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My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time

My experience is that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. Those people are mainly doing it with the goal of making money for no one but themselves. The fact that they don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. One of those primary early ways to make money is that early on you may have to strike some potentially less favorable deals when you have no money to get your first projects off the ground. Which of course they are NEVER EVER are willing to do. ie profit sharing or something.

s1artibartfast 6y ago
> that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. I would with your sentiment if you said helping indie devs wasn’t profitable opposed to a waste of time. There is real value in supporting a community, you just have to know when you are doing charity work.
- purple-again 6y ago
  I agree with this interpretation. The article OP experienced a real and true 'failure' because his goal was income generation and the project didn't provide that. The guys he handed it off to may have a goal of just being a recognized name in the space (clout?) and so consider their time and effort to be a success. The whole one mans garbage is another mans treasure taken from another angle.
cptaj 6y ago
This is pretty contradictory even in its biases. You assume people can't do anything for motivations other than money and then you say people should give away their work for free. The first one isn't true and the second one is simply not doable for poor people.
makeee 6y ago
My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers (https://divjoy.com https://divjoy.com).
- shahinrostami 6y ago
  Very nice work! I've written a small API (https://m8.fyi/chord https://m8.fyi/chord) to generate beautiful diagrams easily and quickly from Python. It's definitely not making a living from the income, but it is enough for a coffee every now and then.
  - makeee 6y ago
    Nice, cool idea. Is that a one-time fee or monthly? If one-time then I'd suggest emphasizing that fact and saying something like "lifetime access" (from my experience most people assume monthly for something like this). Also fyi, your PayPal button does nothing when I click it. Best of luck with everything!
    - shahinrostami 6y ago
      Thank you for the great suggestion - I've already updated the page to add "Lifetime Access"! Fixing the Paypal button issue will be more tricky! I just tried it in Firefox and it's fine, but I'm seeing temperamental issues in Safari. Will look into it further - thanks for the heads up.
      - makeee 6y ago
        Looks like the issue is that the element below it has a negative top margin of -22vw and is overlapping the button. Removing that fixes it for me ;)
- bermanoid 6y ago
  Game engines are different. It's a tiny market relative to web, and really the only people in the market for an engine other than Unity or Unreal are indies, who have near zero revenue and even less willingness to spend it. Those two are so far ahead in terms of features, support, and battle-hardening that you'd pretty much have to be insane to pick anything else if you had paying users. Always be wary of any market where someone's willingness to try your product is in itself a negative indicator of ability to pay. Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools profitably to, but it's easy enough to get minor attention that makes you think you might have something worthwhile (music production is another one that scatters corpses all over the place despite seeming large at first glance).
jt2190 6y ago
> The fact that [your potential supporters] don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. This is a critical thing to assess in any case where you’re investing time and effort and expecting to get support (either financial or “in kind”) in return. I see this ignored in many “startups” of all kinds (companies, social clubs, workout groups... anything that requires some effort to make happen). The key test is: “Can this thing continue running without me? Do people care enough to give something if I’m not pushing?” (Pay a fee, volunteer for well defined role, resolve disputes, etc.)
Toyentrepreneur 6y ago
I wouldn't say it's a waste a time, just that in tech industry people have a tendency to overrate "selling shovels in a gold rush" when they have about the same odds of success. ie. Making a successful game vs successful game engine
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
hibikir 6y ago
I am not sure about that. There's this small company called Stripe whose entire business model is about making it easier to make your online store: They don't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but it sure mes it a lot easier. Similarly, in videogames, Epic makes quite a bit of money licensing engines, which, in practice, is all about helping other people build faster. We all built websites and ran companies before AWS, and yet they are also they might be Amazon's best division. What is difficult in those kinds of businesses is to identify whether there's a real market there, and to convince enough people to try your product. For a new kind of product, you have to easily show large amounts of value, because people are used to get things done without your product. So I'd not say that it's a waste of time, but it's just a difficult kind of business to enter.
- esrauch 6y ago
  I'm not sure if this is what the parent comment meant, but it seems reasonable that it's not a lucrative path to focus on anyone who doesn't already have a functional business without you. Partnering with that existing coffeeshop can pay off a lot more easily than the dozens of weekend game devs that will probably never make a cent themselves.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
throwaway2245 6y ago
Counterpoint: almost all paid work is assisting someone with building their thing.

