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Comment by czue | Hacker News Reader

Here's an off-the-cuff summary:

First you have to make space in your life for it. You need long blocks of time for deep work.

The first idea you pick is unlikely to work, so pick something and start moving. Many of the best products come out of working on something else.

When building, optimize for speed. Try to get something out in the world as quickly as possible and iterate from there.

Pick a tech stack you're familiar with, that you'll be fastest in.

Try to spend half your time on marketing/sales, even if you hate it.

The most important skill you can have is resiliance. Not giving up is the best path to success. This is hard because there is so much uncertainty in this career path.

It's worth it! The autonomy and freedom are unmatched by any other career.

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This is not really passive income. What he's describing is running your own one-person business. That's about as far from passive as you can get.

Actual passive income is living off the returns and royalties from assets, doing nothing but managing those assets (or maybe not even doing that).

But you have to work to get those assets, just like building a website

OK, but TFA is about the work part, not the passive part, despite the title. Even having a “portfolio of revenue generating products” will require work to maintain. Maybe full time or more so, depending on if you used log4j or an SSL cert from a provider that screwed things up, say. Or built on a fickle platform like reddit, twitter or Apple that changes the fundamental rules every so often. Just because you don’t have a boss that will fire you for not waking up for on call during an outage, doesn’t mean that outages won’t happen or need to be fixed.

It reminds me of people that consider buying a second home and rent out the old one to gain “passive income”, not realizing how much work it can be to be a good landlord.

I feel like "passive" income is anything that takes under 10 hours a week once it's up and running. There's rarely any opportunity that can be considered passive if your definition is 0 work ever once it's going. The only thing that [might] fit into that slot is investment dividends.

I don’t know if it’s 0 for me, but it’s definitely way less than 10 hours per week.

I have ETFs and a HYSA that I basically never look at. That’s passive.

yeah I guess if passive means no ongoing work (beyond what it took to get them in the first place) then you're right. OP is playing a bit loose with the definition if that's what it's supposed to mean.

Good summary. I've landed on all of the above with my own projects, from a mix of experience, reading, and reason. Hardest for me has been making time between family, work, and other activities that are important for me.

Unlike when I was younger I can't just stay up coding until 3AM anymore. In fact I find myself without the mental energy after work that I want to put into my projects, so evenings are out completely for me.

So instead I wake up at 5AM and put myself into it before work. It was a big adjustment, but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project? Now it's a pretty energizing way to start the day.

Take the warm blankets into the office with you

> but all I needed to do while acclimating to that schedule was ask myself each morning which I wanted more: warm blankets or a successful project?

I choose warm blankets lying next to my warm wife where my heat and shelter is paid by exchanging my labor for money 40 hours a week, paid time off, paid health care, etc

In other words, it’s the exact same bland, generic, worthless advice parroted by every grifter selling you the dream of financial independence via passive income.

And if you fail, it’s your own fault, you just didn’t want it enough, you didn’t do the necessary sacrifices.

The advice (in the post you're replying to) isn't bad. But you can do it all, and still not have lightning strike.

I certainly do not think is good. I won’t say I’ve seen destroyed lives because of it, but pretty much miserable in comparison to what it had been if not followed the advice. It is just bot for anyone, and just too often fails.

And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money).

Can we agree that it is, at core, gambling? Like spending all your disposable income on lottery tickets?

> And I've seen people succeed (admittedly by spending every spare minute devoting themselves to the pursuit of money).

Is that what you call success?

It was for him. It wouldn't have been for me, hence the caveat.

Different people have different goals.

> Can we agree that it is, at core, gambling? Like spending all your disposable income on lottery tickets?

Yes. Can we also agree that advising people to spend all of their disposable income on gambling is bad advice to make money? I think you’re agreeing with the post you replied to.

I think, if someone's going to gamble anyway, gambling competently is better than gambling poorly. (Am I stretching this analogy too far?) Entrepreneurship may not be for you (or me), but there are people who find it a deeply satisfying path to walk. If they're going to do that, they should at least do it with the best possible odds of success.

> The advice (in the post you're replying to) isn't bad.

I didn’t call it bad, I called it bland, generic, and worthless. Like telling people they should eat healthily and exercise. It’s not wrong or bad, but it’s also not something you haven’t heard hundreds of times before and doesn’t really help you much.

Well, when you put it like that, it sounds pretty fluffy.

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