Ask HN: I can't do this anymore, I need help
I've had enough.
Hear me out. I've spent the last 5 years of my life slaving away on startups and new business ideas and I'm failing, bad. So tonight I've come to the conclusion that I clearly have no fucking idea what I'm doing. I've lost pretty much all my friends because of the time I've spent trying to make my ideas work. I have spent money I can't afford on ideas that have never came to light. And now it's 2:31am on a Sunday evening and my girlfriend is in bed wondering why I won't come give her a cuddle, but I can't. Because I know I have to wake up tomorrow morning and hit the repeat button on my life again. I have to work all day just to put a roof over our heads. She wants to travel and damn I want to take her so bad, but I can't. I hate what my life has become.
But I have a solution, because I know complaining won't change this. Truth is, I have no idea about business. That's why I can't do it. I come from a working class family, I have working class friends, no one I know has any idea about business or even any interest in the topic. I've read a lot though: on business, development, management & self help. I can do it, I know I can, I just need some guidance. So here I am; asking for guidance. I have about $5000 and I'm willing to put that into an idea, and I have some of those too. So who's ready to play ball with me? I can guarantee the technical skills, could you guarantee the business skills? Maybe together we won't need to press the repeat button on our alarm clocks next Monday.
Let me know, hnineedhelp [at] gmail.com
136 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 186 ms ] threadWhat are your technical qualifications?
I work as a web developer. I have been building eCommerce sites since I was 15~, I'm 23 now! I can do frond-end and back-end development, although I think I'm better at back-end development. I have good experience with HTML/CSS/Javascript, PHP/MySql, Java & Node.js. I also have some experience in building AI systems using ANNs, GAs, etc.
Both. I learnt to program at 15 when I taught myself PHP to set up an eCommerce site that could automatically create new voice server instances when a user placed an order. I guess you could say that was my first startup.
Since then I've worked with a few different companies on eCommerce sites doing a bit of everything including marketing. I have quite a lot of experience with SEO, pay-per-click and social media marketing. One of my failed startups was a social media marketing startup.
It sounds to me like you've got plenty of technical experience and might need a little more of the business side of things - how to show the things you've built are valuable. I'm in Cambridge, MA, and I can say with certainty that there are plenty of software shops around here that would claw over each other to get to someone with your skillset.
I'm the least experienced entrepreneur on this website, but if it's help of that sort you need, you've definitely come to the right place.
You don't know anything.
Come on man—you're 23! how many real problems have you even encountered in your life? Let me rephrase that in a way that sounds less dismissive of any personal problems you may have in your life (which are important but not the basis of a startup)—how many problems have you encountered in your life that could be solved by technology or automation that are also shared by people with money who are willing to pay for them?
Get a job that pays well. If you can get a job that pays you well enough to save a little something AND lets you work part-time, that's even better. Take the extra time to work on your ideas, work on learning a new language, read up on things you know nothing about. Because THAT'S where successful startups play. Until you get out and see the world around you, you're not going to see problems you can solve. Its the biggest mistake I made in my 20's, and the biggest mistake I see most people your age making. Work at a crappy job for awhile, learn an industry that has a lot of sucky parts to it, and figure out how to make them better.
Also, FWIW (and something I wish I'd figured out a lot sooner)—most of your friends probably don't share your values, so find some that do, and things like paying your rent and going on vacation to Germany with your girlfriend is as much her responsibility as it is yours. Don't be that guy.
Email's in my profile, feel free to contact me for lots of cranky-old-guy advice.
1: what's something that your girlfriend wants/needs? A bike, a computer, how about a silver necklace. Go buy it for her and give it to here. It should cost you about $1,000
2: When you give it to her, tell her you are taking her on a holiday. You are paying. Spend the $4K on the holiday.
3: Do steps one and two NOW. Get up from your chair and do it now.
After this, you will have a very happy partner who will love you more because you put your relationship ahead of stupid business.
