17 Year Old Developer Goes Up Against 19/yo with $1.1 Million
psocha.co.uk
psocha.co.uk
> While I’m very excited for Gumroad, as someone who was just about to launch their startup, from a business point of view this is pretty bad. Had we gone with launched as a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) back in November as planned, things would have been much better, but we didn’t. Now I see why everyone in the startup world seems to be saying MVP in every second sentence; possibly because it’s damn well important getting your product out there.
This is just not true. Sahil (of Gumroad) is a very skilled person who has proven himself and has a lot of connections, his company (Gumroad) has been around since before November (in fact it's 11 months old now...) and this is such a cop out. He is not going to beat you because he has investment, he's going to beat you if his product is better than yours. You're also competing against kout (http://www.kout.me/) and I'm sure there are others I don't know about. The fact that Sahil launched Gumroad in a weekend and you've taken over 6 months should show you that he is not just some dumb kid who got lucky, he's someone good at what he does.
If anything this is a fucking wonderful thing for you, your idea has been validated and investors think there is money in the product.
If you're going to quit, quit, but don't blame the success of Gumroad for it, that's just a cop out. Oh and stop mentioning your age, it's irrelevant. Such a terrible link-bait title...
Instead, he was honest about why a well funded competitor is a daunting prospect to someone who's prelaunch, and went on to say that that's not a reason to quit. On the whole, a pretty admirable post.
Read the damned post before you spew this self-righteous nonsense.
And I'm 36 and so much more mature. So there... ;-)
By the way, I am EXTREMELY impressed with what gumroad has been able to do. He announced it on HN a few weeks after I had started development of mine. While I do see it as a competitor, I also see companies like Digital River as competitors and love the fact that there are people making it easier for non-techies to sell things on the web.
For me, I am glad that he vented because I would not have heard of Propelly otherwise. :)
To the author: Keep up the good work, kid. Starting a business is rough, and sometimes you strike out right out of the gate--happened to my first company.
Get up, dust off, and keep going--and don't waste your time or ours by bringing up your age, because it doesn't matter.
Sorry about the landing page too, you should be seeing the site but we're holding back the launch just a few more short days.
Hey, why not launch now? You've already waited this long, and you've got HN's attention. You aren't going to do any harm you can't fix with good customer support in the next few weeks.
Nowhere did he say Sahil isn't skilled. Now, I've spoken to Sahil before and he really is a really impressive person but putting that aside, I don't think building a product in a weekend automatically makes the builder skilled (though in Gumroad's case, yeah, he is skilled). You can launch crap in a day just the same as you can in 10 years. Irrelevant.
I think you underestimate the power of investment too. A better product doesn't always mean success. To me that idea is a myth in the same family of the whole American Dream, you can do anything if you work hard idea. A better product is certainly an advantage but perception counts far more than reality and $1M can buy you a really valuable perception. That $1M gives Gumroad credibility and press. Meanwhile, this 17-year-old nobody could be on to something far better but nobody cares... yet.
He's not saying he's quitting, just that he feels like quitting. The really awesome thing about this is that while everyone here is piling on this kid he just helped himself out. Maybe he did use a link-baity title but it sure worked. He may get overly critical comments here but I know word will spread to places online where the people won't have the same mindset as we do over here and when this story reaches those places he's going to get a lot of positive attention instead. I like this kid, he's going to do well. And mentioning his age was smart, not irrelevant. If he were 30 this wouldn't even get posted but he's 17 and everyone wants to root for the young underdog and read his 1 in a million success story. This is really really sneakily smart of him. I think he knows exactly what he's doing. Lay off the guy.
"When you give us content ("User Content"), you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sub-licensable (through multiple tiers) right to exercise any and all copyright, trademark, publicity, and database rights (but no other rights) you have in the User Content, in any media known now or in the future."
What you upload is owned by you, you made it and your rightfully own it- why shouldn't you?
