your ideas aggressively.

Only big changes give you big changes in outcomes. Small tweaks to an idea get you small change in outcomes - in the early going. Sure at scale, a button change can be a million dollar benefit but not when you're seeking out the "does anyone give a shit and will they pay for it stage"?

The influencers you see are the 1% who made it, and given luck plays a role it's indeed possible they made it "easily" and therefore candidly but erroneously preach that story.

I've failed a half dozen times too, but only at side-hustles, and that discouraged me from going all in, but I've also been successful once (albeit very moderately) and that was with the least effort of all my attempts. So I think the lesson is to keep trying only if you value the journey as much as the intended destination, that way even if you don't reach the target you'll presumable still get some fulfillment from the journey (for me it was learning no-code tools, learning to produce professional quality print materials, etc.)

What did you learn?

That's the most important question to ask yourself. I also tried running a startup that got nowhere. What I learned is that I like spending most of my time behind a computer, programming. Thus, I decided I was better off joining someone else's startup so I could spend all day programming. I'm a lot happier that way.

Perhaps there's something in the process that you really enjoyed? Can you do just that piece in someone else's startup? Do you believe you'll be more successful working in a team when you're doing what you do best, and someone else is running the company?

I think you can, and with some self reflection on what you were good at, I think you'll find a great direction for your future career.

I am old. I have had two companies and about half my adult life self-employed. I have never gotten rich. I had fun for part of the time in each company or situation. Less fun for the rest. Here is my advice:

Don't every do anything that is not fun. Don't ever do anything you cannot afford to do.

This means do not waste your very, very short life on ambition for its own sake. Only start a company if it is fun to be doing it.

Don't gamble your economic future. You have to pay for things. Failing to save for your old age is as irresponsible as not saving money for your kid's education or making your spouse pay all the bills.

When I recognized that my fantasy of self-employment and riches was never going to be real, I got a job. It felt like a vacation. Someone else figured out what to do. I just solved the problem. Direct payroll deposit is like magic. You wake up one day and your bank account is full again.

Putting money in savings is like an orgasm. You can do it again and again and it always feels good.

Americans have this insane idea that work and business are so so so important. Like this kid, I have been through it. Unlike him, for decades. I am telling you: Capitalism is very often toxic. Don't do it unless you are doing something fun and can afford the price while meeting your other responsibilities. Don't do it at the cost of your real life, friends, spouse, kids, hobbies, books.

You only live once. Business is absolutely not the right priority. Nobody old wishes they had worked more.

I struggled with the same before. What I invite you to look at is: are you trying to be successful more than you are trying to serve people? Business is helping people in exchange for money. If you’re super preoccupied about being successful, you don’t have the mental resourcefulness to genuinely figure out how to help others. The energy of “need” you put out in the world is reflected to you as scarcity. If you start shifting things around and genuinely look for people to help, things will change. But it may require some soul searching, which means time. I am sure there is something for you to learn here. You’ve given up on trying too hard, that’s a good thing. Now, don’t give up on yourself. You have something to give.

As a person who is running a startup, I know how hard it is to get there. Its been 2years since we started and still we are working days/nights without even having a single chance to get a vacation or a day off. Only day offs I had was my sick days where I was unable to work at all. This is the reality with starting a business, making a real impact. Its no easy thing to do.

If I look back, we are in a good place compared to where we were...But still it has a long journey to go, tbh I really have no idea we will make it...

I just exited my first one, bought up by a listed company.

I think the main reason a lot of startups fail is that it is started out as "I want to have a startup just now at once", and not the reverse direction.

All my high school and university life I was just open all the time, and every other week/month some good opportunity came with people holding money in their hands. My father was kind of a guy who everyone called if had a problem, he was the channel of these. One day this idea came that with years of work we can have this recurring revenues and this is even cool, started it with friends, win.

Point is: the agenda was not to have a startup, but I had gigs with open eyes. And I was picky to stop and choose this, I can tell you.

Just my 2 cents.

I gave up as well. Fell on hard times. Needed to take a job. Everything turned out great. My personal solution was to take all the humiliation and frustration, let it ripe and turn it into gratitude.

So I’m grateful for not having the responsibility of running the business and finding customers. I gladly take the pay cut that comes with that.

At this point of my life, I far more appreciate the positive feedback of „only“ a dozen colleagues coming my way and the success we share as a group.

…and as it turns out Steve also has something nice to say about us „not destitute” people. :D

https://twitter.com/nier/status/1606268364371869697

Starting any business is very very very hard work. Creating a new product from nothing, is very very hard work. Combining the 2 means you have an insane amount of work to do. That leaves you to be CEO and R&D and manufacturing. How do you think marketing and sales fits into that? And finance and strategy? Those are the pitfalls and a reason to better not do startup alone. There are freelance sales people that will sell your product for a fee, with the advantages of using their network and their feedback in an early stage of development (if they say they can’t sell it, stop your work).

For now: you have a ton of experience and are invaluable for any employer. See this as an investment and see you get a return.

> There are freelance sales people that will sell your product for a fee, with the advantages of using their network and their feedback in an early stage of development

Can you elaborate on this please?

This is quite common in Europe, not sure on other areas now. These are people that have worked as account manager and decided to start their own business. I know one that has worked for Accenture, one ex Microsoft. They work for a percentage normally and with that it is in their benefit to sell as much of your product as possible. They have their network and knowledge, I liked working that way a lot.

It is fricking hard, and I agree that the influencers sell a rosy picture. Usually it's not just a picture they're selling, too — ever noticed how many of those influencers earn money on selling services to people like you and me? All those businesses helping with marketing, analytics, E-mail campaigns, etc.

Anyway, as someone who failed a number of times and then eventually succeeded in building a stable (what is derogatively called "lifestyle") business, I'm not sure if I have good advice to offer, apart from perhaps one thing: don't do B2C, a B2B business is the only way to go.

Otherwise, it's just hard. And I agree about caring for mental health: this is important.

Amigo, stay strong. we generated 200k in revenue in our first year by burning through 100k. Now we have no liquidity, and no investor wants to seed us further. our revenue is going to drop and we are literally not able to pay our people. I am millionaire on paper, and broke irl :)

Feels bad to fail now, but it is what it is.

This is not an era of entrepreneurs and there might never again be one that conforms to the stereotype.

Its an era of industrialized cookiecutter startup generation, too much money chasing too few worthy ideas, overwhelming oligopoly power, permacrises that wake nobody up from the consumerist get-rich-quick stupor, an era of dwarf politicians, and supersized hypes, engineered manias and fomo and a dazed, confused and bitter body politic.

Its an era of startups-as-a-service and right now we are probably entering the managing-startup-failure-as-a-service phase.

We are, in part, complicit in this state of affairs, the way the cogs of a malfunctioning machine are both cause and victims of its unhappy unraveling.

It sounds like you fell in love with the idea of "the tech-start up dream"... Willing to sleep in the closet at HQ to fulfil that dream, put your heart and soul into it - but don't have matching tech. And I get it, that's backwards.

But deciding to be an inventor is a tough road to walk.

And being in the tech-start up space you are going to be dealing with vipers and scorpions - not ideal. And even if YOU have a perfect idea - your chances of success are still slim.

Start small and build up. You don't need a facility, team, or anything but the smallest decent product. Build it, the rest will come.

But these influencers are going to destroy us all. Avoid for advice at all costs.

Most of them sell the idea they are successfull. But once in a blue moon they share their real MRR and you are shocked. Because most of them make 1-2k and behave like they are successfull and can live from it. Most are just pretending and are never successfull at all. But they know each other and push each other which make it seem you are the outlier of being a ”failure“.

Yesterday I thought about a metapher for it:

A small tree that grows in the shadow with minimal sunlight. If it just would get enough sunlight for once, it could grow high enough and reach direct sunlight, it could get the energy for real sustained growth. But as long as its in the shade, it will simply never get that energy, no matter how much it is told by other plants to just grow a little bit more. When there is no more energy, there is no more energy, even if the goal is close.

Maybe an old tree will fall down, then suddenly there is enough air and light, until then you can only grow with what energy you have avaiable. Not everyone makes it and not everyone had even the chance.

