Ask HN: Wantrepreneur who's run out of energy/ideas. What now?
I’ve been trying to launch startups on the side for the past 3 years, indie hacker style. Many evenings and weekends were burnt. Yet I gained very little traction, and made a big fat 0 dollars.
Having taken a break in December, I now find that I can’t get back into working on any ideas I have on my list. Mostly because I’m realizing that they don’t solve a pressing need.
I still want to start something of my own, but I don’t know what to do next. Here are some of the things I’ve tried in the past:
- Switched careers (from sales to dev) to better prepare myself for starting a tech business. Realized that tech is the easy part.
- Looked for business cofounders. Everyone who was open to partnering wasn’t willing to validate their ideas; they just wanted me to build the whole thing in one go.
- Joined a startup accelerator. Found it’s like playing the lottery.
So here I am, asking for advice :)
41 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadAlso maybe go along to local inventors' clubs, uni and business seminars, and other things that might set new thoughts running...
Stay receptive to interesting things, but try less hard for a while.
Try to solve a small problem, rather than trying to boil the ocean, it may lead on to other things.
I just can't find small problems that...
1. people are willing to pay for, and
2. I can reach out to said people and they're open to trying it out
For example - I was thinking of helping content creators with content repurposing. So I met up with a guy who runs a podcast, and I told him how I could build a tool that repurposes his podcast episodes to LinkedIn posts. He said it's an interesting idea, but not something that he'd want to try out anytime soon. He's got more important things to do, and it made perfect sense.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyon...
I think I followed the approach the author recommended, unless I'm mistaken. I didn't build anything before I had that initial conversation with the potential customer. And the fact that he didn't say "yes please help me" made me realize the solution wouldn't be that useful.
In a way, I'm happy I realized it early on. It's just that I can't think of anything better at the moment ^_^
As for the next part, learning and talking to others. Go learn about things that interest you, new technologies and tools, problems people have, the competitive landscape to find gaps. I spent most of '24 in this mode and have settled on ATProtocol as the area I'm now focusing in. There are vast and open green fields and the opportunity to reshape how humans use social media and interact with each other through it.
I'm struggling with having the patience to dive into a new technology. I just end up asking myself "what's the actual usefulness", and I can't find an answer that's convincing for me. That's how I missed the boat with AI. But then again, even now I struggle to find good use cases for it beyond the occasional search.
"The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level" by John H. Cochrane
https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691242248/th...
You need good ideas AND 'luck' amongst many other things to have an idea 'work'.
So, basically you're asking for advice how to find more unprofitable ideas if the evidence you have shows that it helps with only that.
Continuing on the example - a flower shop probably manages their inventory via spreadsheets. They're not happy with it, but I doubt they'll fork out $600/year for an inventory tracking app. And I think it'll be very hard for me to get in touch with flower shop owners to validate the idea - they live in a very different world to mine. So the only path to success is to publish an app on the Apple App Store and hope it takes off.
That's similar to what I ended up doing with the last startup project I had, unfortunately it didn't work out.
Sounds like your main problem is not going after a specific problem that people have expressed, not that you think would work.
I've come to realize that just because people express problems, doesn't mean they'll do something about it. You need to find something where the pain is urgent, and unsurmountable. And that's very tricky.
Just a few of the things I learnt from that book:
Don't ask if people would use your product. It's too hypothetical and people are too nice. "Sure, I'd probably use it. Looks useful. Keep working on it!". Then you never hear from them again. If you really think they'd be interested, ask for money.
Don't ask about people's problems in an abstract way. "Tell me about your business problems" is just too vague and wishy-washy. Ask about more specific things. Example: "You're having issues with double booking? Tell me about the last time it happened." Asking about the most recent time something happened is a great way to get concrete details.
Ask people how they have solved the problems or tried to solve the problem they talk about. "It was a major issue so we hired an extra member of staff to confirm all the stock lists". (Great, they're willing to spend real money on fixing this). "I searched around and tried out ABCSoft and XYZSoft but they were designed for a different kind of business and didn't really solve it for us" (pretty good, they're putting effort into finding solutions). "Oh, well, it's always been a big issue but we haven't tried to solve it yet" (Uh-oh, it's probably not really a big problem for them. It's not painful enough for them to try to solve).
As you noted earlier, the tech is the easy part. As you note here, finding customers is the hard part.
Naturally doing the easy part first can often turn out yo be a waste of time.
You talked above about "your ideas". Don't start there. Start by walking around talking to people. Start in your local community. You're looking for pain, and a willingness to pay. Yes, it's the hard part. Yes it's work.
If you have any cash saved up, this would be a way to go because:
- cash flow - existing customer base to talk to - product - market fit has happened (hopefully)
You'll get a crash course in everything after the 0 to 1 phase of the business.
And you'll get some energy from talking to customers and building for them.
source: I'm doing that with https://www.fundedlist.com after many years of doing what you described.
I have spent more than 20 years working on side hustles. I love tech and enjoyed building various prototypes and games. Building is easy part.
Never fully understood rest of the business, had no sales.
A friend who had done same thing, decided to stop doing that. Instead he started an e-commerce store. Focused on market research, marketing, etc. After his first store took off, he created more stores. He doesn’t care about what he sells, he just cares about revenue.