s1artibartfast 6y ago

> that anything that spending significant amounts of your time on anything that assists others with building their thing is a total waste of time. Tech or otherwise. I would with your sentiment if you said helping indie devs wasn’t profitable opposed to a waste of time. There is real value in supporting a community, you just have to know when you are doing charity work.

purple-again 6y ago
I agree with this interpretation. The article OP experienced a real and true 'failure' because his goal was income generation and the project didn't provide that. The guys he handed it off to may have a goal of just being a recognized name in the space (clout?) and so consider their time and effort to be a success. The whole one mans garbage is another mans treasure taken from another angle.

cptaj 6y ago

This is pretty contradictory even in its biases. You assume people can't do anything for motivations other than money and then you say people should give away their work for free. The first one isn't true and the second one is simply not doable for poor people.

makeee 6y ago

My experience has shown me that tools that help others build faster can be quite profitable. Currently make my living from one such tool and most of my customers are indie hackers (https://divjoy.com https://divjoy.com).

shahinrostami 6y ago
Very nice work! I've written a small API (https://m8.fyi/chord https://m8.fyi/chord) to generate beautiful diagrams easily and quickly from Python. It's definitely not making a living from the income, but it is enough for a coffee every now and then.
- makeee 6y ago
  Nice, cool idea. Is that a one-time fee or monthly? If one-time then I'd suggest emphasizing that fact and saying something like "lifetime access" (from my experience most people assume monthly for something like this). Also fyi, your PayPal button does nothing when I click it. Best of luck with everything!
  - shahinrostami 6y ago
    Thank you for the great suggestion - I've already updated the page to add "Lifetime Access"! Fixing the Paypal button issue will be more tricky! I just tried it in Firefox and it's fine, but I'm seeing temperamental issues in Safari. Will look into it further - thanks for the heads up.
    - makeee 6y ago
      Looks like the issue is that the element below it has a negative top margin of -22vw and is overlapping the button. Removing that fixes it for me ;)
bermanoid 6y ago
Game engines are different. It's a tiny market relative to web, and really the only people in the market for an engine other than Unity or Unreal are indies, who have near zero revenue and even less willingness to spend it. Those two are so far ahead in terms of features, support, and battle-hardening that you'd pretty much have to be insane to pick anything else if you had paying users. Always be wary of any market where someone's willingness to try your product is in itself a negative indicator of ability to pay. Hit-driven markets that attract large numbers of non-serious dabblers are extremely difficult to sell tools profitably to, but it's easy enough to get minor attention that makes you think you might have something worthwhile (music production is another one that scatters corpses all over the place despite seeming large at first glance).

jt2190 6y ago

> The fact that [your potential supporters] don't have money already proves that they likely are not good at making money. This is a critical thing to assess in any case where you’re investing time and effort and expecting to get support (either financial or “in kind”) in return. I see this ignored in many “startups” of all kinds (companies, social clubs, workout groups... anything that requires some effort to make happen). The key test is: “Can this thing continue running without me? Do people care enough to give something if I’m not pushing?” (Pay a fee, volunteer for well defined role, resolve disputes, etc.)

Toyentrepreneur 6y ago

I wouldn't say it's a waste a time, just that in tech industry people have a tendency to overrate "selling shovels in a gold rush" when they have about the same odds of success. ie. Making a successful game vs successful game engine

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

hibikir 6y ago

I am not sure about that. There's this small company called Stripe whose entire business model is about making it easier to make your online store: They don't do anything you couldn't do yourself, but it sure mes it a lot easier. Similarly, in videogames, Epic makes quite a bit of money licensing engines, which, in practice, is all about helping other people build faster. We all built websites and ran companies before AWS, and yet they are also they might be Amazon's best division. What is difficult in those kinds of businesses is to identify whether there's a real market there, and to convince enough people to try your product. For a new kind of product, you have to easily show large amounts of value, because people are used to get things done without your product. So I'd not say that it's a waste of time, but it's just a difficult kind of business to enter.

esrauch 6y ago
I'm not sure if this is what the parent comment meant, but it seems reasonable that it's not a lucrative path to focus on anyone who doesn't already have a functional business without you. Partnering with that existing coffeeshop can pay off a lot more easily than the dozens of weekend game devs that will probably never make a cent themselves.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

throwaway2245 6y ago

Counterpoint: almost all paid work is assisting someone with building their thing.