I spent 8 years trying to be a professional musician, running my own music project. I gave up opportunities, travel, etc. for it. Lived with family a lot of those years to save money for the studio, and to work part time so I could write songs and make demos. I made some things I'm really proud of. But it didn't pick up, I didn't get signed, I made no money from it and lost many thousands of dollars from it, etc.

By the end I was completely burned out, and saw I gave up most of my 20s for that. If I were to go back I wouldn't change anything. I gave it my best shot. But like OP here, I am burned out and need to just enjoy life now.

Some time ago I read 'The Hard Thing about Hard Things' by Ben Horowitz and what you describe reminds me about 'The Struggle'. Ben Horowitz wrote about it in a blog post too [1] and I find it gives a much better impression how entrepreneurship feels like, than most other descriptions.

Always monitor your mental health and when in doubt, keep it first.

[1]: https://a16z.com/2012/06/15/the-struggle-2/

Just a comment for wakana. First, I feel for you, and would say hang in there. Most startups even from very successful people, don't work out. It's up to you, but you could pursue something as a hobby in the background of your life that won't drive you batty or present too much risk if it fails. If you pursue anything next time, do something focused on fun and cheap that you love and won't harm your mental health even if it doesn't work out.

Now, onto my main comment that I think many people here will disagree with.

Conventional wisdom in life is bullshit designed to make yourself look good: you only have to look at the dumb advice given to distraught men about pursuing relations to recognize that. To me, it sounds like you're trying to take the startup community's bullshit about how to grow your business way too literally.

The good sounding advice that all of the bloggers out there give (stuff like writing high-quality content and contributing to the community) is all well and good and something you should strive towards, but you're a sucker if you think that this kind of advice is designed to do anything but make the writer of that piece seem like a noble individual. Yeah, maybe if you're Mark Cuban wealthy you can fund a big marketing campaign for your startup and do things entirely above-board and fund it until it wins out, but that's not 99% of us who are bootstrapping something.

You know what smart business minded people do to grow their startup when they have 20 followers? They go out there and spend a few dollars to buy a bunch of fake followers to appear way more popular than they actually are. It's social proof and is designed to persuade people that you're legit.

How did Reddit get their start? Wasn't it a bunch of fake bullshit accounts posting nonsense?

How do all dating sites get started? They find pictures of hot people online and make a bunch of fake profiles.

If you're pursuing your business entirely honestly, well you might win some points with the big guy upstairs, but it's not a path to business success unless you get insanely lucky. It sucks, but this is the way the world works.

Any other poignant examples? Like a review site like glassdoor would they fake reviews?

I'm not going to make assumptions about websites I don't know about, and I'm sure some companies are completely honest. Maybe the company is honest, but many of the reviews are bullshit?

But one good example of how important social proof is nightclubs keeping people lined up outside waiting even when they could easily fit everybody inside fairly quickly.

Why do they intentionally provide a shitty, subpar experience for their customers?

Social proof. They're trying to get people to wonder "Hey, why is everybody lined up outside of that club even though it's cold outside? Must be something great going on in there. I want to check it out."

You're an investor of time, so the following quote applies:

The lesson for investors, Buffett says, is that you don't have to swing at every pitch.

"The trick in investing is just to sit there and watch pitch after pitch go by and wait for the one right in your sweet spot. And if people are yelling, 'Swing, you bum!,' ignore them."

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/02/02/war...

If you failed on your startup i would recommend you to read "The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed" book by Alberto Savoia. This will give you basic tools to succeed and an explanation for why you failed before. Check it out and you will understand why you failed building your startup. Also don't get over your self, try to give some time for your self and take rest then after reading this book start building something new that you can test and validate the market. Good Luck.

Have you considered buying a working business? There's no shame in not starting from scratch. You can get something with proof of concept and take it to the next level. Even Tesla had some parts in place when Elon came in.

This is why there needs to be good jobs, wages, and benefits, so that so many people aren't feeling like they have to be entrepreneurs to have a good life. These things have been undercut over the decades to maximize profit for the few. Not everybody can be an entrepreneur, but most entrepreneurs need good worker, and they typically far outnumber the entrepreneurs. Workers make the entrepreneurs money, and need to be treated well. Treat them well, and you'll have less people trying to compete with you, and more wanting to help you build your dream and benefit from with you.

This question might be off taste, but.... what are your actual skills? what can you actually do in your life? can you program? can you reverse engineer? can you design? can you market? Have you ever had a salaried job where you have matured a knowledge about how a product is planned, designed, produced and shipped?

If you exit college with not ulterior education, building a successful business is extremely unlikely. You first have to at least know how stuff works in the job and products market and you have to study a lot about tech entrepenourship to avoid all the pitfalls and dumb errors that many inexperienced people make.

I used to be a digital nomad (well, still a bit am)

I never have been an entrepreneur.

When I went to digital nomad events (cruise ship etc), most of them were pretentious Facebook advertisers, aka "digital marketing experts". With a quite low "salary", registered in one of those tax heavens (Cyprus) so that they kept most of their income, and didn't care about their future.

Don't mix entrepreneurship with digital nomadism. They have nothing to do with each other. Once you are a successful entrepreneur, you might go to remote places to work, but the two doesn't have to (and usually doesn't) go together.

> building an audience

This is the most BS thing I've observed on twitter. It's for e-books and courses, not for usual target customers. "Build audience before selling" is also utter BS. To be fair, one type of this approach works, that is solving customers' problems for free (it may be counted as building audience in a broad sense), and sell them a package of full-blown solutions later. I mean, building friends on twitter is a good thing, but that's indirect benefit or benefit that doesn't affect the process of getting customers at all.

We always only hear success stories. Its simply because no one writes or likes 'normal failure stories'. Once in a while we have such a beautiful story that goes viral, but for 99% of normal stories of 'it just failed' never see the light of the day.

I believe I found my success (screen.studio), but first I had to give up on it to start having a healthy relationship with my career. Only then I was able to look at myself being proud, even while seeing everyone tweet (remember, only successful people tweet - thus 'everyone' is a bit biased) about their success.

Good luck!

Yes, I have written to Courtland Allen of indiehackers.com a number of times saying I want to hear more from those who fail. What I actually want is people working with mentors and the mentors saying why they are failing. But Courtland has always wanted to focus on the success stories, since those are the models to follow. I understand that logic. But still I want to hear from those who fail, especially those who are in the process of failing.

Comparison is the thief of Joy. It sounds like you need to get off social media.

Having seen various projects go well, and go badly. The trend I've seen is that "quality" is massively overrated. All about knowing the right people that can further spread your network and reach.

ugh, this so much, the cringe cofounders at my last startup were so painstaking annoying about how "perfect" the design had to be (for all 500 of our monthly users) that it took us MONTHS to ship new features.

my wisdom: if a product is good, people will use it and pay for it, regardless of minor design problems (that can always be fixed later!)

It is ok to give up. It is ok to come back to entrepreneurship to it if you want at some point. It is ok to never think about entrepreneurship again.

What matters is that each point you make the decision that makes sense to you.

And if you choose to look back one day, you may find that despite failing being an entrepreneur for some time helped you in ways you may not have realized or anticipated.

Either way, as you said, optimize for your mental health. All responsibilities in life seem like chains some of the time, but if your startup feels like a chain all the time - then by all means - break the chain.

Here’s a corollary that has worked for me and that I want to share - if, in general your startup feels like freedom - even if it has required you to work long hours for many years -(as all startups do for at least a while) - long hours that most people equate with chains - then it’s not only ok to keep doing the startup but it’s perhaps advisable - that at those inevitable moments when you do feel like a failure you don’t give up - that you give yourself enough time to try all the things you’d want to. It is ok to fail at a startup and not give up because the mindbendingly frustrating thing about startups is that even when you are succeeding you experience a lot of failure, and success rarely seems to precede at least one period that feels like utter failure.

I realize the tone of this advice may seem contradictory to my comment above, but it’s not. If a particular set of responsibilities that feel like chains to many / most people in the world feel like freedom to you - then by all means - keep enjoying the freedom, don’t let the world define it for you, and don’t give up when the roller coaster hits a low.

The vast majority of new businesses fail. Always have. Using the "E" word doesn't change that. SO don't start a business that isn't really worth the risk; have a Why, have some special sauce that nobody else has (such as genuine intellectual property), or develop it fast; or maybe a very uncommon insight about the future.