He is making enough to quit his EM job. He plans to keep adding new stores in his portfolio.
he did mention drop shipping to test out ideas but don’t think any of those businesses took off.
How can you have a sales career behind you and not been able to make any sales on your previous projects? It's not hard to make a business with good revenue. What's hard is making a decent profit from that.
Enterprise corporate sales is very different than startup sales. I had well-established products, and prospects were always interested in hearing about them.
Just to note, I did get some great advice from this post. Will probably add a comment to summarize everything after the discussion has died down.
I think it isn't obvious why it should be a desirable thing to do.
I am genuinely interested to know your answer - because there's so much startup culture but it isn't clear to me what the drive is...
The usual trite reasons of money or independence are not compelling enough. I think most founders know the probability is failure and $0. Having clients or VCs mean independence is not much more than a trade worker.
Firstly, I wished I had spent more time understanding my motivation. What should we do once we win - isn't it the same question as before we try to found a business? I now have money and free time which are useful but not very satisfying. Know who you are, before wasting your irreplaceable years.
I suspect that the desire to start a business is really just a desire for social status. We see Gates/Bezos/Musk and we want to copy that. Engineers evade explicitly social status jobs (politicians or corporate). The anti-management talk of engineers is incompatible with running a business. Strangely it is socially acceptable and internally justified for engineers to do a startup. Hard to grok the contradictions. And geeks have their own status ladders (which outgroup laughs at).
I suspect my internal social status competition is actually against my close group of buddies from school (even though we have very different careers). People want what their peers want. https://thementalmodels.substack.com/p/mimetic-desire-why-pe... Following our own desires is hard because going against our norms is hard. Even knowing ourselves is difficult.
#1: if you want status then admit it to yourself and optimise for that. Choose your status ladders carefully and then commit to playing for them. Some status games are for losers. Playing some status games has high personal costs. Most status games are lose/lose if winning requires luck or you lack resources/network. Understand what you want from status. I see guys that actually just want to screw and even the "winners" seem very unsatisfied.
#2: Money is a poor goal to aim for. If you really want money then make decisions that will gain money - and avoid diversions that don't. FAANG employee is sensible. Don't be a wantrepreneur - startups is foolish game because the modal result for is $0 (independent of how smart one is).
#3: we don't live in a capitalist society. People choose jobs that give them status and satisfaction and usually the pay is less important. In our society money is visible but the important payments are invisible.
I don't know how we learn what gives us satisfaction. Money is not actually satisfying (much beyond the low necessary amount). The only way I can think of discovering the unknown payoffs is to work in as wide a variety of jobs that you can possibly trial. The more random the choice the better. For example try working in education: maybe as a volunteer or IT helper or teacher aide. Maybe try some temp work. Offer to help acquaintances at work: and provide value to them. In theory we could ask people what drives them - in practice I notice that people's stated drives are not what I believe they actually are. We are monkeys and we don't know ourselves well. Experimentation seems the best way to sound our desires. I pay a lot of attention to my friends and acquittances that seem satisfied (from all walks of life). I'm not sure I can learn from them but I make a lot of effort to.
Background: I've received a minor prize in the founder's game (I now have passive income). My trick was to do software work with someone who is much more money focused within a self-funded business (VC in New Zealand is toxic).
Good luck and good skills.
I highly doubt I'm doing this for status. Peers from my past sales life are probably laughing at me, flailing around with little to show. And I'm fine with that.
But I agree, I'm not doing this just for the money. Otherwise I'd probably be back in sales. It's the combination of money, and control over my life right here, right now. Not 20 years down the line, after working on something that I don't enjoy.
Anyway congrats on hitting your wealth goal! Money might not give you satisfaction right now, but I'm sure there are points in your life where you're glad to not be in need of it.
I mention status so much because my current learning goal is to better understand how we tick: why we chase certain goals. I do wonder if I've been countersignalling status for a while!
> back in sales
Ahh - I presumed you were a shape rotator (I skimmed your post) and answered as though you were an engineer, sorry. I respect sales as a career path (maybe not when I was younger).
> congrats on hitting your wealth goal!
I am not sure I hit it. Need 30x post-tax return (as per VC risk-reward for one investment) to justify time investment (2 years $0 income which is negative 2 years of wages). My invisibles (e.g. satisfaction) wasn't any better than working for someone else.
> I'm sure there are points in your life where you're glad to not be in need of [money].
More importantly is having time available to help friends and family.
I find that managing money is a job in itself and it has downsides. Either you tell people you have it (causes some downsides) or you need to be deceptive (uggh). I don't yet feel I have enough retirement funds that would keep me at job level income: so I'm not ready to donate a lot (which has other issues). A metaphor might be that having more food than you can eat is not that helpful.
Most people from developed nations are given similar amounts of time. As I age I dislike the exchange rate from time to money. I donate my time, but I value my time rediculously highly in dollars (and I try to balance saving money against saving time).
> - Joined a startup accelerator. Found it’s like playing the lottery.
Yeah - we learned a lot of negative lessons by being involved with an accelerator. Fortunately government funded and they didn't demand stock. Saw lots of incubees get screwed by bad decisions related to investment (own goals, and poor investor advice).
Sorry - another spiel!
- continue attending networking events
- start reading books on technical topics that I'm personally interested in
- look into e-commerce businesses
- write some blog posts about technical/business things I have strong opinions on
Appreciate all the comments!