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Comment by philippz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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