The good news that you have valuable experience, should you bump up against those last mentioned factors at some point.

You, cant', control, everything. Especially if you are not in the right place with the right connections and so forth. YC initial startups were cool built by smart people but their astonishingly high success rate is due to other factors as well: this not to diminish their value but to put things in context. So don't be mad at yourself if you can't create a successful business. Try to solve a smaller problem with paying customers to build your 500k/year business and enjoy life or just get a normal job and don't care. Take care.

For what it’s worth, it seems like you put all of your eggs in one basket. You need to have clear indications of success AND failure. There’s always a point where you say, “it’s X months so far, none to minimal revenue, burn chart indicates this project will go under” and actually kill/shelf the project.

It sucks that you got the idea that it was ever “easy” and your mental health suffered as a result. I fucking hate those people. These are probably the same people that say “programming is for everybody. Anybody can write code”. In reality, it’s just not.

"Building a startup is hard work and it takes time." "I'm giving up on my entrepreneurship dreams." Take time to recover mentally and financially. You can always try again at a later time (or not), and do it in a gradual way, not all-or-nothing (take a look at the 37Signals books). You at least tried, and won't have regrets of never have attempted it. Though it is hard to see it right now, you probably have learnt a few things that hopefully you can put to use in the future. Good luck and hope things improve.

Honestly, this realization is a success in itself. Some will tell you to not give up, but if your heart really isn't in it anymore, then it's ok to move on.

Personally, I think you'll be happier later on in life knowing you tried and you gave it your all rather than growing older with regret because you never tried at all.

Keep your head up. This, in itself, is a success story.

It's not for everyone, and yes there is some luck involved. Some luck in terms of timing, some in terms of how good your network is. Some ideas just aren't that good too.

I would say don't give up, at least on the general idea of entrepreneurship. If you have that drive, that is more of the equation than you think. Perhaps consider a more stable approach if your situation allows -- get another job and use moonlighting to see what ideas might take off. And keep in mind the saying: alone you go fast, together you go far.

Thanks for sharing your story, I see where you're at and have had similar thoughts throughout my career.

It definitely is not a fair game: I literally started my first company because I knew my parents wouldn't let me starve and I could just crash at their place for years before I 'made it'.

~13 years in, still haven't made it but I can make a living. Every time I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs I make sure to highlight all the crap you have to go through to counter the media doing a great job at highlighting the good stuff.

Take care of yourself.

Letting go and giving up is okay. Sometimes even the best/only option. I failed to recognize that for too long in 2019 and ended up victim of the sunk cost fallacy: https://www.dsebastien.net/2021-01-04-20-months-in-2k-hours-...

Now I prioritize my time, happiness and well-being way above MRR, success and whatever else ego related.

You know what helps (me)? Coming from the start with knowledge the success rate is about 10%. Some may say such "negative thinking" dooms your endeavour from the start. I disagree. One can be really committed and still know in the back of your head it is most likely to fail.

This mindset not only means you'll not put your last savings into a venture that is very likely to fail, but also that you remain sane.

Also, sometimes one just needs a break. If you can, take a year off. If you have to work to support yourself, try to take it easy.

> Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you.

Next line

> But for me, I can't take it anymore.

How can you advice something you're not doing?

I don't question you have worked really hard and pushed yourself to the limit, but I would look at the experience you've gained as a learning experience and seeing things from different perspective when you get a job. Now you will see in more clarity why decisions are made at work, and how hard it is to sell a product.

Celebrate your learnings, your situation is the majority, very few startups will succeed.

You know how many people tried to build start-ups and failed? Many then you can imagine, and they're heartbroken has you are, it's not necessarily personal. Sometimes business needs some luck, or maybe you product just was...bad, which is ok, that's how you progress. Life is a hit and miss, but you need to learn from mistakes. Because if you aren't, you will never succeed. At least you gathered experience, and if you still have some motivation and a good idea for a start-up, go for it!

There's no shame in being a freelance or employee. The whole "foster community" thing is extremely demanding and unlike what these "success stories" on youtube imply, it isn't for everyone.

Focus on what you do best or what is less stressful for you to do in the area you work on. Make some new friends, share some stories and have a laugh about the worst parts of the job when you can.

A humble, but peaceful life is better than getting consumed by a vortex of false promises and lies.

> constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself

I don’t know where the grindset culture comes from (on Instagram I often used to see sappy quotes slapped over an image of an overrated business type) but it must be very lucrative. Influencers are not there to show you reality, just like no one is ever driving their new car down empty streets in Manhattan. I don’t know what success is like, but it’s not that.

Sorry to hear that.

Like others mentioned - the chances to succeed are very slim.

I think 2 things are the root cause of failure for most businesses: - Running out of money - Running out of energy (founder burnout)

Things like not finding product market fit etc. can all be categorized into these 2 points of failure.

I find that helpful to take a step back when I'm feeling stressed and remember that worrying too much will just cause me to burn out, which is a bigger risk to the burnout than e.g. not fixing some bug or answering some email immediately.

In my opinion, thinking about success and failure is already the wrong path. I would say do things you find intrinsically worthwhile instead. For example, right now I'm developing an online course because I think it's fun to do. If no one signs up, then I'll do something else. If I do get students, I'll do something else anyway...in fact, I never even think about the word "failure". It's just something to do that enriches your life and move on from.

You are not your startup. And defining risky endeavours like entrepreneurship only by its outcome, is setting a trap for yourself.

"Giving up" never got the recognition it needs. You cannot pursue new goals without letting go of old. You cannot find a new girlfriend without "giving up" on the old.

Life is all about letting go and be open to where it takes you next.

Good luck on your journey. Although the place you are in now feels miserable you will look back at it as a defining moment where new roads opened.

You have to choose the right road with right companion for the journey. If you choose the wrong road, does not matter how fast or hard you go, you will never get there.

It's pretty brutal.

I offered a service essentially undercutting what I do for my day job by $15-$30k and its been nearly impossible to market that and convince anyone of the value. Despite it being exactly the same work companies already pay (me) for, lol.

The effort required to attract new clients isn't something people that build want to spend time on. Its just a numbers game and ultimately entirely subjective.

Build for fun, build for yourself. That's the only way it doesn't beat you down.

Most will tell you that its about luck or perseverance, but reality it's about the network and people you know majority of the times.

If you ever worked at FAANG or graduated from Ivy League, or have connected parents it's actually difficult to not get money from VCs - especially the last 2-3 years. Assuming that you have a reasonable sounding idea. Network and connections is highly undervalued. Once you have money, long term success becomes more likely also.

I like to follow Pieter Levels in this regard. He’s very open on what works and what doesn’t. Yes he has thousands of followers now, but that didn’t come easy. He tried a lot, only 4 projects out o 70+ made money: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817

Listen to Nassim Taleb on success. If you want maximize your chance at success, you need to do something non-scalable. The number of successful barbers is astounding, the number of successful tech startup founders is vanishing, and half of the founders have given away much of their equity before even making money.

Focus on your mental health. Life is hard. Treat the people you care about well because they're really what you have in life.

> If you want maximize your chance at success, you need to do something non-scalable.

What is the meaning of 'scalable' here? Popular/widely-known?

It means you can only sell the product on a case-by-case basis, and it does not scale.

Author: scalable. One book can be sold to 1 person or 1,000,000 with little extra work.

Barber: non-scalable. One haircut can be sold to 1 person, but not 2 people without doubling the amount of work.

You can do everything right and still fail. It's just the way a system is works when there are more people trying to be successful then there is room in the space for them to be successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeonhole_principle

What's more frustrating is that people can also do the wrong things and succeed anyway.

I've always worked for a big corporates. The teams are large and infrastructure support is good. We produce apps with specialists for databases, networking, front end back end, middleware, tools, business analysts, project managers, HR etc etc. And we dont even have to worry about marketing or advertising or search optimisation. I realize corporates have overhead but dont know how one entrepreneur can do significant by themselves.

Thank you for posting this. The world of solopreneur success stories is rife with survivorship bias. We need more candid conversations like this it balance the message.

It is hard.

You may feel differently in a couple of years, and if you do, consider a business with tangible goods or in-person services, where you see immediate results. It's unlikely it will have the growth of a tech startup, but you will get some satisfaction with every product/service you deliver.