Alternatively you could spend your last $5,000 on one of your ideas or you could spend your $5K on someone elses idea. In either case the idea probably won't work, and even if it is a good idea it does not need your $5K. Your money will be gone. You will never have invested any substantial money into yourself/your girlfriend/your relationship which will fall apart because it's no fun and there's always money pressure and you are always stressed because you never have a holiday and are always working. You'll be in exactly the same position you would have been if you'd spent the $5K on her.
In the meantime, pursue your personal business ambitions as a hobby and stop gambling everything you have on it.
Thanks for the advise and you're right, but this isn't my usual nightly routine. I took her out this weekend, like I do most weekends and I'm taking her away to Germany this summer - she wanted to go ever since I've known her. I'm not the perfect boyfriend, but I really do love my girlfriend and I do everything I can for her. Mine and her happiness comes first, period. The only reason I'm up tonight is because I wish I could give her more.
If you've got the technical skills, why is the $5000 so important. I'm sure you've read about being 'lean', why do your start-up ideas require such a cost input, if you already have the technical skills.
Where in the world are you? Technical skills seem more in demand than business skills, but you also say that the people you know, know nothing about business, so I suspect you aren't in one of the technology hubs.
I'll bet that if you look around in your community, you will find business leaders. They may not be running multi-million dollar ventures, or start-ups, but they know the basics of business. See if one of these people can help you flush out your ideas. You'll probably find somebody willing to do it for free. Maybe they'll even want to invest in you (later) if they see you getting the job done and believe in your business.
Don't go blowing your $5k, but make sure you are doing what will make both you and your GF happy. A vacation doesn't have to cost a ton, you can get creative and have an amazing experience.
Next, live like a pauper, saving 60-70+% of that income. Spend your free time doing exactly 3 things 1. working on a side project 2. spending time with your girlfriend. 3. exercise (never count this out, no matter what your life circumstances otherwise)
Then just wait 5 more years. You will either have something going from your side project or you will have enough money saved to legitimately work full time on something without worrying about bills
As far as the idea, go for something as boring as possible. Preferably something that someone else is already paying money for but that the incumbent product is shitty or lacking in some major way. Fix it or make it signficantly cheaper. Business is just a wrapper around value.
Create value, get paid. That's how capitalism works.
i applaud the OP for pushing themselves but also agree that a well paying job is an option they may consider. Better yet, just variate between them. Spend a couple years trying to find collaborators and push projects, then a couple moving slow and steady on the side.
pyrrhotech's advice is exactly the one I was going to give.
Work on some side project at the same time.
And you know what? You might even like it, gain some skills and friends at work which will put in get stead for the rest of your life.
The genius artist in an attic is a seductive myth.
Now, you won't necessarily be living like a pauper. Just stop buying stupid shit and buy bare necessities.
Read earlyretirementextreme or mrmoneymustache to see how you can get out of the rat race as fast as possible, and get back into doing startups (if that's what is exciting to you)
Exercise changed my life, not long ago. :)
My routine:
Runing: 7 kms on Tuesday and Thursday. 10 kms on Saturday.
Strength: Just body weight - push ups and pull ups and crunches - on Monday and Friday
Sprint runs: on Wednesday followed by some strength.
Overall time spend is about 1.5 hours each day (because I don't hurry, and a relaxed stretching session after running)
edit: format
I do agree that freelancing would definitely give some nice extra income but only if you're disciplined enough to find time for it.
Most developed nations have all kinds of barriers and quotas in place to make it difficult for aliens to fill jobs that might otherwise be filled by citizens.
Sometimes the right connections, company sponsorship, etc. can get you in; but if you're imagining just flying to the UK or wherever and getting a job, that's not possible. Even if a company there wants to hire you and is willing to jump through legal hoops it still may not be possible.
Try and target yourself to those clients and avoid the local clients like a plague. It has been my experience that if you want to break into more profitable territory you need to break away from local clients completely.
Every place I've worked - small or large - has been fun in one way or another, made me some friends, and taught me things I didn't know going in. I even made a few neat things that made people's lives better along the way.
Yeah - I run my own company now. Because it gives me some other things that I value. But the idea that a normal job is always a terrible boring experience really does depend on the job. Not every employer on the planet is an asshat. Working for other people can be fun.
> Next, live like a pauper, saving 60-70+% of that income.