In effect, we're just an online shop for digital goods. An easy online file payment gateway :)
It was cute at first, but now I only cringe whenever I see a title like this. Tech blogs do it, news sites do it, and as we can see even the teenagers themselves do it. It's pure link bait.
As said in another comment here, it's irrelevant. Almost every single young entrepreneur's website I see puts their age to the very forefront. "Look at me! I'm only this age! Here's my startup!" (which, a lot of the time, turns out to be nothing but a LaunchRock page).
An associate of mine is the about the same age as these teenagers, but is the complete opposite. He runs numerous 'web startups' and, more importantly, actually generates revenue (high seven figures annually). Investors would fall over themselves to invest. Tech blogs would salivate at his story. But he stays away from that.
The thing is, there are countless young founders like this. Generating huge profits, making big VC deals behind the scenes, working away under the radar. Don't be fooled by the way tech blogs and news outlets try to make it seem so unique.
Disregard your age. Ship a real product. Get users. Generate revenue.
Playing devils advocate, if it gets you users, press, etc why not? I'm not using it in this circumstance but if you want to get TechCrunched, have a great product your age will help, why not use it?
The press always needs a story, every blogpost has a story, it may not be age it may be funding or the fact you worked for Google or though of it on a mountain, regardless every tech blogpost has a story not just 'this product has launched'. Blame journalism, not the people conforming to it.
I'm mostly referring to the young founders' perspectives. Many of them get a false sense of accomplishment and specialness by building a half decent prototype just because of their age, and don't understand how beneficial it is to have killer execution. They often see getting TechCrunched as an end goal, instead of gaining true traction and building a real business.
Then again this is the same for anything. People on reality tv, competitions, etc
I look at this as even more validation for my payments startup http://merchee.com, which has similar basic functionality to GumRoad, but focuses on subscription billing, offers affiliate marketing and checkout pages that match your website.
A bunch of really smart people, who see a lot of different products, teams, deals- They are betting that there is a market that will deliver ROI for innovation in the payments space, and they're putting their money behind Sahil, who has done a great job earning their backing. Please consider, he hasn't come out of no where, this isn't a sudden "overnight success". Even more validating is that lot of seasoned investors are doubling down on innovations in the payments space- look at stripe's 1st and 2nd round of funding for example (now with a valuation of $100 Million!).
Your competitor's ability to gain market adoption, traction and to raise funds should motivate you to raise the bar and build a great product, now that you "know" that it's a market that can reward your efforts.
I felt that gumroad funding was more for Sahil's credentials and than for gumroad itself, so please take that into account.
Indeed he is, however both myself and my partner are from the UK. To some extent I believe this is a great opportunity since the London tech scene is progressively getting bigger and it gives us a chance to grow with it. Having someone such as Sahil of similar age and ability to look up to is something invaluable and quite honestly very encouraging.
Can anyone just throw up a link to an imaginary "product" and watch the $$$ roll in while delivering nothing?
Keep working on this or other ideas and don't blame your lack of success on external factors it is self defeating. First to market historically has almost always lost, all about how execute it's a long long race to the top and when you get there, better not slow down. Google wasn't first, facebook wasn't first, apple is never first.
Good luck.
Additionally both myself and my partner have learnt a lot along the way, for instance we now have one designer we can rely on to get the job well done and on time. Our previous one disappeared for a month on holiday without warning and I admit, we waited too long before deciding to move on and find a new designer. Little niggles such as this slowly but surely kept pushing back our deadline.
We've had users persistently asking us when are we going to launch so you're not the first, nor the last. Thanks for your interest however :)
I hope this answerers your question.
However, if I were you I wouldn't make a big deal about your age & lack of funding.
As a potential buyer, I'm not comfortable with giving my credit card details to a 17yo kid. Especially as the problem space is such that it's really easy to get started but pretty hard to get right..
If you have any other questions regarding how we manage payments/downloads we'd be happy to answer them: hello [at] propelly.com