4 ms·

Why are you giving advice so confidently about a goal without actually having achieved said goal yourself?

jimmyvalmer 6y ago
What a fatuous remark. My dad was a business failure, but he had the audacity to offer me advice, with confidence no less! I'll concede his advice, and good advice generally, isn't nearly as long-winded nor rife with platitudes as GP.
- mstipetic 6y ago
  Sharing thoughts on the matter and asking questions is appreciated. Telling someone to quit their jobs and just grind it out through productivity and avoiding procrastination is bad advice.
  - NiagaraThistle 6y ago
    my advice wasn't to quit his job. it was a facetious comment combatting the 'i don't have the motivation to work after my 9-5'. you have to want to put in the work. if you don't want to, wait until a different time in the future where things are better and you can stomach spending a couple hours before or after work to build something.
NiagaraThistle 6y ago
i have achieved the goal. The question was 1. how to come up with ideas, and 2. how to work on those ideas with a 9-5. I have achieved both of those. Successfully and profitably, or not, is another question altogether. Even in the past when i've procrastinated, i still 1. had the ideas to work on, and 2. spent some time after work many days to work on the projects. If the question had been 'how do you build profitable projects and earn $100k+ per year doing so?', i would not have commented. But given the 2 questions asked, i definitely have an opinion i could share, regardless if it is agreed upn by anyone else.
- mstipetic 6y ago
  But your advice is reductive "it's about building habits." No it's not. His question was about escaping the grind with an "idea" which kinda implies building a business. I intentionally use the word business, not product as a lot of people (including you it seems) conflate. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm trying to save you from a lot of potential pain, as I've been also through that and am trying to get you to reflect a bit. I'm now almost 3 years in running a vc funded startup and things are not going so well because I didn't start off with the right fundamentals and have been focusing on product. I've had a look at the list of your startup ideas and I am almost certain you yourself, let alone many other people, don't pay for these types of things, and they don't seem to have network effects in order to scale up quickly and dominate a market. It's not only about hunkering down and building things, it's about understanding what makes a viable business, where your potential customers congregate, which language they're using, is it really a problem for them that you're solving, how can you reach them in a scalable way, who are the technical/economical decision makers in b2b, or how do you achieve some kind of network effect if b2c... (obviously i'm generalising a bit, but it's a fascinating multidimensional problem and I feel this advice of grinding it out is repeated everywhere and is super harmful) as far as ideas go, I can guarantee you that in your 15 years of professional experience you've seen many potential business problems that you just didn't recognise. Any repetitive annoying process you've seen somebody using a patched up excel sheet is potentially a business. if you're launching a cycling app without already having built an audience and a brand in the community, it's most likely going to be a painful experience. Really not trying to be an asshole, btw
  - NiagaraThistle 6y ago
    definitely not taking any of your comments as 'being an asshole'. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and advice, and 100% agree with each of your points. I am the first to admit product /= business and project /= startup, but the terms do definitely get interchanged a lot now. my comments above fail to clarify that 'hunkering down' is not the only aspect of building something successful, nor do i think the '12-, 24-' hour hack sessions (regardless of what you're building) are a good formula to success, i've been very guilty of putting in the work but not doing so smartly in the past. I guess i was just trying to nail home the fact that if you want to start something on the side it IS going to take extra work, and that might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but some work is necessary. And i also definitely agree with the fact that many of my ideas don't lead to community, and agree that a vibrant community is a great means to success, most of these are 'scratch my own itch' type projects. But my primary point was , good or bad, ideas surround us daily. Thanks for your advice and feedback. I genuinely appreciate it!

What a fatuous remark. My dad was a business failure, but he had the audacity to offer me advice, with confidence no less! I'll concede his advice, and good advice generally, isn't nearly as long-winded nor rife with platitudes as GP.

mstipetic 6y ago
Sharing thoughts on the matter and asking questions is appreciated. Telling someone to quit their jobs and just grind it out through productivity and avoiding procrastination is bad advice.
- NiagaraThistle 6y ago
  my advice wasn't to quit his job. it was a facetious comment combatting the 'i don't have the motivation to work after my 9-5'. you have to want to put in the work. if you don't want to, wait until a different time in the future where things are better and you can stomach spending a couple hours before or after work to build something.

NiagaraThistle 6y ago

i have achieved the goal. The question was 1. how to come up with ideas, and 2. how to work on those ideas with a 9-5. I have achieved both of those. Successfully and profitably, or not, is another question altogether. Even in the past when i've procrastinated, i still 1. had the ideas to work on, and 2. spent some time after work many days to work on the projects. If the question had been 'how do you build profitable projects and earn $100k+ per year doing so?', i would not have commented. But given the 2 questions asked, i definitely have an opinion i could share, regardless if it is agreed upn by anyone else.

mstipetic 6y ago
But your advice is reductive "it's about building habits." No it's not. His question was about escaping the grind with an "idea" which kinda implies building a business. I intentionally use the word business, not product as a lot of people (including you it seems) conflate. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm trying to save you from a lot of potential pain, as I've been also through that and am trying to get you to reflect a bit. I'm now almost 3 years in running a vc funded startup and things are not going so well because I didn't start off with the right fundamentals and have been focusing on product. I've had a look at the list of your startup ideas and I am almost certain you yourself, let alone many other people, don't pay for these types of things, and they don't seem to have network effects in order to scale up quickly and dominate a market. It's not only about hunkering down and building things, it's about understanding what makes a viable business, where your potential customers congregate, which language they're using, is it really a problem for them that you're solving, how can you reach them in a scalable way, who are the technical/economical decision makers in b2b, or how do you achieve some kind of network effect if b2c... (obviously i'm generalising a bit, but it's a fascinating multidimensional problem and I feel this advice of grinding it out is repeated everywhere and is super harmful) as far as ideas go, I can guarantee you that in your 15 years of professional experience you've seen many potential business problems that you just didn't recognise. Any repetitive annoying process you've seen somebody using a patched up excel sheet is potentially a business. if you're launching a cycling app without already having built an audience and a brand in the community, it's most likely going to be a painful experience. Really not trying to be an asshole, btw
- NiagaraThistle 6y ago
  definitely not taking any of your comments as 'being an asshole'. I genuinely appreciate the feedback and advice, and 100% agree with each of your points. I am the first to admit product /= business and project /= startup, but the terms do definitely get interchanged a lot now. my comments above fail to clarify that 'hunkering down' is not the only aspect of building something successful, nor do i think the '12-, 24-' hour hack sessions (regardless of what you're building) are a good formula to success, i've been very guilty of putting in the work but not doing so smartly in the past. I guess i was just trying to nail home the fact that if you want to start something on the side it IS going to take extra work, and that might be uncomfortable in the beginning, but some work is necessary. And i also definitely agree with the fact that many of my ideas don't lead to community, and agree that a vibrant community is a great means to success, most of these are 'scratch my own itch' type projects. But my primary point was , good or bad, ideas surround us daily. Thanks for your advice and feedback. I genuinely appreciate it!