[HN Gopher] My Year of Exploration
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My Year of Exploration
Author : jakozaur
Score : 17 points
Date : 2024-01-07 18:40 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (jacek.migdal.pl)
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| sph wrote:
| I am trying to bootstrap a business, and this article presents a
| way to approach that challenge that I never understood at all,
| yet seems so very common, especially on this forum. I quote:
|
| _> I always wanted to build a company. Startups are frequently
| the most efficient way to make a profound impact. Build something
| that people need._
|
| _> At first, the insurance sector seemed ripe for disruption.
| The customer experience was lacklustre, and incumbents were
| reaping substantial profits. Our thorough analysis of startups in
| this domain revealed numerous well-executed attempts to shake up
| the space. [...] While we did spot some niche opportunities, they
| didn't pave the way to building a billion-dollar enterprise._
|
| _> Next, we shifted our focus to employment of record and
| payroll services, a sector that had grown post-Covid. Following a
| disciplined approach, we conducted customer interviews and market
| research. [...] Although the concept was sound, we missed the
| train. Our timing was too late._
|
| _> Our journey led us to technological advancements that
| agriculture should have adopted more widely. [...] Former ag tech
| founders warned us about this being a dead zone. Even with the
| most progressive farmers, the conversations were challenging. We
| simply lacked founder-market fit._
|
| ---
|
| I really do not get this approach of _" I want to build a
| business. I have no idea what. I'll try something that VCs might
| like the sound of, but if I can't raise money after 2 months,
| I'll move onto something else."_ This is such a common sentiment
| which to me does not make sense at all. Building a business is
| something that takes hard, hard work, long hours, fighting
| against impostor syndrome and the excitement of an idea that
| slowly fades away, while only the insurmountable mountain
| remains. Then the actual work of chipping away at the mountain
| really starts.
|
| The only way to succeed against all these odds stacked against
| you is to have a passion, have a vision for a product, however
| modest and stupid as mine might be, that keeps you going. Because
| the difference between a cool idea and a profitable business is
| not how quickly people are throwing money at you, but how much
| effort, blood, sweat and tears you have sacrificed for your crazy
| idea. People can make billions selling hyper-advanced technology
| as well as selling shoes or nails. The thing they have in common
| is the effort their founders put in their idea.
|
| Am I hopelessly naive in this belief? The entire indie hacking
| world seems to focus on making money as quickly as possible (the
| goal always being to disrupt an established player), ideally
| before you even have a product, and no one really seems to care
| about the product and effort required to build it.
|
| As much as I am a huge fan of Paul Graham and his writing, I
| believe this fail early-fail fast approach comes from his Silicon
| Valley / venture capital way of making things which has conquered
| the Internet and this space in particular, but is totally
| antithetical to how the rest of the (non-tech, non-SV) world does
| business, where raw effort and stubborn belief in an idea is what
| separates the successful entrepreneur from the failed one.
| loremm wrote:
| I'm not really in the SV/VC world so what do I know. But I see
| what you mean.
|
| I actually put this in my list of articles which I call
| "Another planet's worldview" because the way they phrase their
| experiences and thoughts is entirely self-consistent but so
| alien to my own. No judgement and I actually find it valuable
| to read but it does feel a little like a "CS Savior complex"
| (although still less egregious than some of the AI savior
| complexes I see lots of places)
|
| I can read Graham without thinking he's in another planet but,
| as an example, George Hotz's livestream really makes me think
| that.
| orev wrote:
| There are many people who go to school (or have an interest in)
| "business", with the goal of building and running one. That
| education is about the structures of how to build/run a
| business, like legal structures, financing, building a culture,
| leadership, process building, finding a market, etc. All of
| those things are actual skills, and things people can be really
| good at, even if they don't have an idea for a specific product
| or service. For those people, the company structure is the
| passion, and finding a product to sell is just part of the
| process.
|
| People who have a passion for something can also build a
| business, and this is who you may be thinking of, and also this
| is the type that's often glorified in the tech space. But many
| passionate founders are quickly hampered by the reality of
| having to build the company structures instead of being able to
| focus on the actual passion/product.
|
| This is why many VCs prefer teams of founders instead of a sole
| one, as they can divide and focus on these separate areas. The
| idea of a sole passionate founder who grinds away in their
| garage is more of a "chosen one" trope than a common reality.
| jakozaur wrote:
| Some ideas are suitable for indie hacking, others need venture
| funding.
|
| Surprisingly, the world went quickly from 2022, raising as much
| as possible, growing at all costs, to the belief that indie
| hacking is the only way.
