5 ms·

Brain dump of a wantrepreneur

45 points by umedzacharia 10y ago

Terretta 10y ago
TL;DR: Soft focus melancholia dreams of showing up an ex and an expensive affiliate marketing "membership" don't magically make you a wildly successful digital nomad -- turns out you may also need to do billable work. PS. I have no money, give me a like on Medium.
- dazc 10y ago
  Maybe she could have a look at her own blog; there are loads of tips on being a successful digital marketer on there? http://entrepedia101.com/blog/ http://entrepedia101.com/blog/
  - WA 10y ago
    That blog, unbelievable. "Here is how blogs make money: Join this multi level snowball marketing system, like I did, and sell to the next sucker down below. Btw. I'm broke now."
- heyalexej 10y ago
  Scheme she's peddling doesn't seem to work all that well for herself. Very sad.
- thesagan 10y ago
  Ya. I'll also add there's a lot to be learned from embracing and observing your own 'loserdom' for a while. Entitlement begets its own correction.
- donquichotte 10y ago
  Thanks for the TL;DR. She does call it a "brain dump", but I was unprepared for that amount of incoherent ramblings and self pity.
narrator 10y ago
Most businesses fail, quietly. There's a lot of inspirational B.S out there that makes being successful look easy. I think people vastly underestimate what it takes to be successful. If there were as much written abut failed businesses as successful ones, there would not be such a huge wannapreneur fantasy industry.
jondubois 10y ago
Succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech (for the first time) is nearly impossible. It's like winning the lottery. I don't think that anyone who succeeds understands (or much less planned for) even a small fraction of all the factors which led them to this successful outcome. Of course when you've succeeded once, doing it again is easy - It's the first time that's hard. I think the author is right to be afraid of starting a new project. Unless you know people who can fund you and/or help you secure deals, there is no point in starting anything - It will fail; it doesn't matter what the idea is, how smart you are or how hard you work. Maybe intelligence and work ethics mattered 10 years ago but not today. Today they are practically worthless - Almost everyone is intelligent and hard working. Start a project if you enjoy it, but don't expect it to pay off ever - The reality is; it won't.
- vinceguidry 10y ago
  I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder than doing it without investment. Sure, once you've gotten over the experience hump like the supermen already have, you can start being picky about where your money is coming from. But really, the knowledge base on offer here just isn't up to snuff for an inexperienced person here to learn what he / she needs to learn to avoid failure. You can fetishize failure all you want, but all that says to me is that the community is failing to give the people joining it the tools they need to succeed.
  - jaxn 10y ago
    The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies. A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech. The E Myth is a best-selling book precisely because of how hard it is to go from being someone who knows how to do something to creating a successful business that does that thing. The sad part about this blog post is that the woman who posted it doesn't seem to be good at the thing she is trying to build a business around. The group she is an affiliate of seems predatory. My experience: I own 3 retail stores, and a SaaS product. I have been in both the brick-and-mortar retail space and the tech space for over a decade.
smoyer 10y ago
"But learn the skill of forgiveness Not for them but for yourself." Then in the next sentence she says she'll never forgive "him". A huge part of being both independent and successful is to constantly be moving forwards. Forgiveness is in fact emotionally "for you", but you need to actually let go. I see no indication that this author has actually broken free of any of the entitlement she lamented early in the piece. But maybe a whiny piece on failure is good for views? Everyone come and see the train-wreck so I can get some impressions!
binarysolo 10y ago
Reading this just made me sad, as I see this over and over in the tech scene: the author is too obsessed about success and not enough about solving fundamental problems or being any good at them. Esp in tech, there's no value for being half-assed.
malloreon 10y ago
The first thing that jumps out at me beyond the florid writing is that she chose as her affiliate niche 'make money online,' so she's spent the last year trying to get people like her to buy from her. Also, 'make money online' is probably the most oversaturated and highest noise:signal ratio niche there is.
ImTalking 10y ago
There wasn't a single logical word in that article; just emotional drivel. My advise for this young lady is to get off her emotional roller-coaster, plant herself in a chair, turn off all her devices, and begin to think rationally.