I've been bouncing between writing code and work-with-your-hands type startups for 16 years and it has kept me (arguably) sane.

As someone else living with mental illness and :gave up" in 1999, I hear you. You did not give up, you were not defeated, you had a realization of your true nature.

I hate the internet and all that comes with it, it has commoditized everything and turned everyone into a self promotor, an advertiser of the self. It's all a pyramid scheme, and the moment more people like us drop out the more quickly the pyramid collapses.

Please understand that rock bottom is temporary.

Entrepreneurship is a story of perseverance being extended long enough to meet luck.

Take time to recover and plan. Then get up try again.

Considering all the comments about the amount of luck among the top performer entrepreneurs I am always flabbergasted by how HN is so vocally opposed to the confiscation of fortunes in excess of 1bn .

It seems like the natural consequence, the bigger the lottery win, the bigger the cut that society takes out of the lucky winner.

It’s only natural and if somebody were to spit on 999.99M they deserve to also have that remaining amount confiscated.

Learn to rest, but not to give up. Rest for some time. It seems that you just need to learn a couple of things to continue, also to find mentors that have build real and tangible things, not the ones that you see on youtube. The foundation of everything is to provide value to the customers. If you allow me lest talk.

I genuinely don't mean this to sound negative, or defeatist – sometimes nuance is difficult to convey in plain text.

I think giving up a dream can sometimes be the best choice, the sensible choice. Some dreams just aren't going to work out (I say this from personal experience), and giving up on them allows you to move on to focus on other things that might work better.

Take care of yourself and I wish you the best for the future.

I'm reminded of that line in Silicon Valley where someone sarcastically says "oh, is it hard to build a billion dollar company?"

Of course it's hard, and the entitlement here of "with an audience of 20 people, nobody signed up for my substack!" is astounding. The world isn't against you, the world just doesn't care about you. That's an extremely important distinction.

First, take care of yourself, then think about entrepreneurship.

I'm reminded of the pinned tweet from the Nomad List entrepreneur[0]:

> Only 4 out of 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew

> Over 95% of everything I ever did failed

> My hit rate is only about ~5%

> So...ship more

[0] https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1457315274466594817

I'm very curious what you may have done differently knowing what you know now. Particularly any self-care / mental health. Please feel free to contact me at the email in my profile.

You sound like you're in a down place, and I sympathize. You had the guts to try though. And it sounds like you built something useful. That's pretty good.

It's a hard game. This topic will fill up why all the failures were because of lack of privilege, and the successes are privilege and luck.

Luck comes to the startup founder who takes the difficult and hard steps to starting a business and iterating on finding what works.

Edit: the game is hard. Really hard. And it's not just luck, but some of it is. Luck without lots of hard work means nothing.

Maybe your journey was meant to include some type of cold turkey exit from entrepreneurship to force you to step back, reevaluate things, rebuild mental health, etc., and maybe it's all temporary and you'll be back, better and stronger. Or maybe it'll give you the chance to find something else more fulfilling. Wishing you the best of luck either way.

Take some time off. Spend time doing something else. Clear your mind. This year specifically is the Big Suck. I always have to laugh when people say it was so easy to raise funds in 2020/2021 and no DD was done. Maybe if you have the right network at the right time with the right product. I..e, all stars are aligned. But for the 99.99% this is not true.

I hope you're ok, and I hope you find peace. More importantly, I hope you take to heart that so much in life really is luck of the draw. Even people who have everything together still fail. I know it may sound silly but the Picard quote is still true. You can do everything right and still lose. It's not a weakness, it's life.

Yep it's that hard. I respect your decision. Go do something else. Find yourself again. Replenish. Find a new life direction.

I tried to be my own boss, but I was really bad at acquiring new clients. I was broke and then really learned to appreciate being a salaried employee. It’s much easier to build something when you don’t risk homelessness or something similar.

You seem to be really bad at marketing. HN frontpage and you don’t say anything about what you tried and what your skills are.

Sorry to hear you're burned out. I hope you can find a healthy reset, and happiness in what you focus on next.

I never had a paid customer

To others, I would suggest building something you have someone willing to pay for is not a bad start for a new venture. May not be as glamourous as burning gobs of VC capital but it's probably more sustainable.

It is OK! Well, the selling of distorted dreams by others is not, but what I mean is, that it is OK to not be a founder or entrepreneur!

For some people it is the right thing, for others it is not. There are many factors involved. Things like "How much can I accept to not do what I want, but to do what I am told by an employer?" or stress resistance.

Best wishes!

> Building a startup is hard work and it takes time. It's not as easy as they make it seem and it's not for everyone.

And, as others have mentioned, it takes a lot of luck. I mention this specifically, because your words seem like you still believe it's you. It's not. Your fine. It's circumstances, almost entirely.

Indeed. You need blind luck and lots of it to be a successful first time entrepreneur.

Just remember that there are also the people who sell shovels in a gold rush —- or for the modern times, start an exchange during a crypto craze. There are also investors and funds. Their maths looks different.

Don’t be just a roll of the dice in someone else’s numbers game.

>After three failed attempts at building a successful startup

In many stories I read authors said they've done 20+ attempts before getting a success.

>I tried everything

Besides hard work, luck and connections also play a role. Maybe even the most important one.

>Building a startup is hard work and it takes time.

I am not participating in Twitter but think here in HN this is the general consensus.

You’ll be ok. I’ve been institutionalized many times and I’ve never even tried to start a business. Take care of yourself and shield yourself from the liars who profit from your belief in their fabrications. Be well, health is a process and has nothing to do with monetary or business success, but is far more valuable.

This is good starter for a conversation, but I'm afraid text is not the medium for it.

You're right in going to a recover phase. Move on to something that isn't yours but give you a good foundation with at least a decent team and keep going waiting for a more adequate opportunity for you to try something of your own again.

Mate, if you failed to make $10 online it means there is something seriously wrong with your mental model of how the world and business works.

I am sorry about your health, of course get that addressed first.

Then ask yourself what you want and get someone who had more success than you to point out what's wrong with your beliefs and approach.

Hey, if its any consolation, your post made it to #1 on Hacker News for a while. I think that actually fits the definition of the word 'ironic'.

Anyway, I feel for you. Having a dream and seeing it fail hurts. It may be painful in the present, but at least you know yourself. That is something many people never learn.

Mental health is extremely important and should be given a priority in ones. Also, being a startup founder is not the only way to be happy and successful these days.

Still, it is sad to see someone, who apparently has so much discipline and persistence to give. Hit me up on Twitter (@phprunner) in a few days, maybe we can talk.

Take care of yourself mate. Not everyone has to be an entrepreneur. I tried to be one for 10 years, couldn't make it work. Now I am happier and wealthier working for a good company enjoying my work and people around me. Go find meaningful employment, life doesn't have to be about hustling only.

Don't trust social media. VC funded startups in general are a scheme to get the rich investors richer, the people who actually work on the start up (including founders) are very rarely going to do better than a person who worked as SWE in a big tech company for the same amount of years..

The world is against you. People really don't like to accept the reality that most businesses and startups will fail, they like to think they will be the exception because they are willing to work hard.

It's not enough to just work hard. You have to be lucky, and the smarter and more ruthless you are the luckier you will tend to be.

What you have described is pretty much what you should expect to happen for the vast majority of startups. No one cars about you in any sustainable, repeatable way. There's always something new and more important coming up.

Fuck startups. You want money? Just work in tech. Get a remote job, maybe two. You'll make more money than you will by trying to juggle the million different responsibilities you'll have bootstrapping a startup, half of which you probably don't really even care about doing. And you will end up working less and living, truly living, more.

You want fame and to touch the lives of millions? Just be some kind of influencer, that's all people really follow these days. Make content.

You want to change the world? Forget about it, the world will change with or without you. Trying to change the world the way you think it should be is just a thinly veiled lust for power. A selfish goal.

