Ask HN: How Do You Know When It's Time to Give Up? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How Do You Know When It's Time to Give Up?

8 pointszxlk21e16 comments

I really enjoy the building phase. Development and solving problems are my passion... but my projects tend to never take hold and sit stagnant with <10 visits a day for months after the initial 'i made this' plea to folks/sites/forums.

At what point do you call it quits on projects and hang them up, let the domains expire, etc?

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How educated is the market on the problem you are trying to solve? How tied down is the market to their current solution? Does your product have sufficient value to justify switching costs?

Assuming your product actually is better than what's already out there, it is up to you to figure out how to reduce friction for your potential customers. Have you reduced your signup flow to the least amount of pages and fields required? Are you able to showcase the value of the product even before they sign up? Are current customers able to easily share the product with others in a way that's also valuable to them?

A lot of this stuff sounds simple but many products don't get it right since some successful products get by without addressing it.

Taking the marketplace project: a marketplace is probably only as good as it's contents. Liquidity is the determining factor... and it's a chicken and egg scenario. So maybe that venture would fail that test from the start. You can be better with technology but the intrinsic value wasn't raised so maybe it's a fail.

I created http://dogehold.com/ out of interest in crypto and the lack of a good escrow system for Dogecoin. However, after the first few transactions I realized I wasn't actually interested in maintaining it as a business.

One seller had an issue due to a bug in DogeAPI, and given that my reaction was "Ugh, I don't have time to deal with this nonsense", I realized I didn't have the passion for it that I thought I would.

It was a really fun project, I had a blast building it and playing with Redis, but I knew within the first week of its release that it wasn't something I wanted to sustain.

I struggle with the same issue. I've shifted my thinking quite a bit and now think of it as just solving a different problem.

Say my goal is to write code 6 hours a day with headphones on. In order to do that, I need people to pay me to use what I'm building.

So the problem to solve has become "how to get people to pay for my service/product."

Projects die all of the time because of bad market fit. Less likely do they die because they were built poorly.

I am having a hard time following your logic. If you wanted people to pay you 6 hours a day to write code, then I am sure you could get great pay working as a programmer.

I think the better question to ask is, "What problem am I solving for my [potential] customers that is worth them paying for it?" (rather than "how do I get them to pay?" The former is a more sustainable business philosophy)

And I am pretty sure market fit and quality of the product are not mutually exclusive. They go hand in hand.

I think we are in agreement. I am interpreting OPs problem as "I love developing code but my projects don't go anywhere." My answer is to switch from writing code to solving the trouble problem, which is "how to find customers for my project."

Also, I've worked for many companies that had shitty code but lots of revenue.

You are correct. That puts it succinctly - I like making things, but I suck at choosing what to make (or selling what I make). Maybe they are the same thing.

How saturated are the markets you are trying to enter? You're not going to invent a better search engine as a side project (without a ton of luck and an amazing idea/staff/developer/perfect execution).

Do you receive feedback for these projects?

Do you listen to your feedback and pivot when necessary?

If the idea is good and the site is made, then it should be just marketing and appealing to customers needs.

The visits for one specific project were in the tens of thousands over the course of a few months after 'launch'. Feedback was numbered in the tens at most and mostly things like 'cool site!' 'cool idea!' or 'i cant find this specific product'

The site looked promising but noone comes back to check things and of the initial rush of users, a decent % signed up but did not participate in any transactions.

My first question is asking about your competitors. If I want a company to provide the service you offer, can I find an established one with a quick search on Google? Do you rank well on search engines?

If I'm a customer then I'm going to look for the best product to provide the service, some people will base it on cost depending on the service.

Keep in touch with your potential customers. Reach out and say that your site is new and you'd like to know what they think and maybe even be as bold as to ask why they did or didn't purchase from you and if they purchased from a competitor.

Those questions were asked and it came down to the fact that it was a collectibles marketplace and the specific things they were looking for were not available or not an attractive price. There is also the trust issue... many seem to rather want to use ebay.

So long as you're alive-- there's still hope. If you read the bios of great inventors, tinkerers, and founders-- all of them faced failures, road-blocks, and years of struggle. Areas to explore: Can you persist? Have you ever achieved anything in your life that required years of disciplined effort to complete?

What kind of project(s) are you building? Do they really make people's lives better, easier, etc.?

The last couple have been collectibles marketplaces and quantified self tracking platforms. I think that is my main thesis -- solving problems/making things easier for people through technology, especially in markets where they are not taking advantage of technology much.

Not to be a dick, but that's not really a thesis: there's nothing in need of being proven or disproven. We all know that technology can make things easier for people, and that some industries don't use it much.

Think a little bit more about your own personal reasons for doing something. That's where you'll find a good reason to keep going or not.

Maybe the issue is that markets that don't take advantage of technology much will be slow to adopt new technology (seems like that would be the reason why they have not taken advantage of technology in the first place).

Self-tracking sounds like a cool idea, but I have used self tracking websites and apps before. In my experience, I just get lazy or forget, so I have never used on more than a month. I think it is just too much hassle and most people don't like the inconvenience of having to enter data about themselves. Do you use your own platforms in your daily life?

I agree with andkon about searching for a purpose that is personal. That, in and of itself, would drive you if it were a worthy cause. I'd say pursue an idea to which you would dedicate your entire life (or at least the next ten years, as Sam Altman has said).

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