I had a job in San Francisco with a baseline salary of $90k and total cashlike compensation (stocks / annual bonus) raising it just over $100k. Low end, but that's six figures.
Largest single item on my budget: taxes, at roughly 35% of my pay. Saving 70% of my nominal "income" would have been grossly illegal.
Still, it's kind of hard. Usually places with six figures jobs tend to have high rents.
I'm nowhere near that figure, and more than a fourth of my monthly net income goes towards paying the rent.
A stable life and supporting yourself, your mental status and your family or whatever is, imho, more important than trying to live some fairy tale where you build a chat app and get bought out by Facebook.
The startup success stories are all basically lottery winners, probably with similar odds.
I made something boring: https://invoicerunner.com
Nobody wants to use it because most people make boring things. The market of boring things is saturated in most cases.
I feel like I'm back at square 1 personally.
Building a successful business is hard. You don't just "build it and they will come". There is no one-line answer to success.
This "Start managing your invoices today. Take the stress out of tracking what's due, when, and to who" should be at the top of the page. The photo of a woman at a computer does absolutely nothing to explain what you're selling. It was pure curiosity that made me page down enough to figure out what you were selling. Most people who come across the page after googling "invoice management" or the like will just hit the back button.
Typing fast, gotta leave, don't mean to be rude, but that's my feedback.
Toyota can build the best Corolla but they still need to spend millions every year marketing it so it sells.
I should work harder on getting it out there for sure. One challenge is that I think (yes, it's an untested assumption) my customers are probably more retail focused, which means doing some legwork to actually make contact (i.e. offline), something I haven't got time for at the moment.
Any suggestions there would be welcome!
It's more like: - I like the ability to view all my invoices anymore but how does it integrate with my QuickBooks, Simply Accounting, etc. - How do I keep my information in sync between my internal system and this? - What else is out there - oh look, here's Freshbooks, seems to be really better product
My recommendation is that you need to get more niche on this. For example, let's say companies are using QuickBooks a lot in your area. Maybe they use your site as another frontend to add and view invoices that get pushed to Quickbooks. You make the process ten times easier.
I'm just throwing out ideas here. The main point is that your problem is that you identified an initial potential need but now you need to go out there and actually figure out what the real value of your solution is for companies. There's maybe that extra 2-3 features that it needs that will make somebody want to use it and buy it. I would highly recommend following Steve Blank's approach. Also, check this out - http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas. The book is also worth reading.
Basically, what it comes down to is that at this point you have a nice MVP that you can show potential customers and say "Hey, what's wrong with this? What else does it need to have for it to be useful to you?"
The one thing that stops me giving up on it is that I use it myself, and find it useful... it's been great for tracking my own invoices. Drop me an email if you'd like to discuss it further: davedx@gmail.com
It's hard to realize that we're our own little techno bubble when we read HN and about start-up's all the time.
The fact is that most of the software companies that start, that are actually profitable and make money (not hundreds of millions or possibly millions) but enough are just not sexy enough in either their business model or their story to make it on HN or other blogs. Frankly, I think these companies are too busy running their business to get caught up in all of it.
Rules of startup:
1. One should not quit his/her job until you have been funded very well. Once you get funded it means your idea is credible and fund will help you survive.
2. Never spend a penny from your personal savings. Because it's a slippery slope. Today you took $5000 from your savings, tomorrow you will do more.
3. Fail Fast and move on. Quickly build a prototype and showcase your ideas to your customers, have them on board with minimal viable product.
4. Don't spend your resources and time on things which people are not planning on using. Build based on what your customers wants and they are willing to pay you for it.
5. Make daily goals which is toward a main goal.. we have wasted so much time drifting in wrong direction. Keep your goal steady and only focus on that, nothing else.
6. Get some help, You cant do everything on your own.. get co-founders, try them out for 3 weeks before having them on board.
7. Be honest to yourself and communicate very well with your co founders and team mates.
1) Try being more specific - http://lesswrong.com/lw/bc3/sotw_be_specific/. Perhaps you've been failing because you've been building things people don't really want? If so, being more specific will help.