|
| I strongly encourage everyone to find customers for your idea,
| as I did for Quesma before starting to raise money. In the
| current environment, even for initial ideas, the bar is higher
| than it used to be.
| jamestimmins wrote:
| If you're open to sharing some of the niche, but non billion-
| dollar ideas, I'd love to hear them.
| jakozaur wrote:
| I believe there are many specialized insurance opportunities.
| Things that are not insured today, but we found customers
| willing to pay or switch from the current offer, which was
| terrible.
|
| For example, pet insurance in some markets is very
| underpenetrated. Similar to expensive hobby items.
|
| The trick is to bundle it within the existing distribution
| channel and offer it as an addon.
| madamelic wrote:
| No offense but it is astonishing how much seemingly faffing about
| was done all to result in "Woo! We raised money and are building
| a team".
|
| Like... where are the results? Where is the solution?
|
| Indie hacking has a lot of faults but at least they jump in on a
| solution immediately rather than spending time looking for a co-
| founder and to raise a round.
|
| Maybe you skimmed over a lot of actual work but this seems very
| self-congratulatory and like the article was written with the
| conclusion in mind ("join our waitlist") rather than being
| informative or targeted at any one audience.
| jakozaur wrote:
| The article was already quite long, and adding Quesma's part
| might even double it. I spend a few months working full-time
| before raising the money for the final idea.
|
| Indie hacking might work for some businesses, but many
| companies need funding, and it is a viable path to create new
| companies.
| madamelic wrote:
| Yes, fair. Would you be willing to expand on why you feel
| Quesma requires funding to get started?
|
| This seems like an extremely software-focused business that
| could have an MVP written by the technical founder while
| typically I'd expect hardware, deep science (self-driving to
| name one), etc to need to raise money for obvious reasons.
|
| What is Quesma's planned offering that requires an initial
| team larger than 1 to be able to bring to market?
| jakozaur wrote:
| The data product has a very high-quality bar, even for MVP.
| You can't lose data, slow things down, need a lot of table
| stakes functionality, etc. I'm not even going to start with
| SOC2 compliance...
|
| There is a healthy amount of scepticism about one-man
| products in many enterprises due to quality bar, ability to
| have a quick turnaround, etc.
| johnfn wrote:
| The article is alright, but I couldn't help thinking, while
| reading it, that it was written by ChatGPT (or perhaps assisted).
| There's nothing wrong with using ChatGPT to assist your writing,
| but this particular essay comes off as exceptionally robotic.
| This part jumped out at me:
|
| > During this journey, my co-founder and I also came to a pivotal
| realisation about our partnership. While we shared a great
| personal rapport, our business visions diverged significantly. My
| inclination was towards sophisticated B2B enterprise technology,
| whereas my partner favoured B2C models focused on operational
| excellence. Our efforts to align our distinct approaches
| ultimately highlighted our partnership's strengths and
| limitations. With mutual respect and acknowledgement of our
| differing paths, we decided to pursue our entrepreneurial
| journeys separately.
|
| Who the heck writes like this? It seems like a potentially
| interesting aspect of the story (topics about relationships and
| disagreements usually are), but it's written in such a bland
| monotonic way that it extracts all the emotion and intrigue out
| of it. It reminds me of the language that businesses use when
| announcing layoffs.
| RankingMember wrote:
| For real, this is egregious- OP, if you're using ChatGPT to
| make content, please stop.
| jakozaur wrote:
| I used AI for copywriting. I wrote every initial sentence. The
| amount of facts and words is roughly same as in my draft.
| munificent wrote:
| In the future, please consider that any actual human who
| chooses to spend a fraction of their finite time on Earth
| reading your words deserves to have that time spent reading
| something _you actually wrote using your own effort and
| mind_.
|
| I read blogs to connect with _people_ , not LLMs. I have far
| _far_ better things to do with my life then waste it
| stumbling through mostly-meaningless machine-generated word
| vomit.
|
| If you don't feel it's worth your time to write the
| sentences, why on Earth should I feel it's worth my time to
| read them?
| jakderrida wrote:
| It looks like my writing while a pretentious 14 year old that
| didn't realize how transparent it was I was trying to prove I
| was smarter than everyone.
| dakiol wrote:
| Another clue: "spearheaded". ChatGPT throws that word at you
| most of the time.
| anthonygarcia21 wrote:
| In case anyone was wondering, the airport in the center of
| https://jacek.migdal.pl/images/posts/2024/ideas.jpg is Marseille
| Provence Airport.
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