If you still want to have your own business, first figure out the existing businesses in the industry and find where you can close a gap to add value. This is going to take real insight, and skill, not some tweets or votes on "Product Hunt". You will have to work in the industry. Don't bother with the shiny world of mass consumer tech, it's garbage. A digital version of selling C.R.A.P. on Amazon FBA. Better to find something where you can sell a very expensive product or service to businesses that most people don't even know about. Example: We offer services where we audit tech code bases for clients who are acquiring tech companies. You've never heard of us, we sound boring (audits?!), and if we posted our business on Product Hunt no one would give a fuck. And yet we gross nearly $1.2 million a year in fees doing this, and it's not even our full time jobs. We beat out the shitty little failed startups with good graphics and social media footprints and enthusiastic CEOs. Yet the only thing people will find interesting about us is that we make some money.

So just give up, startups don't work if you force it. The more you have to try the more likely you will have to fail so you can get your life back.

In a way the tremendous success of YC drove this false belief that :

- Creating a startup is fun & rather EASY success.

It's not. It's never been. It will never be.

I am fifty three: I now know.

I also was a teenager then a young adult, influenced by "entrepreneurs" of their time.

Entrepreneurs dream is RISKY.

Start-up's future is 90% of the time doomed.

Worse : Chance plays a big role.

Wish you all the best as you focus on healing over the coming days. Do you have any counter-intuitive advice on how to build a following? I assume your startup is B2C.

Sounds like you were motivated, hard-working, and played the game as best you could.

Though it sounds like you might've overlooked two of the most important ingredients entrepreneurs need when getting something off the ground:

- vast web of influential family connections - inherited wealth

Maybe go back and try it with these two?

It’s really hard to be successful with something new. With new products.

That’s why most companies do something very traditional. Plumbing, baking bread, hosting servers, building „boring“ websites, …

If you want to invent something new, you need to be exceptionally creative and exceptionally lucky. It’s okay if you aren’t.

You’re right that your not alone in this. More than 50% of products built by indie hackers don’t make any money at all: https://scrapingfish.com/blog/indie-hackers-revenue

There are a lot of things you can do for your mental health. Good habits for diet and exercise go a long way. Learn how to manage your stress. If entrepreneurship is taking a toll on you, then by all means do something else, you may come back to it one day in a better state to try again.

Most people flaunting their startups and stuff are rich and using this firstly to manage their tax liability, making it big doesn’t matter because they already made it. You should be more established before trying again. Stop trying to make your come-up with a startup it’s cringe af.

Been there, done that. However, the worst position to find yourself in is partial traction. A few customers, giving you that slight bit of hope to keep grinding. Then after 5 our more years, you've made 20K and are stone motherless broke. Or maybe that's just me. Chin Up dude.

So true brother. Partial traction is the worst.

If you enter business, either go big or go home.

Almost all of the successful “entrepreneurs” I know are just rich kids who had the time and space to figure things out over the course of 10-15 years after college without worrying about money. Same thing for all of the successful people I know who work in media. It’s a racket.

Influencers are selling a dream, which can be a part of the big picture, but you have to remember, much like the people who used to sell pamphlets on tv about how to get rich, you have to ask yourself why they are selling pamphlets instead of just doing whatever their pamphlets say.

For a SaaS to help founders I had over 200 wait-list sign-ups. I think only one tried the MVP and that was about it. I put significant time and effort into building it. Marketing is incredibly difficult. Possibly why Paul Graham says there needs to be at least 2 co-founders.

I deliberately avoid startup porn and hustle porn.

Otherwise, my impostor syndrome would get 100% worse. I would feel that my salary is terrible, my skills are dull, and I'm lazy.

Some days, even just scanning the headlines here on Hacker News makes me tense... But generaly, I'm happy with me.

You have received a lot of advice here. I'm curious to know what were the products you shipped?

> It's okay to admit defeat and move on to something else.

It is better to have tried and failed than not having tried at all.

I live the comfortable life of a decently paid employee, but I always wonder what could have been had I chosen a different path.

Good luck with whatever and wherever your life takes you next!

Success is an addiction that many people long to suffer from. It’s just an illusion for all but a fraction of those try to roll the boulder up the hill.

Comfort is what we should all learn to settle for. It’s really not that bad.

Learn to be happy and fulfilled where you’re at. Life is short, enjoy it.

>PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PROTECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AT ALL COST!

You forgot to mention physical health, unlike mental health the damage to physical health can be relatively permanent and relatively irreversible. And of course physical health and mental health is related.

How many digital nomad influencers vs would-be entrepreneurs who keep wasting time on IT social networks? This ratio alone should make it very clear to you that most of that world is fake and just here to entertain you when you feel alone in front of your machine.

If you haven't already, you could reflect on your 'failures' to see what you can learn from them. You may identify areas you want to develop in yourself, spot something you could tweak in your products, or just clarify your career aspirations.

>> But please don't give up. Keep pushing forward and don't let the failures define you.

Yeah, sure, and then die one day realizing that you spent your life chasing illusionary goals that were injected into your mind by bulshitters on twitter. Way to go, mate!

If you think you have nothing left to give, look at the success of this very submission. You hit a nerve. It would be interesting to learn more about the specifics of your venture and learn more about your lessons learned. Wish you all the best.

Have you considered just duplicating an existing business in a still growing market and then hiring a PPC/seo marketing agency? You don't have to invent anything new perse, and you absolutely need professional marketing in most cases.

I'm very sorry that you are having mental health issues as a result of your efforts, that sucks.

But as someone who has been where you are, and has a couple of small exits, dude... you're trying to get into the NBA. It's really fucking hard.

good. It's not a sustainable lifestyle. Imagine if you had employees and payroll to hit and sales are slumping and you are running low on cash and your investors are yelling at you, your customers are never happy... That's a lot harder of a situation to deal with.

I dropped out of being an entrepreneur and normal life with a normal job is just a sweet sweet vacation. Bonus if you don't have to talk to the outside world and have good coworkers. You are a super human now.. be considerate of those who can't produce as much as you. The normal world moves slow. Turn up your patience dial and get home for soccer practice.

Hang in there. Creating something is hard. It can take many, many attempts and many years to have success.

Stop for a while, take a job that can leverage your skills, learn new skills and get paid while doing it.

There was a period where lots of startup founders I followed where getting real jobs I was like what is going on.

Even the people you see as successful and idolize have issues and sometimes give up and take real jobs. Or take a real job and keep working on their side project.

Entre-porn is a real issue, quit cold turkey.

Relax, enjoy life with family and friends, get a pet, get new hobbies, enjoy nature.

You can try this again in the future but give yourself a 1 yr of 2 yr break from it.

And when you are ready to start again take it slow, look at Rob Walling's stair step approach. StartUpsForTheRestOfUs.com.

This Startup School Talk by @DHH was made for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CDXJ6bMkMY

Make sure you're financially stable before trying again, having financial pressures can really add to the stress of trying to build your startup.

It's totally possible to have a job and start something on the side. You'll enjoy startups for the rest of us.

And if it feels all consuming and stressful, it might not be for you.

Control your own situation, maybe you focus on your career and level up and then invest in startups instead of creating them.

Make choices that are best for you and your happiness.

Take care, enjoy the journey.

I think it's wonderful you tried. Three times! Wow! Most people don't even try once.

Sorry things didn't blow up the way you hoped, but I doubt you'll ever regret the fact you gave it a go.

Hope you feel better soon. Good luck with everything.

You seem to be getting a lot of advice, some good some I disagree with.

But I would say that this post on the front page of hacker news is an amazing opportunity for you to promote your three failed startups. Maybe one will get the traction you need.

Sounds like you've been going it alone. Have you tried teaming up with someone else? Many successful projects wouldn't be successful if they were done alone, having another person can help sanity check and motivate you.

Welcome to the real world! There are millions of people out there with broken dreams and failed ambitions. Life for most of us is a succession of diminishing aspirations...

I want to be rich and famous and loved by the world... I want a private jet... I want to be successful and admired by many... I want a big house... I want to be recognised as the best amongst my peers... I want a nice car... I want to get promotion and a pay rise... I want a house... I want to keep this job... I want to rent somewhere better... I want a job I don't hate... I want to afford to have the heating on...

Unfortunately, as you point out, the internet makes your own perceived 'failure' seen like an outlier, rather than the norm that it actually is. It's infuriating when you've worked hard at something --like a product or a written piece or some art-- and got no interest at all. And you look at YouTube and see some vaccuous fuckwitt with a million views for a video of them opening a box.

