They say I make $45K/month just by pure luck and just by posting my MRR on X
twitter.com
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You can do all that and fail. It's true. That's how it works. But about the most pathetic thing to see is someone unsuccessful put down another person's success as just luck. You just know the guy saying it's luck is the excuse maker, the guy who would have succeeded if not for someone, the unaccepted genius misunderstood despite his mastery of comments about how Google always kills projects.
And the worst part of it all is that if you read this guy's blog post, you don't get a feeling of "Wow, he really just cracked it!". I got a feeling of "Bloody hell, mate! That's an absolutely tremendous amount of work." Not only did it not seem easy or lucky, but it felt like something I could never do myself. It's so hard, I originally shared it with a friend to show him how hard it is.
I do have to credit him with turning this into another content marketing journey, though. Clever ;)
I also think this kind of content marketing is effective largely because it is designed to rile people up.
Maybe we should have said he wasn’t unlucky instead?
Basically just getting to live in a western/first world democracy already makes you luckier then most people on the planet.
Like there are billionaires in Vietnam who made their money while living there and still live there. There is no such thing in North Korea for example. There is also enough law/policing to make running a business possible (some random thug with an AK won’t show up tomorrow to take your business as their own)
edit: Also note that I said living not born in a democratic/western country. The moment you get into such a country (with a visa that allows you to work or a citizenship) the amount of opportunities available for you skyrockets no matter what country you were from originally. Having those opportunities available for you is what makes one "lucky". Though you still have to work hard to get any benefit out of them.
But if he is still living in Vietnam then he probably did work harder on it then someone who did the same in the west.
Basically luck alone won't get you much (outside of winning the lottery) but neither will only hard work. You need both.
> Having those opportunities available for you is what makes one "lucky".
Only a small percentage of people make $45k/month even in the United States.
> like there are billionaires in Vietnam who made their money while living there and still live there. There is no such thing in North Korea for example
There are billionaires in hundreds of country. It’s disingenuous to cherry-pick North Korea and argue on the semantics of “lucky”.
I looked up Vietnam’s billionaires list. Half of them have ties to Moscow. It’s pretty obvious they have political ties. It’s not relevant to comparing the meritocracy in those echelons with a bootstrapped indie hacker
> some random thug with an AK won’t show up tomorrow to take your business as their own
Yes, because the socialist party has a monopoly on violence and guns. Nonetheless, I’ve seen some street thugs chase each other on motorcycle with machetes in this decade. I’ve also seen the cops come to a small shop my uncle owned to collect protection money. They told him that their daughter's cellphone was broken and gave him an address to another cellphone shop, even though he was running a cellphone shop himself. If you don’t pay, they’ll take your customers for a ride around the block.
My family is well connected in Vietnam, and I don't think you know what you're talking about. You're either a traveler who spent a few months in Southeast Asia, or someone living in Vietnam brainwashed by the government. I am familiar with how things work for the elite in Vietnam, and it's not relevant to discuss billionaires versus social mobility for most of the populace here. At one point, the richest family in Vietnam at the time was our next door neighbor. My siblings and I are legally barred from holding any executive position or government positions for political reasons. My cousins, however, are fine, and one them owns a zoo with a bear. My family is also well connected politically. I’m talking the people who run the largest city. Last week I was considering a trip to Vietnam, and realized I had to apply for a visa. My mom told me she just needs to make a call and they’ll escort me right through. The management at the airport will probably have my latte prepared for me, too. There are completely different set of rules for everyone else.
The point is that Vietnam is no where close to this free and fair country you’re making it out to be. 95%+ of university grads won’t have spare income to be able to afford a trip to the United States in the next decade of working. Just because it's not Somalia doesn't mean the author was "lucky". His success from Vietnam can only be attributed to creating something people pay for, and not because they have to.
Remember Flappy Bird? Even people in the West was impressed by how lucrative the ad revenue us. Ever wonder why the developed decided to delete in overnight? The answer is obvious for people who actually live in Vietnam, but you're not going to find anything about in the Vietnamese press, and the Western press didn't know enough to speculate.
Developer claims it was because it was addictive and not good for people. The Media, which of course is state-ran, claims is was because of intellectual property legal reasons. "Lawyers in Vietnam" denied that it was related to internet censorship.
He was making $50k a revenue a day and like most businesses in China and Vietnam, not formally paying taxes. Even in Japan, most small businesses are not correctly paying taxes.
The fact that the game itself is a rip-off makes it unlikely that the developer has the highest standard of ethics. Regarding intellectual property, even the government was found to be using bootlegged versions of Windows. Before companies like Adobe realized they needed to move to a SaaS model, there were entire streets selling cracked version of software like Photoshop for 50 cents a pop. Same with Playstation games. Nintendo used hardware medium to make the economics of bootlegging harder, but it was much easier to burn CDs. You simply couldn't buy authentic versions of Playstation games if you wanted to.
I don't think the government had any clue on how to regulate, control, and tax digital services. Regardless, it is guaranteed that government officials paid the developer a visit that day and brought him back to the police office in a police truck. Somebody there would have hassled him for money. Whether he paid or not, there will just be more vultures coming and will just leave him the leftovers. He probably just rage quit instead of having them have most of the pie. This shouldn't be a surprising for a communist regime that a generation ago seized tens of thousands of landlord's land [1], made their children bury them alive, while declaring how they've stolen from the people. Some of the older party members there right now who are eating with Salt Bae [2] were probably there torturing [3] the 80,000 missing American POWs
[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/2756362
[2] https://www.independent.co.uk/asia/southeast-asia/vietnam-ja...
How is this not seen as the height of cringe?
That said, in his case, there's a few repeat accomplishments. More than once he thought of a product, built it, and seem to have gotten traction with consumers.
This is different from say Jeff Bezos, and how he famously said he doesn't think he could make it again, because he was kind of at the right time, right place. And he wouldn't know what in the current time and place would be the next Amazon.
But in OPs case, he seem to be able to replicate these small-ish but still successful products. So at the very least he's got a knack for good ideas, identifying products that don't have a good offering, and building them quickly to a point that people will pay for them. That takes some talent, and hard work to accomplish.
But for smaller successes, like building a profitable lifestyle business, I’d argue it requires much less luck (still needed regardless).
Also there are 4 kinds of luck:
- Pure luck: out of our control. This is where most people referring to
- Luck from motion: hustling, grinding, increase luck surface area. This is where most founders find their “luck” comes from
- Luck from preparation
- Luck from uniqueness
Thiên Thời = being in the right time, right place, right era. As Warren Buffett said, his skills in resource allocation would have been irrelevant if he was born during the Hunter-Gatherer period. Who knows what us code monkeys would be doing just a few decades ago when trading was done on the trading pits of Wall Street rather then electronic trading.
địa Lợi = Position and having an edge
Nhân Hòa = being in harmony (with other people)
The people aspiring for non-Mega success can at least cultivate the last two.
Most people should be thinking about that random day where you'll meet someone who works at your dream company, or an investor, at a party. It will happen once or twice in your life. If it happens tomorrow, are you going to be able to make the best of it?