2) Perhaps it isn't worth "slaving away" on startups. I believe that the 80/20 rule is very powerful, and is applicable to startups: a small amount of the work leads to a majority of the success. Maybe you could live a less stressful life, and still work on startups.
If you ever want to brainstorm any startup ideas before pursuing them, HMU - azerner3@gmail.com.
Stop. Get a job. A job that you like.
Then just be good at it. Better yet, be the best at it, and make sure it is something you are passionate about and talented in.
It really is that simple.
Nobody wants to invest in somebody with a bunch of failed entrepreneurial ventures. But if you sit back, take a check, work on cool shit and build an impressive body of work, well then perhaps people will be more willing to invest in you.
And for god's sake, go bang your girlfriend and give her a massage.
Like everything in life - just because it appears simple, doesn't mean it is easy...
...and then go bang your partner again. They're either missing you or about to break up with you.
I've often wondered about that, I know that in reddit and even slashdot these type of comments are lauded even though they add nothing to the dialog people like them, because well, they do do give us another comment to upvote, because you can add one point to the original comment. Still they deal with all that extra chaff by physically minimizing comments that don't get enough likes thus they don't interrupt the flow of conversation as much. HN doesn't have such a feature so I understand why, you're against it, I personally only downvote these type of comments if the user has a history and the comment is >2 words.
Exactly. If your ideas aren't working right now, why not work on some other guy's?
I can see that you're willing to let someone else handle all the business side. So why not not join some start up that you believe in, and provide your tech skills to help realize their dream. In the mean time you can learn how they did the business side. This will also alleviate you from your financial troubles (though do you really have them? considering your $5000...)
And then some time in the future, someone will provide their business skills to help realize your dream.
Either way, it's time to get a job.
> go bang your girlfriend and give her a massage.
Yep, she deserves that for sticking with you through all this.
I want to avoid your situation, because of the large variance and unhealthy unsustainability that accompanies the startup lifestyle.
I desire your situation, because working on new products and ideas is my (currently) most ideal working arrangement, I value being in charge and be flexible.
So for me the solution I have thought about and try to implement in the next couple months is to do a split:
X% involves "mercenary labor", freelancing/remote work Y% involves working on my on side projects Z% do other awesome things
Minimize X with the restraint of providing enough sustainable income and maximize Z% with continious estimation of whether Y can actually make some money realistically.
Would love any feedback
Starting a business is hard and takes a long time. It also takes a fair amount of luck.
May I suggest, next time you have a business idea, you pitch it to as many successful business people you can find. They don't have to be VC's or Angel investors. Pick any successful business owner in your community.
Ask them for their honest opinion. If they say they like it, see if they would "put their money with their mouth is" and would invest in your idea.
In the mean time, do as others have suggested: get a good paying job and start saving as much as you can. You are going to need much more than $5,000 to pay for living and business expenses when you go all in on your next venture.
[1] http://www.statisticbrain.com/startup-failure-by-industry/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/elainepofeldt/2013/06/29/the-ris...
I suspect that work has nothing to do with this, more likely the negativity and the real reason why you're so obsessed with work. I think work is your crutch, not your problem.
* And now it's 2:31am on a Sunday evening and my girlfriend is in bed wondering why I won't come give her a cuddle, but I can't.
Most people are asleep then, that, by no stretch of the imagination is "evening".
You need to stop whining and get a job. Learn how to be a person, relate to your girlfriend, balance your interests, sort your shit out. Whining to the hn crowd is not the way to sort your life out, you need to stop looking to others to sort things out for you.
No business person with any chops is going to read this and want to go into business with you. You can't sleep, you can't keep your end up in a relationship with your girlfriend, you've been working five years and have only $5k to show for it, you've admitted to failing at everything!
You make a lot of assumptions about me.
I'm not trying to whine, I saw a problem and I'm asking for help fixing that problem in return for my time and money. Also, I have a job.
Me and my girlfriend have a great relationship and I do everything I can to make sure she's happy.
I have a lot more than $5000 to show for it. That's is just what I have for a side project.
I don't fail at everything. I'm only 23, and I think I've achieved quite a lot for my age. I wouldn't say all of my ideas have failed, but I aim high and I feel like I'm failing overall.