45 points by umedzacharia 10y ago

TL;DR: Soft focus melancholia dreams of showing up an ex and an expensive affiliate marketing "membership" don't magically make you a wildly successful digital nomad -- turns out you may also need to do billable work. PS. I have no money, give me a like on Medium.

dazc 10y ago
Maybe she could have a look at her own blog; there are loads of tips on being a successful digital marketer on there? http://entrepedia101.com/blog/ http://entrepedia101.com/blog/
- WA 10y ago
  That blog, unbelievable. "Here is how blogs make money: Join this multi level snowball marketing system, like I did, and sell to the next sucker down below. Btw. I'm broke now."
heyalexej 10y ago
Scheme she's peddling doesn't seem to work all that well for herself. Very sad.
thesagan 10y ago
Ya. I'll also add there's a lot to be learned from embracing and observing your own 'loserdom' for a while. Entitlement begets its own correction.
donquichotte 10y ago
Thanks for the TL;DR. She does call it a "brain dump", but I was unprepared for that amount of incoherent ramblings and self pity.

narrator 10y ago

Most businesses fail, quietly. There's a lot of inspirational B.S out there that makes being successful look easy. I think people vastly underestimate what it takes to be successful. If there were as much written abut failed businesses as successful ones, there would not be such a huge wannapreneur fantasy industry.

jondubois 10y ago

Succeeding as an entrepreneur in tech (for the first time) is nearly impossible. It's like winning the lottery. I don't think that anyone who succeeds understands (or much less planned for) even a small fraction of all the factors which led them to this successful outcome. Of course when you've succeeded once, doing it again is easy - It's the first time that's hard. I think the author is right to be afraid of starting a new project. Unless you know people who can fund you and/or help you secure deals, there is no point in starting anything - It will fail; it doesn't matter what the idea is, how smart you are or how hard you work. Maybe intelligence and work ethics mattered 10 years ago but not today. Today they are practically worthless - Almost everyone is intelligent and hard working. Start a project if you enjoy it, but don't expect it to pay off ever - The reality is; it won't.

vinceguidry 10y ago
I don't think it's akin to winning the lottery, but I do agree with you in that it's monumentally harder than, say, starting a nail salon. I think the difficulty goes severely under-appreciated on HN, where you have a whole bunch of founder-supermen saying that investment is counter-productive. The tech sector is ten times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry, and bootstrapping is ten times harder than doing it without investment. Sure, once you've gotten over the experience hump like the supermen already have, you can start being picky about where your money is coming from. But really, the knowledge base on offer here just isn't up to snuff for an inexperienced person here to learn what he / she needs to learn to avoid failure. You can fetishize failure all you want, but all that says to me is that the community is failing to give the people joining it the tools they need to succeed.
- jaxn 10y ago
  The tech sector is not 10 times harder than all other sectors with low barriers to entry. Unless by "tech sector" you mean only the part of the industry focused on trying to create billion dollar household name companies. A guy who knows how to fix a car is not going to have any easier of a time launching a successful business than a guy who knows how to build an app or website. If anything, I would think it would be easier for the tech. The E Myth is a best-selling book precisely because of how hard it is to go from being someone who knows how to do something to creating a successful business that does that thing. The sad part about this blog post is that the woman who posted it doesn't seem to be good at the thing she is trying to build a business around. The group she is an affiliate of seems predatory. My experience: I own 3 retail stores, and a SaaS product. I have been in both the brick-and-mortar retail space and the tech space for over a decade.

smoyer 10y ago

"But learn the skill of forgiveness Not for them but for yourself." Then in the next sentence she says she'll never forgive "him". A huge part of being both independent and successful is to constantly be moving forwards. Forgiveness is in fact emotionally "for you", but you need to actually let go. I see no indication that this author has actually broken free of any of the entitlement she lamented early in the piece. But maybe a whiny piece on failure is good for views? Everyone come and see the train-wreck so I can get some impressions!

binarysolo 10y ago

Reading this just made me sad, as I see this over and over in the tech scene: the author is too obsessed about success and not enough about solving fundamental problems or being any good at them. Esp in tech, there's no value for being half-assed.

malloreon 10y ago

The first thing that jumps out at me beyond the florid writing is that she chose as her affiliate niche 'make money online,' so she's spent the last year trying to get people like her to buy from her. Also, 'make money online' is probably the most oversaturated and highest noise:signal ratio niche there is.

ImTalking 10y ago

There wasn't a single logical word in that article; just emotional drivel. My advise for this young lady is to get off her emotional roller-coaster, plant herself in a chair, turn off all her devices, and begin to think rationally.