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Comment by code_duck | Hacker News Reader

Sure, one could say the same about artists, restaurants, musical projects, or tech blogs. A high level of success is only achieved by a small fraction of projects, which is somewhat mandatory as there is not room for every endeavor to be a smash hit.

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And lots of things deliver value and bless people along the way. Even a restaurant that eventually "fails" still employs staff, feeds patrons, purchases food from suppliers, and all the rest of it.

A thing doesn't have to achieve a shoot-the-moon ending in order to be a non-failure.

Indeed, that’s what I think about ideas like “Twitter wasn’t profitable” or “the post office loses money”.

The post office losing money is especially ludicrous because the post office is not a business— it's a public service. It should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds that the post office is financed from the general tax base, same as libraries, highways, parks, defense, airline bailouts, and all the rest of it. All of these are run at a loss because it's worthwhile living in a society that enjoys the benefits they provide.

(And in the particular case of the USPS, it's literally enshrined in the constitution because it was seen as a pillar of democracy to be able to securely communicate with others over long distances.)

> It should be obvious to anyone who thinks about it for two seconds that the post office is financed from the general tax base

This is not true in the US, the post office budget is separate and not subsidized by taxes.

Moreover success depends on factors that may be tangential to the quality of the project. I have had more Github stars from low-quality "throw over the wall" projects that just happened to use whatever framework/language was cool at the time, as opposed to projects that I have put more effort into but used more "boring" technologies. As with a startup, if you catch the wave at the right time, you can succeed with a relatively low quality/effort project.

But that depends on what counts as "success". If you are looking at just money or Github stars (or whatever the equivalent is in art or music) then that's one measure, but success could mean learning, personal satisfaction, something that helped or inspired someone else, the praise of a few people you look up to, or a job opportunity.

Even a gym subscription is a startup that will probably fail.

Almost everything new is hard.

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