What do you do to make sure you're happy? No one wants to hang around with, invest in or buy something from someone who isn't happy.
Find yourself first. Everything else will fall into place. I'm not saying you need to break it off, but put yourself on equal ground and see what happens. You'll learn a lot about yourself and her.
Personal stuff aside, heed the advice of so many others: Get a job, be great at it. Take every opportunity to learn and think of new ideas, new ways to create value and grow.
That's the wrong way around. Do everything to make sure you are happy, with or without her. It's up to her if she wants to be happy with you.
Imagine if we had that attitude with our children? Or mother?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_contagion
Therefore, for others to be happy, you must be happy first. You cannot rely on other's happiness to lift you up and IMHO you should not let your own unhappiness fester and drag everyone around you down.
Imagine a child, whose parents come home in a bad mood everyday, though they do everything to make the child happy except changing their own mood, will the child grow up as a well-rounded individual?
> That's the wrong way around. Do everything to make sure you are happy, with or without her. It's up to her if she wants to be happy with you.
...though you're pulling in the right direction here.
It's not either/or; you & your partner have to take care of yourselves, in the context of taking care of your entire family unit. I've been married for 14 years and have 2 kids. If I ignore the balance and either forget to suss out (and attend to) the needs of my partner & kids, or if I try to "do what they want" with no attention to my own needs, it goes poorly for us all. My wife has to do the same thing.
There's work and short-term sacrifice involved; sometimes I do things I wouldn't do, on my own, because I have longer-term goals in mind that rely on my relationships w/ wife & daughters.
But the same applies to us all, and this is something we discuss with our kids all the time -- e.g., "sure, I could clean up all this stuff myself, but I'm probably going to be cranky about it, and we'll have less time to read together this afternoon...".
Hope it works out for you :)
If you do think that the entrepreneurial spirit is something that is burning inside you, and not just peer pressure (of sorts) then I would say, just keep dreaming, keep working and don't dwell on failed projects. Find a personal itch that you would like to scratch. Good luck to you!
Burnout is a good thing. Your body is basically telling you that you are working too hard at something that is not achieving results, and it's time for a change.
kriptonic: I would recommend leaving your side projects on the back-burner for a while. Just work on your day-job, and catch up on your sleep and maybe take a vacation. Once you've taken a break, start thinking about your projects and you might come up with a new direction.
Just because you think your idea is good doesn't mean it will be successful. It also doesn't necessarily have much to do with being good at business. You just need to come up with something that other people want to use.
Taking 7 years to get good at something is actually a smart thing to do. The best thing to do is always look for a room where you are not the smartest so you can learn and when you can't find anymore rooms, you'll know it's your time.
1. You have to support yourself before you can do other things. If that means getting standard employment, that is what you have to do.
2. Being from a working class family is no obstacle. You can do some work on the side (make sure you check your employment contracts, make sure no conflict of interest, and if necessary discuss with your employer). But avoid living in the machine. Get out, spend time with friends. Maintain social relationships. Those are important, and nevermoreso when you are in business for yourself.
3. Go to garage sales. Pick up used accounting textbooks. Learn enough accounting that you can keep your own books. Accounting is the language of business, and it is one thing you have to have at least a basic grasp of if you are to get back into business for yourself.
4. If you still have time, get involved in Toastmasters, to develop public speaking ability.
5. Surround yourself with people who will support you when you start something but challenge you before you do. This is vitally important because you want a clear view of the problems before you begin but you also want people who will help you overcome problems rather than drag you down to them.
6. You don't have to know everything yourself. You need to know people who can help with things.
Don't let all the hype get to you. Life is not about building Instagrams or WhatsApps, you might as well play the lottery.
So say you can't do it and then you can... sounds like you just have a pre-life crisis.
Set yourself up for a tiny win, like, try and run 10km, or get a first-aid diploma. Fist pump, you're not a failure. Then set your next target. Enrol for uni, flip some burgers. Life is the same for everybody, by the way.
The problem is, you are pretty smart; the nice thing for dumb people is that it's easier for them to be happy but you'll get there, too.