I know. I've 'Been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt ' so many times I could open a T-shirt shop... which, naturally, wouldn't get any customers.

I'm guessing you're pretty young, as you're taking this failure to become the next Elon Musk pretty personally. You also need to learn to separate you as a person from your crazy schemes and, when they come crashing down round your ears, just shrug and move on.

As I've got older, I've come to terms with the fact I'm never going to amount to anything, if my yardstick for success is internet likes or upvotes. But I'm a decent person and, in the real world, my family and friends think I'm a good bloke. So fuck all that fake internet popularity shite.

You mentioned "digital nomad influencers" a few times, were you trying to start businesses as a digital nomad, or was that just something you saw as a common feature of the "influencers" you paid attention to?

A lot of the journey is trying to pick the right idea. Something that people will take to and buy. I've heard that surveys can help with that, but there really is no guarantee.

It also really helps to build up a following and be well known.

I have vast industry experience. I know lot of problems in different businesses. The challenge I have is putting together a good 2-3 member team. My friends are retired full time workers. If you are interested, DM me.

Yeah been there, luckily enough i almost always had also a job so failure was always an option.

Only projects that worked for me where of different nature which didnt require marketing to make money, one could say hacking side projects.

https://i.imgur.com/6GzFqxv_d.webp?maxwidth=520&shape=thumb&...

Fuck influencers. The vast majority haven't done shit but sell a dream.

Ironically if you linked your projects here, you would see more traffic :)

To the OP (if you read this), I appreciate your candor, and you're not alone. Heal well. Heal with your family and loved ones. Lean into them. I sincerely hope you move onto greener pastures.

Ah, you mean those influencers that make money through talking about how they make money? That only works for them as - not the most perfect analogy but it does the job - the top of the pyramid.

What is your "entrepreneurship dream?" Being able to build startups for the rest of your life? Building a single successful company? Building a company that earns you enough to live?

I don't know if that's helpful; but one lesson I remember from a business program years ago was that the average business owner fails at least three times before becoming successful.

You should give up. Influencers are total bullshit and should not be followed, because they're only leading you to themselves.

Give that up. Figure out what you want and use your mind to go get it.

This is also something that I feel when trying out a new hobby like gamedev or music or art. I know it is definitely possible to have success on those, but I feel like it was such a reach.

Great post and I am sorry that you have suffered these failures. While I agree with you that the scam artist influencers share some of the blame, I think there is another culprit at work here: the mindset that it must be the "brass ring" or nothing!

What about a simpler path of just being a good developer, working for a stable tech company and building a life around the good salary, good work and good people that an IT Career affords?

Though I also had dreams of a hit product and failed at one such endeavor, it was as a side-gig, and I have become modestly successful in my career. Or maybe I should say "successful enough". I hope you can also find a path that is deeply satisfying. Best Wishes!

I haven't given up. I'm still trying. If anybody wants to try with me - I'm looking for co-founders - please contact me: @duttaoindril, duttaoindril@gmail.com

Take a break, also you are on the front page of HN with this post, maybe add some links to your three failed products and you can get some traction, or at worst some advice.

Do what 99% of startup "influencers" do and write a book and create a course on how to do a startup and avoid your mistakes. I am serious here.

It is not defeat and you did not fail. Running a business is incredibly hard, and I think the entire HN audience would applaud you for even trying and give you our support.

I think it’s right to get out. Give yourself time and you will start to feel better. I’m hindsight you will see that this issue is with this “space” and not at all with you.

Being a startup founder myself. I know the pain. Taking care of your mental health itself is very important. And yes listen to your heart and not what somebody says.

Look all these influencers do is get advertising revenue from their content. Which might be easy enough for them. They don't own a real economy type business.

Yeah. Sorry to read that. Wish you good luck for your future.

I feel you. I wish you all the best. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is the only book I've read that shares a real vision on how hard is to try it.

Don't give up! Pivot and find the niche your product can fit! All kinds of amazing app/product add-ons that NEED to be made. I recommend focusing your efforts on whatever app is 'best' in the same category as your attempts and then trying those apps out and trying to figure out what YOU would pay for, then just pivot your attempts to that and try some google/linkedin marketing. I'll be happy to share, just PM me for my linkedin profile and I'll be happy to maybe share some of my lowly point of view friend. DO NOT GIVE UP!!!

Bet you didn't think you'd be top of hacker news

Define "making it". Do you want a million/billion dollar startup? Or would be a "lifestyle business" enough for you?

I can tell you that I'm pretty happy with my small business selling desktop software to "normies". But if my benchmark was Elon Musk or some VC funded dude having millions at his disposal ... well I'd be miserable, too.

But my benchmark is the small business next door and compared to them I'm doing very well. Heck, I don't need to engage "fellow indie hackers" on "$product hunt" and collect twitter followers because that's completely irrelevant to my bottom line. All I need is a good sales copy and a little SEO.

I don't know you but maybe re-aligning your goals would make you happy?

Do what’s best for you; it’s hard to see other project a false reality about entrepreneurship when you’re doing the work and not achieving what you want.

Don't worry I'm the same way but with 10x your level of failure. I am done with tech and money and every cunt obsessed with any variation of these two things.

The mistake you made was thinking you were going to make free money by click clacking at a keyboard like all these other keyboard warrior stories you read. Don't worry, I made the exact same mistake for 15 years straight. The part we probably missed is being born well connected with family members that can give you $50k on a whim.

No ivy and no connections = no chance. It was designed this way.

We had no chance.

I'll still say don't give up yet. Rest and look at it again. There might be something you ain't seeing yet.

"Human History [...] is the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy." --C. S. Lewis

If viewed in the narrow interpretation that you're presenting it, then sure, trying and failing at startups is "something other than God". Maybe that is his frustration.

But if building a startup is simply part of the process of tested faith through challenges, being stripped of ulterior motives, servant leadership, creating something from nothing, bringing order & structure to chaos, enabling people to feed families, then it's quite on par with discovering who God is.

Work itself is a divine activity given from the very beginning, certainly not meant to be our god but about as divinely predestined as one can get on the list of "things one can be doing". I mean shoot, one of the first tasks was to name things, what else is programming other than naming things?

What type of products? Can you give any examples? If you rather don't publicly (as you created an account for this), my email is in my profile.

Could you show us your products please?

Maybe other indie hackers are not the best audience for your stuff, and you're just digging in the wrong place.

Thank you for sharing this. Don't feel bad for failing after trying everything. I hope you get fully recovered soon, praying for you

Maybe you should see it more as doing things other people need and want to pay you for instead as an more abstract entrepreneurship...

You tried and failed. There are others who dont even try and live with regret. At least you have no regrets about not trying. Take care.

the same dream that pushes you forward, can keep you down. I have felt (and still feel) in a similar way, my approach is to have an "healthy" relationship with my dreams and desires and don't let the lack of results, or just the disappointment of not finding the paradise island I was looking for, put me down. Good luck and don't give up.

The irony that this is perhaps your most popular post and you didn't plug the product, may want to add an edit and mention it?

Please don’t take any offence at this, it’s not meant to offend at all. I just feel like perhaps part of your outlook here may help to explain where you’re currently at.

Firstly, you’ve learned that social media influencing is in essence a MLM scam. Good! A lot of people never realise this and get themselves into incredibly dire situations as a result, so kudos for realising this.

> I tried everything - building an audience, making sure my product actually solved a problem, getting paying customers, and writing high-quality content and contributing to the community. But no matter what I did, I couldn't seem to get anywhere. My efforts were fruitless and I'm tired of trying. I barely had 20 followers, my substack and product blogs didn't get any signups, and while I did get a few upvotes (8) on Product Hunt once, I never had a paid customer. It was as if the world was against me and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't make any progress.

You’ve missed out on one critical ingredient in the above. Luck. A lot of things need to fall together just so in order for a product to gain traction. Broken down these are all fairly logical non-chance related factors, but no-one is realistically able to anticipate the millions of externalities that will play into that ahead of time, so from the perspective of someone trying to get a business off the ground, it is luck. All those factors you talked about in terms of substack and product hunt should be viewed as the cost of getting slightly better odds on your lottery ticket. YCombinator doesn’t expect a single random applicant to become AirBnb, and they have more experience in this than anyone.

