Startups are Hard | Hacker News Reader

Startups are Hard

robertsaric.com

33 pointsaminbandali11 comments

A nice blog post by Robert Saric about startups.

"It has been nearly 4 years since we started the journey as independent operators of a business. Meaning that we started from nothing, and our only sources of income came from the value we generated for clients. We ventured into the business world as 3 software entrepreneurs, who had experience working with companies and building things, and now we’re a team of 8."...

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Our startup is trying to weigh the balance between professional services and developing a product. It's a tricky dance and I've been on both sides of it before. Initially your product isn't great, so you focus heavily on customer service. The trap here is clearly that if you're not making your product more appealing to a wider market, you're going to get stuck forever with a small set of customers. Alternatively if you're not engaging with your initial clients and are developing in a vacuum, your product is going to stink because most likely no one is going to want it.

That's ABSOLUTELY true! That's the trickiest part and it's one of our challenges in our startup. It's hard to keep the balance when you want to build your own product, but also got to make some money while your product hasn't reached your desired stage.

If they weren't hard everyone would be doing it - but knowing that the risk is worth the reward at the end (both money and the idea of success) definitely makes the struggles and years without sleep worth it.

It is a known fact that starting a small business is hard. But we still need to be convinced that a start up is hard aswell

Startup == Small business

note that there are only 2 equal signs

Startup is pregnancy ! More here http://priyankasriraghavan.blogspot.in/2012/11/what-it-means...

Interesting metaphor :) thanks for sharing!

I really like what you have said about enjoying the journey :)

Yeah I agree as well. To me, that's the most important thing. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, then what's the point?!

Absolutely. Furthermore, though I hope will never loose self-motivation, I have realized, that it is really easy to be constantly tired. There is always next big something to catch up. That's why it is sooo important to really enjoy the big picture of what one is doing.

It's true! I hope you (and all of us) always love what we do and keep the self-motivation safe with us. Wish you good luck with your business whatever you do and wherever you are :)

Thanks! Same to you :)))

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