Accept that you will not be the next Mark Zuckerberg because 99.99999% of everyone will not.
I took jobs that didn't require many more hours beyond 9-5 (IE: boring programming jobs) and used my free time to work on business ideas.
Weekends were for friends and family. You need to learn how to balance your life, or it will be very difficult to succeed.
Escaping from the working class is a matter of luck, not hard work, and that's a brute fact of reality. So don't beat yourself up about it, its not your fault.
Whether you want to keep rolling the dice is up to you. Eventually, you would figure it out if you keep trying. And eventually you would flip 4 heads in a row if you keep trying. But it might take decades, literally decades.
Bullshit.
It may be harder, but it's certainly not about luck. I went to a shitty state school (not even the flagship) in Arkansas. While I was a "frat boy" unless I'm interested in managing a cracker barrel they are of little help.
Instead I worked my ass off to develop meaningful skills. Then I intentionally found work with incredibly smart people who could help me. It may have taken me longer to reach my goals than someone with a Ivy League pedigree I was absolutely able to do it. No luck involved.
I absolutely believe that anyone else can do the same. I see it every single day.
Were you surrounded by an environment where the prevailing attitude was "I never needed that skill, I do not see why you do"?
Luck determines whether your parents want you to drop out of school at 16 and join them in the factory, or have you reading by the age of 3.
- Do your project ideas never get finished?
- If not, is it because of technical issues that make it difficult to get your product working?
- If not, is it because you lose interest or the people you work with lose interest?
- If not, is it because there are non-technical factors outside your control that you cannot successfully deal with (e.g. licensing agreements)?
- Do your startups not get traction in the marketplace?
- If so, is it because you're trying to unsuccessfully compete with a larger player in the field?
- If so, is it because you're not waiting long enough, or your expectations are too high?
- If so, is it because you've tried the standard promotional channels and nobody is paying attention?
- If so, is it because the market has shifted in the period between inception and release in such a way your product is now redundant or obsolete?
- Are your projects torpedoed by issues related to the people you are working with, if any?
- Are your projects torpedoed by the fact that you run out of living expense money before they have a chance to catch on?
Although all startups face some similar base set of failure modes, the challenges facing (e.g.) a robotics startup can be very different from those facing a consumer web-services startup trying to build the next Instagram.
If I may, to split your into groups:
Things you don't finish: > - Do your project ideas never get finished? > - If not, is it because of technical issues that make it difficult to get your product working? > - If not, is it because you lose interest or the people you work with lose interest? > - If not, is it because there are non-technical factors outside your control that you cannot successfully deal with (e.g. licensing agreements)?
Ideas that fail because no one else is interested: > - If so, is it because you've tried the standard promotional channels and nobody is paying attention? > - If so, is it because the market has shifted in the period between inception and release in such a way your product is now redundant or obsolete?
Ideas that launch, but fail because of money/scaling issues: > - Do your startups not get traction in the marketplace? > - If so, is it because you're trying to unsuccessfully compete with a larger player in the field? > - If so, is it because you're not waiting long enough, or your expectations are too high? > - Are your projects torpedoed by the fact that you run out of living expense money before they have a chance to catch on?
Reasons that fail primarily due to interpersonal/stress reasons: > - Are your projects torpedoed by issues related to the people you are working with, if any?
Then go to bed and cuddle. Immediately.
In the morning, on the way to work, start to think about how you could reframe your plans on a twenty year scale, optimizing for happiness at home.
I have a different advice that will give you two important lessons at the same time:
"Sell something, as soon as possible."
If you have a product that you can build quickly. Build it and sell it, ASAP.
If you don't have a product... Good. Use the money you have and buy some product that you can sell for more... Repeat it.
Sales is the quickest way to make money and consequently will teach you about business.
PS: At this point it is preferable to find cheap products, so you can buy <-> sell quickly, until you have a good sum of money... then, you'll be able to elaborate the perfect product/business you have in mind.
Stop trying to build a startup. Build a business instead. A bootstrapped, makes cash today business. Maybe it's a consultancy specializing in bank software or maybe it's something else that you have expertise in, but stop trying to build an all or nothing startup.