You’ve learned that social media is bad for you and that nothing on it is real. This is also good. You can take some time, and if you choose to have another attempt at this later, you’ll have that wisdom to carry with you.

> Don't let your dreams consume you like they did for me

Dreams are fleeting, but they’re still precious. It feels strange to say that as in my 20’s I had a very all-or-nothing view of success, but life happens regardless and what you want to get out of it will change over time. I’m grateful for my lot, and if I should achieve those dreams later then I’ll be grateful for that too, but if it doesn’t happen I really don’t regret the pitfalls along the way. You can’t take any of it with you anyway.

> PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PROTECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH AT ALL COST! Don't make the same mistakes I did and realize that entrepreneurship may not be the path for you. It's okay to admit defeat and move on to something else.

This is the correct answer. Speaking as someone with wild stories that are a little too close to the bone for sharing on the topic of mental health, it really does need to come first. Speaking personally - the costs aren’t obvious, they sneak up on you, and you’re usually the last to see it. Take the win here - learning this lesson while you’re young is very much “the easy way”.

I wish you well and happy to chat if you ever want to reach out.

I wish you all the best for the future and I'm sure you will find satisfaction in whatever path you pursue going forwards.

There is some kind of a signal here. This message got you 373 upvotes in a few hours. Maybe you should do something with this.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=l_F9jxsfGCw

Thank you for sharing what you learned. Take a break, but don't burn any bridges, who know what the future will bring?!

Now I really want to know what you were selling and for how much. I want to know if the product was bad or just unlucky.

A baby learns to just walk in three years. If you want to fly in 3 years, you better do a job. Business is not for you.

My advice, pivot to crypto. If you build anything, literally "anything" of actual substance, you can raise 7 figures easily in the next bull market. I've seen absolute dogsh*t nft projects and projects with barely working landing pages and no users raise millions. If you build an actual working product, then the incentives and grants on the layer 2 chains like Optimism and Arbitrum are there for the taking

It sounds like sound advice to do a crypto pump and dump and get in early for the next rug pull. But I think you have to stress that to do this in a sound way you need to have a team of lawyers and a way to insulate yourself from prosecution, if only an exit strategy to a non-extraditing country. Yeah, this is a good plan.

Look at it this way. You are no SBF in terms of failing, ie it could be worse. Cheer up and know that you tried.

Silicon Valley trains entrepreneurs the way World War I trained infantry. The goal is NOT to make most succeed.

Also, aren't stats something like 1 in 10 startups succeeds? Or one in 100? So you have a long way to go.

I am done as well. Reading the comments here and being downvoted for saying things that are true, the internet is just the worst and social media (yes, HN is social media) is just a bunch of bullies and mob censorship.

I love that wakana's post has this many comments, and it is because it strikes a nerve of truth here at HN. That you all are suckers or just want to be the next authoritarian boss with a yacht.

So long suckers.

When “digital nomad influencers” say it’s easy, they are mostly referring to selling the idea that it’s easy.

Feel free to reach out in person. I'm happy to provide an honest feedback about what you have built.

that's ok I gave up too (after a 6 years on my second company) I get back to a full time job I have more sleep, earn more, travel more and much more relaxed Now if I build something, I do it just for fun without any expectation Maybe in couple years I will try again, maybe not

Sounds like you've worked hard on this. Sorry it's not worked out. I hope you're ok.

What I'd learned from almost 15 years running a "startup" hitting multi-million revenue years for the last 6 of the life of the company, is that there is a preternatural bias against you (not personally, but your small company) for business and academic customers. For individuals, I'd imagine its worse.

This bias makes it very hard to achieve escape velocity, never mind low earth orbit. Even when you show multiple million dollar revenues and good margins, investors will demand more before they commit. Customers will demand you jump through more hoops. And will seek to impose fairly crazy T&C on you.

All while you have a team you are trying to care for, a business you are trying to grow.

It f***g sucks. It is as bad for your mental health as STEM graduate school. I'm 5 years out of my business, which was shot in the head behind the barn by our bank.

I am still not fully recovered from that experience.

The comments in this thread about success is really luck in disguise? Yeah, they are spot on. Vanishingly few entrepreneurs really force their way to success. Most are there at the right time and place, with a product that does 80% of what the customer needs. And the customer need is the driving factor.

Note that the same is true of VCs. Who are, as a collection, mostly dumb money. There are a minute fraction who have any real value.

The point of all of this is, no one has your back but you. So take care of yourself. If something isn't working and you feel yourself slipping down a slope, get out. Your health, mental and physical, is simply not worth it.

Sounds like you ignored Product Market Fit and were building solutions in search of problems.

Hello, I'd would love to talk with you if possible, juanpablosarmi on Twitter. DM open

Giving up is giving up. Failing is continuing. Don't be a chump, don't give up.

I don't really understand why did you expect different result? The vast majority of startups fail, the odds are against you. I could understand trying once, but try two more times and be surprised by result? But maybe there is something wrong with me for not following any influencers and stay down to earth.

Let me just give a few opinions. First, social media is bad for mental health in general. From a business view it’s a marketing tool - use it as such and don’t follow anyone - why waste time reading stuff there anyway? As a founder you must run a business. A business is meant for earning money, not for fulfilling a dream. All the shiny posts about how successful a startup is, is just marketing. Smoke and whistles. It should attract the reader into buying the product or service. Your failure and bad feelings are you not realizing you still have a consumers mindset not that of a business man. Also there are endless business ideas and as such an idea has zero value. Execution is what adds value. Ideas themselves are worthless. As soon as you understand that a business is just about money, and you accept that cold reality of capitalism, the sooner you will find ways to success. Luck plays a role, too. But you need to be in places around people where opportunities are plenty. Successful businesses are built around successful people and their networks! Not social media networks!

While reading this thread, I had the illusion that this was posted by me.

I'm a 27 year old nobody, but maybe I can give you a different perspective on things...

Whatever you read online often has this goal: extract time and money out of you. So, whatever you expose yourself to online may skew the perspective on things for some purpose.

A job however, is a balancing act between time, skill and money. The purpose is to satisfy your hierarchy of needs. A company is the same but with more moving parts, but the reality is often different from what is being said. So, in such an environment, I chose to never attach a deeper meaning to it - there is nothing special to it, unless I believe in it. I don't base my identity around any economic output, numbers or whatever my job title is at the moment. Running a startup would just mean more attachment to one thing.

You have been sold on an idea and emotion, that has little basis in reality. This dissonance ripples through your entire being and it's taking a toll on you. A lot of people failed before you and you never hear from them. This experience however is necessary to shift your perception towards what is real.

Having this detachment from what the consensus is, gives you the ability to see the things the way they are. You won't be stressed out when things go wrong, because your definition of wrong stops adapting. A startup ceases to be a vessel to be successful, because the very definition of successful stays within your intention and not what the world seems to define as successful.

By getting rid of this, you can focus on whats real and what matters. You move out of your head and start observing and acting in the real world. You don't think of what should be - skewed by perception, but what could be - by letting your experience of life take over. This is the basis of creating things in my opinion.

You won't be paralyzed by the things that people tell you should be right (like ticking off a checklist to build an audience for an ROI), but rather what makes the most amount of sense from your POV.

I take things very slowly. As a developer I used to do very complicated things as fast as possible, but over time I embraced simplicity and balance over everything.

Some things are out of your control and it's important to see when your area of influence stops and when you are being sold an idea that plays with that perception of reality.

I managed to rest in myself and don't care "if I make it". My definition of "making it" is a roof over my head, food on the table, hygiene, transportation, physical activity, social interaction and time for myself.

My value system is true or false, not a range between 0 and infinite. If a car gets me to a place for example, it does what its expected to do, I don't believe in the bells and whistles I'm being presented. So my intention is to keep this car driving and not how this car compares or relates to anything. It is a tool and stays a tool. Success in my books starts with a true in it's foundation and not what the treadmill of 10, 50 or 100 in all it's facets sums up to, if you know what I mean. Realizing this gave me a different perspective on dreams. I saw how some dreams were never mine to begin with.

Whether I will achieve something the world tells me is successful now or in 10 years or if at all ultimately doesn't matter. I'm in for the experience and let nature unfold. I do what works out for me.

When you layer this sense of security up, you can start replacing layers by moving or switching jobs or trying to launch a company, because your life won't fall apart and you have this eternal rest and trust in yourself. No idea can consume you or act on different layers. You can still get a good nights rest, because things stay where they are.

I hope I could explain my perspective and give some insights...

Can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen.

Guessing you're younger than 30.

Just do something for yourself, something that feels right and useful.

you might have skipped the most important step, being born in a well connected rich family that can give you free advertising for your products. This really boosts your luck!

That is the true secret.

Giving up is not an option find you and get your life back.

Probably you forgot the most important part. Have rich parents.

building startup = testing a new idea / market / product from 0

digital nomad = selling a common service - probably cheaper since you can work remotely from cheaper countries

Thank you for fixing our survivorship bias.

The SaaS age is over. It's biotech's turn now.

What do people think of Alex Hormozi in this regard?

What did you build?

After reading this I really like to know as well!

message to OP: you see? All you had to do is create some drama and now people are interested in you :)

Why don't you just win? Is there really any other option than winning? No. There isn't. Once you understand— and know— this then you won't be sad anymore.

I'd be happy to help you win!

can you please share links to your projects?

Curious to know what you have been building?

Do you have the mental support you need?

19 of 20 startups "fail." Meaning they don't exit for huge valuations. Go look at many of the "successes" and the founders had a deep safety net. Meaning they could afford it. Access to affordable capital and luck. Seriously. Don't be down on yourself. Did you learn? Probably. Did you make deep friendships along the way? Probably. Those count too. Don't let hyper-capitalism define "success" for you.

Entrepreneurship is mostly sales.

you should have associated yourself with other people rather than going solo all this time.

TL;DR

> constant stream of digital nomad influencers on Twitter who sell extremely distorted, rosy, and often times false dreams to indie entrepreneurs like myself. They make it seem like building a successful startup is easy and anyone can do it with the right mindset and a few key tips. But the reality is that it's not that simple. It's fucking hard and it takes more than just a positive attitude to make it.

It takes 10 years until success

What have you been building?

Troll

What's your startup?

I hope you're ok.

indie entrepreneurs?? this is not an hobby! either you are all in or do something else! prepare to fail! you should fail, if you are not failing you are not pushing yourself enough, and it's painful for everyone.

I saw the evolution from a tiny 3 people company to a 150+ and growing, my boss and friend went from one struggle to another, as elon musk put "it's like staring into the abyss while eating glass". It's that hard and gets emotional right away.

indie entrepreneurs? influencers? really? it's an insult to everyone that put their soul into it, it makes my blood boil. There is no half measure, if you think this way you won't succeed.

Lmao

A-->B

Just want to chime in as someone who lived as a "digital nomad" overseas for about a decade in the early 2000s before that was a fad - and never touted it: the influencers ruined it. Along with all the people trying to do the same thing. The whole point was to get away from the world of high school type popularity bullshit and go experience the world and other cultures long term, on their own terms. That's exactly the opposite of the package being sold by influencers.

But also, although I had two major years-long, difficult and ultimately failed startup ventures of my own during that time period, they were side projects and never what paid the bills.

So I'll let you in on what I see as the two big cons being sold to Gen Z:

1. Your startup will take off and be what establishes you. No. Startups are what you do in your spare time on the long chance that one of them hits and gets you to fuck you money. They only succeed if you already have connections from regular business, unless you're incredibly lucky and go viral for reasons no one can predict.

2. Degrees and certifications followed by 9-5 or 8-10 hours as an engineer will get you that freedom. They will not.

What paid for my travel and for my house was something that is not sold at all on social media, and barely mentioned on HN. It was working as an independent contractor, coding and managing systems for small to midsized businesses. Shop owners. But not ANY shop. Only the ones where I thought they had a real chance of taking off. And then, at times, accepting some early equity as pay but only if I believed in it. At other times, demanding top dollar. And always working alone. Never under a boss, and never dealing with anyone lower than a CEO.

I did not have a successful startup, and maybe I never will - although I still code for fun a lot, and who knows. But I took or turned down projects based on how I wanted to shape my career, and made myself indispensable and reliable at all hours for the clients I took, even if I was halfway around the world in a van on solar power. People like that are hard to find for a small business and eventually they rely on you.

If I were in your shoes I would just print a business card and go to where people with growing small businesses hang out... with the idea of finding the next one that you can help grow, of which you will ultimately be CTO along with investments in other things, and time to pursue your own startups should you want to shoot the moon for that once-in-a-lifetime money.

But the way it's sold these days reminds me of my little brother who graduated with a sociology degree and couldn't find a job. Working a regular job like retail was below him... but he spent years doing it having a grudge. Whereas I just didn't go to college, worked at a mall kiosk and learned to hack... and picked up my first major clients right there at the mall just by throwing ideas at them.

[edit] I'd also like to add that I've never had an account on Instagram or Facebook, and the idea of trying to monetize a lifestyle - even one I actually had, let alone one I was just faking to gain followers - has always been revolting to me. But mainly for the same reason all self-help guruism is revolting, namely, if a person knows how to be as successful as they claim, they wouldn't need to sell the secret. Anyone who sells a supposed secret is therefore just cynically taking advantage of gullible people, which besides being unethical, doesn't count as an actual accomplishment.

How did you check or determine who would be successful? These are retail SMBs?

My criteria were all based on the ways the business owners behaved in initial consultations. I'd break them down as follows:

- Do they have a clear roadmap for the custom software and/or website, with reasonable expectations as to features and price, performance and value for their business?

- Can they communicate their business logic in a way that I can translate into software that will help their productivity, and shows they understand the potential limitations or even drawbacks to automating existing manual processes?

- Do they pay on time? (I always begin by billing hourly).

- Are they personable and involved with the employees and the business on a day to day basis?

- Do they have a roadmap for growth that they're willing to share for the sake of future-proofing the systems I'll be engineering for them?

Almost all the work that falls into my net starts with web deaign. And I hate doing web design, so my initial inclination is to set a very high price and try to refer them to companies that can assemble a template store or a turn-key solution. My go-to response to new clients is that I'm too busy but I'm happy to look at their current stack and give them my 2p of advice for free. 90% I will not take as clients. There had to be something ineffable beyond the above requirements.

That said, I'm able to turn down work because I've been established long enough and have enough retainers to not need new clients. In earlier days I lowered my standards when I needed money. But I eventually fired a lot of clients who didn't meet the above criteria.

As to how I got the business in the first place, it's always been word of mouth. Additionally, I get calls out of the blue every couple months from people who've seen work I've done - I usually sign websites somewhere in the fine print.

To your question, yes, this is mostly retail and service stuff. One current client is a small law firm. A couple are food industry - a sushi manufacturer for markets, a local ice cream truck that turned into a national brand. One little shop in the pet industry that became a regional name.

Basically I just became the person that people who've worked with recommended to others because I was serious, forthright about what to expect, and diligent. And none of that was what I wanted to do with my life. That just pays the bills, and I'm happy it gives me the time to work on my own crazy projects.

True

You’re conflating your “entrepreneurship dream” with a very very small subset of entrepreneurs (indie hacker digital nomads). Entrepreneurs start corner shops. Sell physical products, digital products, provide services, etc. the number who build a SaaS alone and travel while doing it is very small.

Also - in regards to the indie hacker space there are important things to watch out for:

- Constant bragging about revenue but no talk of margin/profit.

- Lots of talk that the product would still be a success without the persons huge Twitter following.

- Lots of bragging about success that, when you actually look into it, is $1000MRR. That’s great but these people give off the impression that they are much more successful than that.

Finally, you have to love entrepreneurship because it fits your personality. The risk taking necessary isn’t for everyone (rightly so) and for some people a stable career is much more fulfilling. You sound like you want to be an entrepreneur because of the lifestyle you see from these digital nomads but maybe the reality of it (risk, instability, failure) isn’t actually what you want.

I think what matter most is the product. If the product already exist, the chance of success will be low especially if there are top companies in the competition. I think trying multiple time is great, chances of failure will always be higher than success but we gonna keep moving. Keep improving, learn SEO e.t.c Fund is really important, but one can always start small. I wish all indie entrepreneur like me well, we not gonna give up.

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